Gary Prado is more than just the capture of Che
8 May 2023
Gary Prado is more than just the capture of Che
I apologize to my kind readers if today I comment on something that touches me closely but that I think is of interest to the whole country: General Gary Prado Salmon has left us, a remarkable and multifaceted character, outstanding in many activities beyond his military career.
Gary Prado is known for having been the officer who captured Che Guevara and turned him over to authorities. Without a doubt, it was a military action of national and international relevance, but Gary Prado’s figure goes far beyond that military action.
Gary Prado was also a valuable intellectual, researcher, historian, politician, diplomat, role model, and renowned university professor.
His intellectual production includes a book on the history of the Armed Forces and another on the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (MNR) and the Armed Forces.
His work on guerrilla warfare called “The Immolated Guerrilla,” published in many languages and in several countries, is the best text on Che’s guerrilla warfare. Another very important work is the account of President Siles’ kidnapping, a subject unknown to many. He was preparing his autobiography, which unfortunately will remain incomplete.
Gary Prado was part of that group of young institutionalist officers who in 1974 demanded immediate national elections from the military power. The Government accepted the proposal, but within a few hours, the main leaders, including him, were either imprisoned or exiled.
The opportunity presented itself again in 1978 when the young institutionalists with General Padilla installed a new government with the sole objective of calling elections in six months, and so it was, a unique case of clean elections without an official candidate.
Gary Prado was the Minister of Planning in that Government and from that position supported and promoted the creation of the Development Corporation in Santa Cruz, handing over the leadership of the process to the group of young professionals who were already working on the issue with a specialized consulting firm. It was the team that, led by Oscar Serrate, consolidated the Santa Cruz development model from the public sector, with broad participation of civil society. It is within this framework of collaboration with the Ministry of Planning that the construction of Viru Viru Airport was consolidated.
Gary Prado placed himself politically in the center, away from all kinds of extremism.
As Commander of the Eighth Army Division, he calmed the region with his negotiating and conciliatory skills, rather than using force. He was the guarantee for peaceful coexistence, intervening in conflicts always with great intelligence and knowledge of the issues. His word had credibility.
Being an impeccable career military man, he had to endure ten years of a process of terrorism with which he had nothing to do. Why was he included? According to some sources, it was an imposition of Cuba, but also because the crude scheme invented needed a person with military and strategic capabilities to be credible, and he fitted that profile. But, as expected, that trial could not even stand for ten years.
It is worth noting the significant support that Gary had during these ten years: that of his son Gary, who, as a lawyer with great ability, defended him and several other accused who did not have resources, and that of his wife Maria del Carmen, who accompanied him with great love and supported him with the ferocity of a lioness. The constant presence of journalist Harold Olmos should also be noted, who later published a meticulous and precise book of over 500 pages about the trial, denouncing the arbitrariness.
He was a highly appreciated professor by Private Technological University of Santa Cruz de la Sierra (UTEPSA) students because, with his enormous capacity and culture, he opened the eyes of young people to the complexity of the world in which we live.
Finally, he was president of the Cedure board, always accompanying our activities.
I want to conclude this comment with a phrase that a friend sent me, which summarizes some of my feelings toward him: “The general was a beloved and admired man.” A great achievement in life.
Source: https://eldeber.com.bo/edicion-impresa/gary-prado-es-mas-que-la-captura-del-che_324313
BOLIVIA, AN INVISIBLE DICTATORSHIP
10 May 2022
BOLIVIA, AN INVISIBLE DICTATORSHIP
For decades it was said that Mexico lived under a “perfect dictatorship.” After the revolutionary process, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) was established in 1929 and ruled with an iron fist for more than 70 continuous years. It was a kind of intrinsic contradiction because a revolution –radical and often violent change– occurs by episodes and, therefore, cannot be “institutionalized.” What was institutionalized in that country was a dictatorship in disguise.
