REPORTING THE BOLIVIAN COUP 11-12-19 TO 1-1-21

OMNI

COLLECTION OF REPORTING AND EVALUATION OF BOLIVIAN COUP 11-12-19 TO 1-1-21 arranged in reversed chronological order

January 1, 2021

Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology

http://omnicenter.org/donate/

INTRODUCTION, CONTEXT: US IMPERIALISM

The Astounding Record of United States Interventions in Latin Americahttp://historynewsnetwork.org/article/157958

By John H. Coatsworth, History News Network, posted December 22, 2014

  SOURCE: ReVista: Harvard Review of Latin America

12-22-14 (accessed)  

John H. Coatsworth is Monroe Gutman Professor of Latin American Affairs. Coatsworth's most recent book is The Cambridge Economic History of Latin America, a two-volume reference work, edited with Victor Bulmer-Thomas and Roberto Cortes Conde.

 “Ending Regime Change—in Bolivia and the World”

By  Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies.  Covert Action Magazine,  October 28, 2020.

Bolivian woman votes in October 18 election. [Source: elcomercio.pe]

Less than a year after the United States and the U.S.-backed Organization of American States (OAS) supported a violent military coup to overthrow the government of Bolivia, the Bolivian people have reelected the Movement for Socialism (MAS) and restored it to power.

In the long history of U.S.-backed “regime changes” in countries around the world, rarely have a people and a country so firmly and democratically repudiated U.S. efforts to dictate how they will be governed. Post-coup interim president Jeanine Añez has reportedly requested 350 U.S. visas for herself and others who may face prosecution in Bolivia for their roles in the coup.

The narrative of a rigged election in 2019 that the U.S. and the OAS peddled to support the coup in Bolivia has been thoroughly debunked. MAS’s support is mainly from indigenous Bolivians in the countryside, so it takes longer for their ballots to be collected and counted than those of the better-off city dwellers who support MAS’s right-wing, neoliberal opponents.

As the votes come in from rural areas, there is a swing to MAS in the vote count. By pretending that this predictable and normal pattern in Bolivia’s election results was evidence of election fraud in 2019, the OAS bears responsibility for unleashing a wave of violence against indigenous MAS supporters that, in the end, has only delegitimized the OAS itself.

It is instructive that the failed U.S.-backed coup in Bolivia has led to a more democratic outcome than U.S. regime change operations that succeeded in removing a government from power. Domestic debates over U.S. foreign policy routinely presume that the U.S. has the right, or even an obligation, to deploy an arsenal of military, economic and political weapons to force political change in countries that resist its imperial dictates.

[Source: amazon.com]

In practice, this means either full-scale war (as in Iraq and Afghanistan), a coup d’état (as in Haiti in 2004, Honduras in 2009 and Ukraine in 2014), covert and proxy wars (as in Somalia, Libya, Syria and Yemen) or punitive economic sanctions (as against Cuba, Iran and Venezuela)—all of which violate the sovereignty of the targeted countries and are therefore illegal under international law.

No matter which instrument of regime change the U.S. has deployed, these U.S. interventions have not made life better for the people of any of those countries, nor countless others in the past. William Blum’s brilliant 1995 book, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, catalogues 55 U.S. regime change operations in 50 years between 1945 and 1995. As Blum’s detailed accounts make clear, most of these operations involved U.S. efforts to remove popularly elected governments from power, as in Bolivia, and often replaced them with U.S.-backed dictatorships: like the Shah of Iran; Mobutu in the Congo; Suharto in Indonesia; and General Pinochet in Chile. MORE  https://covertactionmagazine.com/author/medeabenjaminnicolasjsdavies/

Bolivia’s triumph over U.S.-backed regime change is an affirmation of the emerging people-power of our new multipolar world, and the struggle to move the U.S. to a post-imperial future is in the interest of the American people as well. As the late Venezuela leader Hugo Chavez once told a visiting U.S. delegation, “If we work together with oppressed people inside the United States to overcome the empire, we will not only be liberating ourselves, but also the people of Martin Luther King.”

