Below we reprint a statement from Bartolina Sisa Resistance, a Bolivian solidarity organisation based in London. 28 March 2021
If we want an endless supply of political hypocrisy, all it takes is the US State Department.
The United States government complains about the far-right white supremacists who stormed the Capitol, yet it encourages exactly the same activity in Latin America against governments that do not agree with its rules of their game and continues applying the Monroe Doctrine, treating us like uncle Sam’s backyard.
The US Secretary of Estate Antony Blinken complains that the Bolivian government of Luis Arce ‘politicizes its legal system’. But the United States did not complain when the paramilitaries, the police and the army applied an arbitrary and lawless process to crush a democratically elected government in Bolivia.
Evo Morales, the first indigenous president whose government was democratically elected, was overthrew and threatened to kill.
The Jeanine Anez de facto regime with its fascist, racist, looters, arsonists and torturers, was received with open arms by the United States government.
Now that the coup plotters are out of power and are being prosecuted for their crimes, with sovereign Bolivian judicial Laws and following due process, the United States government comes out in defence of its partners who committed crimes against humanity.
And why this reaction? Are they afraid that the dirty deals of their ‘intelligence’ agencies will be exposed, as it happened in Chile, Argentina and all the web of what was Operation Condor?
At least they are consistent in their belief in impunity.
In just one year, Ánez and company murdered 37 indigenous brothers, left more than 800 wounded and put thousands men and women in jail after torturing them. It was like living under the Bolivian Ku Klux Klan (KKK) or Apartheid in South Africa.
Nothing strange for the country of the North where its police kills the African-American brothers in the growing wave of racism, discrimination and white supremacy.
The problem for Mr Blinken is that they are doing it to his ‘good friends’. Perhaps then he should join his ‘true friends’ in the far-right militias that climbed the steps of the Capitol.
And we have the chorus of the ‘great and good’ lining up to join the hypocrisy.
The Roman Catholic Church has a nefarious history of supporting vile reactionaries in Latin America. It provided an escape route for Nazi war criminals at the end of WWII and many settled in Latin America. The Nazi Klaus Barbie, known as ‘the butcher of Lyon’, was expressly sent by the US to Bolivia who became an advisor to the bloodiest dictatorships such as Banzer, Garcia Meza, etc.
So, what morals do they have for wanting to give us lessons on how to govern our country, when they are skilful in meddling in internal affairs, invading countries, sowing hunger, death and destruction?
The Bolivian people cry out for justice for their dead, wounded, imprisoned and disappeared. Mr Blinken only has to put himself in the place of the relatives of the victims who mourn for their dead, caused by his associate Jeanine Anez and her accomplices who wanted to wipe out the indigenous people in the style of the KKK.
The Bolivian people united, recovered democracy in October 2020 and as such we will defend our democratic rights, our free expression, our natural resources against the anti-democratic neoliberal and violent forces that seek to destabilise the country and reinstall despots again.
We will have reconciliation, when justice is done. No Justice, No Peace!
Enough of imperialist meddling! Bolivia is not a colony!
By Miriam Amancay Colque
BARTOLINA SISA RESISTANCE spokeswoman, Longstanding Bolivian Native Aymara Activist