It was a fantasy that Mexico wanted us to swallow because, in reality, its system of government was reddish on the outside but pure green and hard on the inside. That country was a refuge for foreign guerrillas or leftist intellectuals, who were forbidden to interfere in domestic politics, but were given the freedom to foment the insurrection wherever they wanted, being Fidel Castro and his gang, with Che Guevara, their best exponents.
Meanwhile, internally, Mexicans became infamous for the “Tlatelolco Massacre,” which occurred in the face of the 1968 student revolt in their capital city, which demanded a political opening to the PRI regime, which was continually in power –as a medieval dynasty– with hereditary succession.
That political parody continues today with the worst President of its history, the populist demagogue Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a former PRI member, senile and ignorant, who is already the shame of that great nation, and who has sheltered in Mexico the conspiratorial brain of “Socialism of the 21st Century.”
After years of ruminating on the defeat of the USSR in its attempt to establish a military presence in Cuba, after the Missile Crisis of 1962 and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Russia decided to face its defeat in the Cold War with a strategy of subversion in Latin America, of long breath, which consists in using liberal democracy to capture political power and destroy it from within. To this end, it implemented, through its agents in this region, the best and most refined subversive communication campaign, and the penetration of civil society institutions to stir up political discontent, through the “social action” of mobilized minorities.
In this effort, after the resounding failure of the “socialist-communist” model in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, Bolivia established itself as a “successful” model of this evil project. Using that strategy, Evo Morales took power in Bolivia in 2006, with Russian-Mexican-Venezuelan-Cuban strategic support.
This project of political action, of continental nature, aims to overthrow the different republican identities of adherence to their respective countries, replacing them with foreign social categories to create transversal alliances throughout the continent, under a single ideology and political structure aligned with Moscow, in an authoritarian dictatorial, single-party, and “democracy” model administered from power.
The confirmation of this political “model” has been made evident by the Chilean revolt of October 2019, which has followed to the letter the insurrectional script that took place in Bolivia from the year 2000.
Following the Mexican parody, the current Bolivian Government simulates democratic norms to govern as a tyranny, violating all the precepts of the Inter-American Democratic Charter, but with a millionaire spending on propaganda, and the siege of the independent press. In doing so, it has so far succeeded in “making its dictatorship invisible.”
Luis Arce Catacora presides over a dictatorial government, as arbitrary and criminal as that of his predecessor and mentor, Evo Morales, who has turned Bolivia into a refuge for drug trafficking, institutionalized corruption, keeping more than a thousand dissidents in exile, and hundreds of political prisoners, including former President Jeanine Añez, imprisoned without a sentence more than a year ago, in violation of all her constitutional and human rights.
It is the “invisible dictatorship” of Bolivia, which must be sanctioned as such and not invited to the table of democracy, in Los Angeles, next June.
Source: http://www.cabildeodigital.com/2022/05/la-diplomacia-de-la-verguenza.html
THEIR TIME IS UP
20 February 2022
Their time is up
It took a long time, but the time has come when the “empire” identified drug trafficking as an ally of the axis of autocracies and has decided to fight it throughout the world.
For Bolivia, this means the end of an era, marked by the political dominance of figures and organizations linked to drug trafficking, who had managed to control all the institutions of the democratic State.
The country has been demolished by this force. Drug trafficking has as its servants the Armed Forces, the Police, justice, all State institutions and has almost achieved total control of the media.
But now America’s war has begun with worldwide scope. The trigger was the DEA announcement that the Venezuelan Alex Saab, now imprisoned in Miami, had been its informant since 2017. A key element of the Los Soles Cartel, created by Hugo Chávez and his Bolivian supplier to bring drugs to the United States, passing through Cuba.
Europol is arresting hundreds of drug traffickers in six European countries, including Spain, former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández has been extradited, members of the Jalisco Cartel and all the Mexican cartels are being persecuted, the Brazilian Government is mobilizing against the drug commandos and the United States requests the extradition of Bolivian Colonel Maximiliano Dávila, to begin with.