Medea Benjamin is the cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and the author of several books, including Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the US-Saudi Connection and Inside Iran: the Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher with CODEPINK, and the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.

The following entries are in reversed chronological order.

When Bolivians defeated U.S. imperialism with democracy.  Mronline.org (1-1-21).  The resounding victory of the MAS presidential ticket in the elections held on October 18 came after a year of struggle against the U.S.-backed coup regime.  | more…     

Evo Morales: Lithium was the reason for the coup in Bolivia.  Mronline.org (11-14-20).

The former president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, assures that the large deposits of lithium in the Andean country and his government’s attempt to industrialize the reserves were why the coup d’état against him in 2019 occurred.  | more…    

One Year After Coup in Bolivia, 'Democracy Has Won' | News & Views.  Common Dreams (10-19-20).

'Democracy Has Won': Year After Right-Wing Coup Against Evo Morales, Socialist Luis Arce Declares Victory in Bolivia Electionby Jake Johnson, staff writer
"Brothers and sisters: the will of the people has been asserted," Morales declared from exile in Argentina.

Evo Morales was the Americas’ greatest president.  Jacobin Roundup.  10-19-20.   When Evo Morales assumed office in January 2006, he was the first indigenous president of Bolivia — a country historically structured around racism. The son of impoverished llama herders in Oruru, Morales cut his teeth in the semitropical Chapare region as a coca grower, quickly rising through the ranks of the powerful coca growers’ union federation to become a nationally prominent figure.

Under his presidency, MAS won successive elections with unprecedented margins in 2009 and 2014, running on an economic agenda of modest wealth redistribution and partial hydrocarbon nationalization coupled with an evocative discourse of decolonization. news@jacobinmag.com

Why U.S. political scientists are arguing that Evo Morales should be the President of Bolivia.  Mronline.org (8-30-20)

Three political scientists from the United States closely studied allegations of fraud in the Bolivian election of 2019 and found that there was no fraud. These scholars—from the University of Pennsylvania and Tulane University—looked at raw evidence from the Bolivian election authorities that had been handed over to the New York Times.  | more…     

NYT Acknowledges Coup In Bolivia While Shirking Blame For Its Supporting Role.  Popular Resistance.org (7-16-20)

By Camila Escalante with Brian Mier, FAIR. The New York Times (6/7/20) declared that an Organization of American States (OAS) report alleging fraud in the 2019 Bolivian presidential elections—which was used as justification for a bloody, authoritarian coup d’etat in November 2019—was fundamentally flawed. The Times reported the findings of a new study by independent researchers; the Times brags of contributing to it by sharing data it “obtained from Bolivian electoral authorities,” though this data has been publicly available since before the 2019 coup. The article never uses the word “coup”—it says that President Evo Morales... -more- 

Studies Say Morales Won Fairly, UN & Latin American Institutions Must Take Action

By Ekaterina Blinova, Sputniknews.com.   Popular Resistance.org. (3-21-20).   The latest statistical analyses say that the Organisation of American States' conclusions about the alleged fraud in Bolivia’s October vote don't hold water. Ex-UN official Alfred de Zayas has explained what steps could be taken by international and regional bodies in the aftermath of the exposure and shed light on the US role in the Bolivian coup. -more-

Sent to blog and ws, 12-19-19

BOLIVIA COUP NOVEMBER 2019 –

I am tired of holding other worlds in my fist.  Mronline.org (2-15-20)

In November 2019, the Bolivian army–with a nudge from the shadows–told its President Evo Morales Ayma to resign. Morales would eventually go to Mexico and then seek asylum in Argentina. Jeanine Áñez, a far-right politician who was not in the line of succession, seized power; the military, the fascistic civil society groups, and sections of […]

Source    

COLLECTION OF REPORTING AND EVALUATION OF BOLIVIAN COUP 11-12-19 TO 1-1-21 arranged in reversed chronological order

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2019/12/bolivia-coup-2019.html

Readings gathered by Dick Bennett, arranged in roughly reversed chronological order, except for the 2014 historical introduction at the beginning .   