This 21st century war has only just begun. The United States has decided to put an end to the economic and political power of drug trafficking for an elementary reason in any war: drug trafficking is allied with the enemies.
In our region, that economic power came to create an organization that rivals the OAS: the alliance of Narco-States, of which Bolivia is a key player. After all, it is the only country on the planet whose President was the head of the largest suppliers of raw materials for the manufacture of a drug banned by the UN.
Not even in Afghanistan had the drug traffickers gone that far. In that poor country, the world’s leading opium producer, drug traffickers proposed to create a political party, but it was rejected by parliament in the 1980s.
In Bolivia, that political party was not only created but has managed to govern the country for fifteen years.
But their time is up. The culprits have been silent and the main one of them prepares his escape.
Proof of the political party’s degree of dominance over justice is that prosecutor Juan Lanchipa continues to defend Colonel Dávila, who is accused of having conspired to bring a ton of cocaine to the United States.
It is assumed that when the entire framework has been dismantled, and their leaders are imprisoned in Miami or Guantanamo, all the institutions that had been controlled will recover their independence and the country can be reborn from the ashes.
Source: https://www.lostiempos.com/actualidad/opinion/20220220/columna/les-llego-su-hora
A PARALLEL WORLD OF LIES
14 February 2022
A PARALLEL WORLD OF LIES
President-dictator Luis Arce announced from Oruro the discovery of new gas reserves and it is a complete lie. He said: “last year we started an exploration in the Margarita-Huacaya well, they are giving us good results, brothers, we are finding gas reserves in this well that we explored during our administration…”
The Arce Government did not do or discover anything, although it has spent a lot of our tax money to claim false success for its administration.
MARGARITA AND THE NEOLIBERALS
The discovery of Campo Margarita occurred in 1998, in the Government of Hugo Banzer Suarez when Tuto Quiroga was the Vice President. This field located in Tarija was joined by Huacaya, which is in Chuquisaca, which is part of the same natural gas reservoir, the most important at present.
Production began in 2004, two years before the first administration of Evo Morales, and since then it has been in charge of the Spanish transnational Repsol and its partners British Gas and Panamerican Energy.
In 2012, Chuquisaca just began to receive royalties and faced Tarija to obtain a greater percentage of participation, which finally remained 24.9% for Chuquisaca and 75.1% for Tarija.
In 2013, REPSOL was successful in the Margarita X 6 well, which began to produce 6 million cubic meters per day, and that year production was inaugurated in the Margarita X 10 well, success and merit that Luis Arce claims for himself.
To better understand, the specialist Alvaro Rios said that it is an additional faucet placed in a water tank, in this case in a gas reservoir.
The production of the Margarita X10 will barely be enough to meet the export commitments with Argentina, but it will not increase reserves or reverse the general decline in gas production that has been falling since 2016.
LUISITO EARNS ONLY 30 THOUSAND
Finally, the president of Bolivian Fiscal Oil Fields (YPFB), Armin Dorgathen, admitted that Luis Marcelo Arce Mosqueira had worked in that state company but “in no executive position” and denied that he had earned 50,000 bolivianos a month, “only 30,000,” he said.
The lie has become the truth of a parallel world in which the MAS Government moves. President Arce’s son, Luis Marcelo, has been in the [Oil] Field Projects Department, traveling and promoting biodiesel plants. He has also entered into negotiations with the Maduro regime for the hiring of Venezuelans at the Bulo Bulo Urea plant, with such high salaries of 70 and 35 thousand dollars a month, that an investigation is warranted.
Then, Luis Marcelo went to the Chaco subsidiary where the advertising contracts were made for the Brazilian Andre Molabek with whom he campaigned for his father.
At this time, according to reports from the Comptroller’s Office, he continues to work at YPFB. But, in addition, the very appointment of Armin Dorgathen in the presidency of YPFB has been a move by Luis Marcelo who will surely soon say that he does not know Molabek or Dorgathen.
Presumably, they also do not know that in YPFB 821 union leaders have been declared in commission, that they have union immunity and therefore are untouchable, and that 176 of them earn without working salaries that on average are 20 thousand bolivianos.
It is that, in the parallel and blue world, everything is “blue” and they are not known. For example, the Minister of Hydrocarbons Franklin Molina said in a report to the Legislative Assembly that he did not know that there were foreigners at the Urea plant and Evo Morales did not know Gabriela Zapata who was just “a familiar face” and did not know his boss in the FELC-N, the drug trafficker Maximiliano Dorado.
A COUP D’ETAT
In this world of persistent lies, Ivan Lima is the head of the Inquisition against the coup plotters who removed Evo Morales in 2019. There was no fraud, no resignation, no flight. There was a coup and the coup plotters have to pay for it.
The relatives of two soldiers imprisoned for this fiction, Gonzalo Terceros, from the Bolivian Air Force (FAB), and Gonzalo Jarjuri, from the Navy, announced that both will undergo a short trial because, in the current circumstances, where there is not even a dim light at the end out of the tunnel, that was the chance to get out in four years.
The head of the Inquisition, who says he is not aware of the Government’s interference in the Judicial Body, assured that there will be no abbreviated trial if both former military chiefs refuse to plead guilty and acknowledge that there was a coup.
In this world parallel to reality, there are no political prisoners or corruption in YPFB. The PumaKataris arsonist, Jesus Vera, is free and can persecute the former Mayor Luis Revilla, and the Governor of Potosi, Jhonny Mamani, is also free of charges in the purchase of the 41 ghost ambulances, the person responsible had been an opposition member.
The question is: do we go along with them like crazy people or do we risk everything to replenish sanity and truth?
Source: http://www.cabildeodigital.com/2022/02/un-mundo-paralelo-de-mentiras.html
JUSTICE IN BOLIVIA: FROM CRISIS TO CATASTROPHE
6 February 2022
Justice in Bolivia: from crisis to catastrophe
Definitely: what justice is facing today in Bolivia has ceased to be just a crisis (as if it were not enough that it is in a “serious and decisive situation” that “endangers” the very survival of the country), to transform into a true and frightening catastrophe. That is, in an “unfortunate event” that is causing “great destruction and many misfortunes, with serious alteration of the normal development of things.” The inverted commas allude to what crisis and catastrophe expressly mean, according to the RAE. A notable difference that, in the case at hand, illustrates very well the distance between saying that Bolivian justice is in crisis, to affirm, without fear of falling into exaggerations, that what it faces is a catastrophe.
The horror discovered after the capture of Richard Choque Flores, confessed author of a series of crimes committed under cover of impunity granted by judges, prosecutors, lawyers, police officers, and others, supports that qualification: a catastrophe. Not because it is an exceptional, unique case, but rather because it has confirmed that the exception has become the rule, with a long chain of very well-organized actors in what the Minister of Justice himself has described as a mafia. A mafia in which many of those responsible for fighting crime and/or administering justice participated (and undoubtedly still participate), in whose payrolls stand out -in number and in the power of action- those openly identified as operators of the central power.
The Choque case reveals a perverse intertwining between common crimes, including the most serious ones such as those committed by Choque, and those considered political, the latter mostly disguised as crimes against “State security.” All of them were put in the same bag by that judicial and extrajudicial mafia recognized by the Central Government through one of its Ministers. A mafia that has been active since at least 2013, always according to the Minister, although it is difficult to believe that it has not been for more years. A mafia that, however, has been acting not only to do business with the release of confessed psychopaths like Choque, but also to fulfill political favors that translate into the judicialization of politics, in political persecution, of which there are plenty of examples.
Of course, this last part is not present in any of the statements made by the authorities of the Central Government or by the leaders of the ruling party, despite being consubstantial to the underlying problem, referring to the “Rotten Justice” pointed out by more than one voice in Bolivia. A rot that contaminates everything and that is a real threat not only for the thousands of Bolivians who already live first-hand the lacerations caused by these judicial and extrajudicial mafias but also for the millions of Bolivians who, for now, believe they are safe from the clutches of those mobsters. A threat that urgently needs to be curbed, from civil society, articulating actions that are aimed at achieving authentic judicial reform.