The Astounding Record of United States Interventions in Latin Americahttp://historynewsnetwork.org/article/157958

By John H. Coatsworth, History News Network, posted December 22, 2014

  SOURCE: ReVista: Harvard Review of Latin America

12-22-14 (accessed)  

John H. Coatsworth is Monroe Gutman Professor of Latin American Affairs. Coatsworth's most recent book is The Cambridge Economic History of Latin America, a two-volume reference work, edited with Victor Bulmer-Thomas and Roberto Cortes Conde.

In the slightly less than a hundred years from 1898 to 1994, the U.S. government has intervened successfully to change governments in Latin America a total of at least 41 times. That amounts to once every 28 months for an entire century (see table).

Direct intervention occurred in 17 of the 41 cases. These incidents involved the use of U.S. military forces, intelligence agents or local citizens employed by U.S. government agencies. In another 24 cases, the U.S. government played an indirect role. That is, local actors played the principal roles, but either would not have acted or would not have succeeded without encouragement from the U.S. government.

While direct interventions are easily identified and copiously documented, identifying indirect interventions requires an exercise in historical judgment. The list of 41 includes only cases where, in the author’s judgment, the incumbent government would likely have survived in the absence of U.S. hostility. The list ranges from obvious cases to close calls. An example of an obvious case is the decision, made in the Oval Office in January 1963, to incite the Guatemalan army to overthrow the (dubiously) elected government of Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes in order to prevent an open competitive election that might have been won by left-leaning former President Juan José Arévalo. A less obvious case is that of the Chilean military coup against the government of President Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973. The Allende government had plenty of domestic opponents eager to see it deposed. It is included in this list because U.S. opposition to a coup (rather than encouragement) would most likely have enabled Allende to continue in office until new elections.

The 41 cases do not include incidents in which the United States sought to depose a Latin American government, but failed in the attempt. The most famous such case was the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961. Also absent from the list are numerous cases in which the U.S. government acted decisively to forestall a coup d’etat or otherwise protect an incumbent regime from being overthrown.

Overthrowing governments in Latin America has never been exactly routine for the United States. However, the option to depose a sitting government has appeared on the U.S. president’s desk with remarkable frequency over the past century. It is no doubt still there, though the frequency with which the U.S. president has used this option has fallen rapidly since the end of the Cold War...

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE AT REVISTA: HARVARD REVIEW OF LATIN AMERICA

-See more at: http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/157958#sthash.htStaMuH.dpuf

Getting away with murder: ‘clash’ as media euphemism for ‘massacre’.  mronline.org(12-19-19).

After deposing Evo Morales in a U.S.-backed coup November 11, Bolivia’s military selected Jeanine Añez as president. Añez immediately signed a decree pre-exonerating security forces of all crimes during their “re-establishment of order,” understood by all sides as a license to kill. Those same forces have now conducted massacres of Morales supporters near the cities […]

Source    

Members of Argentine Delegation in Bolivia tell the horror they recorded (Coup Repression).  Mronline.org (12-4-19)

Disappearances, murders, arbitrary detentions, rapes, torture and hospitals that refuse to take care of those wounded by the repression were some of the events recorded during the first day of work. They were held and kicked at the airport by a pro-coup mob. Then the Minister of Government of Añez, Arturo Murillo, came out to […]

Source    

We Continue to Fight for Justice for Indigenous Bolivians, Thanks to You!

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News Coverage of Our Protest of the U.S.-backed Bolivian
Coup

Dear Friends,

In case you missed it, 40/29 News covered our protest of the U.S.-backed coup in Bolivia.  We are not only reaching the dozens or hundreds of cars that drive by, but when we get news coverage we are speaking to tens of thousands of people.  This is why even small protests are so important.  This is especially important on this issue of the Bolivian coup, where most of the political and media establishment are not even admitting that it was a coup.  Thanks again to everyone that showed up in the cold and on such short notice! 

40/29 News Coverage: https://www.4029tv.com/article/arkansans-protest-violence-in-bolivia/29872726

'Years From Now, It'll Be Clear to Everyone There Was a Coup in Bolivia'

We Condemn the U.S. Backed Coup in Bolivia!

Next 2 from mronline.org (11-17-19)

OAS involvement in Bolivia precipitated the coup

Let’s put an end to this nonesense that’s peddled by MSM.

Communiqué of the Movement to Socialism (MAS-IPSP)

The Bolivian people are living through terrible moments, with police officers and motorcyclists storm the streets and the military high command deciding to attack the citizens as a means of pacification, including preventing prominent people, religious leaders and political leaders from finding constitutional and democratic solutions to the crisis we are facing.

Source    

Fwd: Bolivia right-wing coup with escalating deaths of Morales supporters and threats to journalists+ How corporate media covers-up U.S. role in Lula's imprisonment

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Date: Sat, Nov 16, 2019 at 1:59 PM
Subject: Bolivia right-wing coup with escalating deaths of Morales supporters and threats to journalists+ How corporate media covers-up U.S. role in Lula's imprisonment
To:

SCROLL DOWN TO THE BOLIVIA ARTICLE

BRIAN MIER,NOVEMBER 14, 2019, FAIR, https://fair.org/home/as-lula-emerges-from-prison-us-media-ignore-how-washington-helped-put-him-there/

As Lula Emerges From Prison, US Media Ignore How Washington Helped Put Him There

The Brazilian Supreme Court reversed a 2018 ruling on November 7, upholding the principle of innocent until proven guilty in the 1988 Constitution and declaring it illegal to jail defendants before their appeals processes have been exhausted. Within 24 hours, former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was released to an adoring crowd of hundreds of union members and social movement activists who had maintained a camp outside the police station where he was held, shouting “good morning,” “good afternoon” and “good night” to him for 580 consecutive days.

The New York Times (8/25/17) depicted Judge Sérgio Moro as “the face of the national reckoning for Brazil’s ruling class.” He now heads the Justice Department in the fascist government of Jair Bolsonaro.

The Supreme Court had previously ruled, on April 5, 2018—after a threat from Brazilian Gen. Eduardo Villas Bôas—that defendants could be preemptively jailed before their appeals processes played out. Directly afterwards, Judge Sérgio Moro pressed for an immediate election-year arrest warrant for the PT party founder at a moment when he was widely leading in all polls. (The far-right candidate who won in the wake of Lula’s removal from the race, Jair Bolsonaro, went on to name Moro his “Super Justice Minister.”)

Lula’s arrest came as part of a wide-ranging international investigation, ostensibly aimed at corruption, called Lava Jato (“Car Wash”), which involved the US Justice Department, US Security and Exchange Commission and Swiss federal police, working with Judge Moro and a public prosecutor team based in the conservative Brazilian city of Curitiba (CounterSpin, 6/21/19). The only charge that prosecutors had been able to stick on Lula was that he had committed “indeterminate acts of corruption.”

At the time, the Anglo media ignored US involvement in the investigation, built Moro up as a superhero, and failed to provide any kind of critical analysis of the proceedings against Lula, despite complaints from some of the world’s leading legal scholars and human rights activists that the former president was victim of a politically motivated kangaroo court proceeding designed to remove him from the presidential elections.

There was no material evidence linking Lula to any crime. His conviction was based on coerced plea bargain testimony by a single convicted criminal named Leo Pinheiro, director of the OAS construction company, which built the building where an apartment that featured in Lula’s case was located. Sentenced to ten years and eight months for paying bribes to Petrobras Petroleum company, Pinheiro originally testified that Lula had not committed any crime, then changed his story twice, implicating Lula before having his sentence reduced to two years and six months. His third and final story stated that Lula had received free renovations on the beach-side apartment in exchange for political favors.

Seventy-three witnesses, including executives from the OAS company, testified that neither Lula nor anyone from his family had ever owned or lived in the apartment. Furthermore, a judge in Brasilia determined in January 2018, as part of a different case, that the vacant apartment still belonged to OAS. The prosecutors were unable to prove that the renovations had ever actually taken place. Although Sérgio Moro had barred the press from visiting the site, the MTST housing movement broke in and filmed a video which proved that, contrary to prosecutors claims, the strikingly cheap-looking apartment had never had any of the renovations listed by the prosecutors, including installation of a private elevator and luxury appliances. The Lava Jato task force prosecutors and Judge Moro were unable to prove that they had any legal jurisdiction over a case involving an alleged crime in a different state, São Paulo, which has its own court system, after they dropped an initial frivolous charge alleging a connection between the apartment renovations and a money-laundering scheme involving the Petrobras petroleum company. Finally, the alleged renovations, which prosecutors were unable to prove ever took place, in an apartment that they were unable to prove belonged to Lula, supposedly happened three years after he left public office, meaning that it was legally impossible to prove abuse of authority.

“Brazilians call him SuperMoro, chanting his name on the streets of Rio de Janeiro as if he were a soccer star,” Time‘s Bryan Walsh (4/21/16) reported.

When Moro, who was declared a Time personality of the year in 2016 (4/21/16), declared Lula guilty of committing indeterminate acts of corruption, Western corporate media made little to no mention of prosecutorial misconduct, which was written about extensively in independent Brazilian media and legal publications. Moro had broken the law on multiple occasions in his zeal to put the former president behind bars. Using a legal loophole dating back to the Inquisition that enabled him to both oversee the investigation and rule on it, he ordered the Federal Police to wiretap Lula’s defense lawyers. This enabled the prosecutors to map out all possible moves by the defense and plan their reactions in advance. Moro also illegally wiretapped President Dilma Rousseff, then illegally leaked out-of-context audio to Brazil’s largest TV network on the eve of her impeachment hearings. In 2017, US Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Blanco bragged about informal communications with his friends in the Lava Jato task force, which violates Brazilian law by bypassing security protocols.

There was certainly enough information out there to suggest that Lula might be the victim of a political witch hunt to keep him from becoming president. This is, in fact, what the AFL-CIO, Noam Chomsky, Angela Davis, Bernie Sanders and 29 Members of Congress were all saying at the time. However, no shadow of a doubt was allowed to fall over the proceedings in Anglo media. In the New Yorker (7/13/17), Alex Cuadros gushed that Lula’s conviction was “the most important criminal conviction in Brazil’s history.” And the week of Lula’s arrest, the Guardian (4/3/18) erroneously claimed that his conviction was connected to an “R$88 million graft scheme” involving Petrobras that Judge Moro had specifically explained in his ruling was not the case.

Behind bars and (illegally) barred from speaking to the press, Lula continued to run for president. Three months after he was arrested, he still led all election polls, with double the support of his nearest competitor. Then the UN Human Rights Committee issued a ruling, legally binding according to both international and Brazilian law, stating that Lula had the right to run for president. But as in the April 5, 2018, Supreme Court ruling, the judiciary decided to make an exception to the law, specifically to bar Lula from the campaign. Less than one month before the elections, the PT party was forced to provide a replacement candidate.

All things considered, the electoral results were better than expected. The PT party remained the largest party in Congress and became the party with the most governors. Last minute candidate Fernando Haddad made it to the final round and received 47 million votes, but it was not enough.

The Intercept‘s revelations (6/9/19) of judicial collusion were mentioned in the Brazilian Supreme Court ruling that ordered Lula da Silva’s release, but were often ignored in US media coverage of his return to freedom.

Months after Bolsonaro took office, the Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald revealed thousands of hours of social media conversations between Lava Jato prosecutors and Moro. They showed the supposedly impartial judge giving instructions to the prosecutors, not only on how to improve the accusations, but on how to conduct a media strategy to commit character assassination against Lula. They exposed collusion with a Supreme Court Justice to issue a gag order preventing Lula from speaking to the press during the leadup to the 2018 presidential elections, in order to aid Bolsonaro’s campaign. They showed Lava Jato prosecution task force leader Delton Dallagnol praying to God that Bolsonaro would win the presidential election. Most damning of all, perhaps, is the conversation conducted between Dallagnol and the other prosecutors, only a few hours before the final trial, revealing that they didn’t think they had any proof, but that Moro was going to guarantee a conviction.

The US Department of Justice announced in March 2019 that it was going to give Dallagnol and his Lava Jato task force $682 million to open a privately managed “anti-corruption” foundation in Curitiba. The money would come from the $3.5 billion in fines that the DoJ and SEC collected in Lava Jato’s process of bankrupting and dismantling Brazil’s largest companies in the leadup to the 2016 legislative coup against President Rousseff.

The move was blocked by the Superior Justice Court, but it raised questions among some US lawmakers about how deep the US government’s role went in Lava Jato. On August 21, Rep. Hank Johnson (D.-Georgia) and 12 other members of Congress delivered a letter to Attorney General William Barr demanding answers to a series of questions about possible legal and ethical violations committed by the DoJ during its partnership with Moro and Lava Jato. One of the questions reads, “Did DoJ provide assistance with the collection or analysis of evidence compiled by the Lava Jato Task Force and Judge Moro for President Lula’s case?”

On September 25, Rep. Raul Grijalva and 14 other members of Congress introduced House Resolution 594, “expressing profound concern about threats to human rights, the rule of law, democracy and the environment in Brazil.” Moro is repeatedly criticized in the text of the resolution, which mentions the Intercept leaks, and states that

Sérgio Moro, the presiding judge in da Silva’s case, acted in a clearly biased manner toward da Silva, violating his right to a fair and impartial judicial process under Brazilian law.

One might think that by now US corporate media would finally begin to question the narrative that Lula is somehow guilty of corruption. Wouldn’t American readers be interested in learning about the role their Justice Department played in this process? Aren’t the leaked social media chats published by the Intercept relevant to the story of Lula’s release, especially since they were mentioned in the Brazilian Supreme Court ruling?

The New York Times (11/8/19) waited until the 18th of 28 paragraphs to mention “questions about the fairness of Mr. da Silva’s prosecution.”

Unfortunately, since Lula’s release, none of the major corporate media outlets have mentioned the US Department of Justice role in Lava Jato at all. Although a few papers mentioned the Intercept revelations, they are reframed and rendered less threatening to the narrative, presented in the context of “raising doubts among some” about the investigation.

On the day Lula was released, Bloomberg (11/8/19) ran an article which does not mention illegal collusion between judge and prosecutors. It states instead:

The ex-president was convicted of corruption in 2017 and lost two appeals since then, but he has not exhausted the entire process. He has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and has said he’s victim of political persecution.

The Washington Post’s first article (11/8/19) on Lula’s release also failed to mention the corruption scandal which has enveloped Lava Jato, although it provided a link to a previous article (6/17/19) on that subject.

In two articles about Lula’s release, the BBC (11/9/19) likewise ignored the illegal collusion between judge and prosecutors in Lava Jato.

On the day Lula was released, the Guardian, whose Latin America editor Tom Phillips wrote 22 articles normalizing Bolsonaro in October 2018 in the leadup to the elections, made the editorial decision to rerun an AP article that makes no mention of the leaked social media conversations. One day later, the Washington Post‘s Dom Phillips (11/8/19), who was one of the biggest cheerleaders for Lula’s political imprisonment in the international media, briefly mentioned the Intercept revelations and Moro’s ethical problems in the context of an article that misrepresented Lula’s conviction as being connected to “money laundering,” and ended with an uncritical treatment of other frivolous charges against the former president.

The New York Times (11/8/19) mentioned the leaked audio messages, saying that they “made clear, for instance, that Mr. Moro had actively advised prosecutors on strategy in the case, conduct that legal analysts have called an ethical and legal transgression,” then quoted Moro on the case and stated that he disputes the idea that he acted improperly.

Despite the evidence of Lula’s innocence and illegal persecution, with the cooperation of the US DoJ, that removed him from the 2018 presidential elections, establishment media cling to a false narrative that, while weakened by the subsequent actions of current “Super Justice Minister” Moro, still attempts to damage the public image of the most popular president in Brazilian history.

As the smear campaign continues, it is important to remember that Lula represented a social democratic national development project, in the tradition of what Brazilians call desenvolvimentalismo, based on strategic control over natural resources and their use to fund public services like health and education, strong minimum wage policies and labor rights, increased access to free public universities, and strong investment in scientific research. This is the project that was dismantled after the 2016 coup, to the benefit of corporations like Monsanto, Chevron, ExxonMobil and Boeing. History shows that every Brazilian president who ever tried to implement desenvolvimentalista policies—from Getúlio Vargas, Juscelino Kubitschek and Jango Goulart to Rousseff and Lula—has been subjected to a coup, political imprisonment or assassination, with perennial suspicion of US involvement. And as we see corporate media working to normalize the military coup in Bolivia (FAIR.org, 11/11/19), it is clear that this problem is not limited to Brazil.

Bolivia: Coup-Born Government Threatens Independent Journalists

Supporters of Bolivia's President Evo Morales carry Wiphala flags as they block roads in El Alto, Bolivia, Nov. 15, 2019 | Photo: Reuters

15 Nov, 2019, Telesur, https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Bolivia-Coup-Born-Government-Threatens-Independent-Journalists-20191115-0002.html?utm_source=planisys&utm_medium=NewsletterIngles&utm_campaign=NewsletterIngles&utm_content=8

Four Cuban officials were also accused of demonstrating against a de facto regime headed by Senator Jeanine Añez, who self-proclaimed president on Tuesday.

Independent journalists who are covering protests in Bolivia were accused of carrying out "sedition" by Communications Minister Roxana Lizarraga, who was paradoxically appointed by a US-backed government that emerged from a coup d'etat against the socialist President Evo Morales.

"Law will be fully enforced against those journalists or pseudo-journalists who are seditious, whether they are nationals or foreigners," Lizarraga said and took the opportunity to blame Cuba and Venezuela for the ongoing social unrest in Bolivia.

“They want to put us on their knees,” she added and warned that the Interior Ministry already has a list of the journalists who are stirring up resistance or rebellion against the coup-born regime.

After these announcements, four Cuban officials were arrested and accused of demonstrating against the interim government headed by Senator Jeanine Añez, who self-proclaimed president on Nov. 12.

According to identity documents to which international journalists had access, however, the detainees are cooperating technicians who are part of the Cuban Medical Brigade.

Physician Ramon Emilio, economist Idalberto Delgado and electromedical engineer Amparo Lourdes are currently being held at the Police Operations Tactical Unit (UTOP) in La Paz. The fourth detainee's identity is not yet known.

The Organization of American States (OAS) is a coup plotter and must answer for its complicity in kidnappings, torture, and deaths of Bolivian citizens, who are resisting and denouncing Bolivia's coup d'etat that was executed with interference from the U.S. Enough of media censorship! The United Nations should disseminate information and intervene.

Despite the blockade that mainstream media are making to what is happening in the Andean country, expressions of international solidarity with the Bolivian people are multiplying.

In Mexico City, for instance, human rights defenders and social activists on Friday will hold a rally in front of the U.S. embassy in rejection of the coup d'etat, which is being consummated under the auspices of the Organization of American States (OAS).

"We are all invited to denounce the U.S. empire blatant interference in this country," the rally organizers said and added that the Bolivians will keep a stubborn resistance against the racist oligarchy.

Bolivia: 9 Corpses in 24 hours Prove Dictatorship's Violence

 Telesur, Nov. 15, 2019, https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Bolivia-9-Corpses-in-24-hours-Prove-Dictatorships-Violence-20191116-0001.html?utm_source=planisys&utm_medium=NewsletterIngles&utm_campaign=NewsletterIngles&utm_content=8

Teresa Zubieta, the Ombudsman's office delegate, holds that 23 people have died amidst the coup d'etat.

Over the last 24 hours, at least nine Bolivians have died as a result of repressive actions carried out by the security forces that support the coup-based government headed by Senator Jeanine Añez.

"23 people have died since the coup. The most recent victims are four people shot dead in La Paz and five in Sacaba," La Paz Ombudsman' Office delegate Teresa Zubieta told teleSUR.

"They have killed our brothers as if they were animals," Zubieta said and explained that Añez's regime is generating "a setback of more than 30 years with respect to the protection of people."

Judging by the complaints filed before the Ombudsman's office, far-right paramilitary groups have been activated to "repress and intimidate people even when they are simply walking home from work."

Coup in Bolivia: The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) condemned the Sacaba massacre. Five dead and dozens injured by the repression. After the murder of five protesters, the IACHR reminded the self-proclaimed president of her "obligation to ensure the right to life and physical integrity of those who protest peacefully" and condemned the "disproportionate use of police and military force."

As a consequence of the prevailing institutional chaos, however, the figures on human rights violations vary constantly.

Until Nov. 14, for example, the Ombudsman's Office maintained that 536 people had been injured and 12 people killed in the midst of intense repression against the people who resist in the streets.

On the other hand, according to the international news agency EFE, the conflict in Bolivia has left at least 18 dead and more than 500 injured since the presidential elections held on October 20.

Despite the evidence on violence against Bolivians, the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom and Colombia recognized the regime of Jeanina Añez as their direct interlocutor.

While that was happening, however, the governments of Uruguay, China and Russia have joined the voices that forcefully reject the coup in Bolivia.

Bolivia: repressive forces at the service of Jeanine Añez killed 7 people. Amid the pain, the people shout: "Añez, murderer!"

In the midst of the political crisis, the Senate on Thursday elected the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) Senator Monica Cota as its new president.

She will replace Ariana Salvatierra, who was forced to resign on the weekend in which the right-wing politicians also managed to press for President Evo Morales' resignation.

By electing a new president, the Senate attempts to rebuild the normal functioning of democratic institutions amid the persecution and repression which the self-proclaimed president Añez is leading.

11-16-19

Following from mronline.org (11-12-19)

The coup in Bolivia: five lessons

The Bolivian tragedy eloquently teaches several lessons that our peoples and popular social and political forces must learn and record in their consciences forever. Here, a brief enumeration, on the fly, and as a prelude to a more detailed treatment in the future.

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Evo Morales slams coup plotters for keeping up violence

“Mesa and Camacho, discriminators and conspirators, will go down in history as racists and coup plotters,” Morales said in a tweet early Monday morning.

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Following written before Morales forced out of office

Bolivian President Evo Morales calls new presidential elections

Morales also called for calm and peace amid opposition protests and mobilizations, which have turned violent, against his victory in the Oct. 20 elections.

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Bolivia on alert: Coup plot underway!

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez denounces destabilization campaign and violence.

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END COLLECTION OF REPORTING AND EVALUATION OF BOLIVIAN COUP 11-12-19 TO 1-1-21