Source: https://eldeber.com.bo/opinion/justicia-en-bolivia-de-crisis-a-catastrofe_266430
HYPOCRISY, BAD IDEAS AND HALF-TRUTHS
31 January 2022
Hypocrisy, bad ideas and half-truths
The speech delivered by President Arce on January 22, during the celebrations for the anniversary of the Plurinational State, was a true display of hypocrisy, bad ideas, and half-truths. Probably the only redeeming feature was that it lasted only 40 minutes instead of the usual two hours of endless boring speech.
Let’s start by saying that there was nothing to celebrate here. The conversion of the Republic to the Plurinational State is a historical absurdity that does not deserve any celebration. One thing is multiculturalism, which one welcomes, but another thing is to establish nations or groups that, as the new Constitution says, have “the right to exercise their political, legal and economic systems according to their worldview.” This is nonsense because it means that a group that defines itself as a “nation” (and supposedly predates the “Spanish colonial invasion”) can have its own laws and apply its own justice as it sees fit. At this point, and when we are all mestizos and citizens of the same country, granting privileges to some and not to others is simply unfair and discriminatory.
Let us now turn to the speech. The 40 minutes began with a treacherous hypocrisy. The President said that in the “Colonial Republic” there was a “kind of social apartheid” in which there were “first-class and second-class citizens” with a “State that represented and benefited only a few.” Is such nonsense possible? Is it not now, in the multinational era of the MAS, that the true “social apartheid” is being experienced? Aren’t those with a blue card, the members of the party, those from the environment, the true “first-class citizens”? Don’t the MAS members do what they want with justice and put anyone who dares to contradict them in prison? Don’t they have a rule that obliges every public servant to be a member of their party? Make no mistake, President, now we have a State that represents and benefits only a few, you, the familiar faces, those who raise their little fists and persecute those who think differently. The rest of us, “second-class citizens,” can only tie shoelaces and see how the country is being divided.
Shortly after, the bad ideas start. The President mentions and praises socialism several times. He says that “socialism is being reborn in new soldiers of the process of change,” that his Government is based on the redistribution of wealth, that we must close the gap between rich and poor, and that we must fight against capitalism. For now much of that is rhetorical. For now, we are not a socialist country, although we are a country in which the State has an enormous and perverse influence on the economy and society. Bolivia is a repressed country in which there is no institutionality that generates economic freedom. We are ranked 172 out of 178 countries in the Heritage Foundation’s index of economic freedom, very close to countries that are socialist such as Cuba (176), Venezuela (177), and North Korea (178). The enormous influence of the State in society translates into a mountain of regulations and bureaucracy, and the absence of legal certainty. This pushes the country into the informal sector (80% of the economy) in which we survive with very low productivity and no hope of generating a solid production network. Instead of praising outdated ideas like socialism, the President should have to worry about moving us in the other direction. The most capitalist countries, that is, those that embrace economic freedom, are the ones that have been able to develop the most and have lifted the most people out of poverty. Ideas matter and it is time to tell the Government that its socialist rhetoric sucks.
Speaking of outdated ideas. The next blunder of the President (and of the Economic and Social Development Plan) is the announcement that Bolivia will develop using “import substitution industrialization.” Something crazy. ECLAC sold the story of import substitution to the region during the 50s, 60s, and 70s, and the only thing it achieved was to generate a deep crisis that lasted a decade (the lost decade of the 80s). Import substitution is a Chinese tale that has never worked and will never work because it ignores the fundamental law of international trade: countries must specialize in what they have a comparative advantage, that is, in what they can produce at a lower cost than the rest. If you do not have a comparative advantage in a certain product, it is rational to import it from countries that do. Do you think, perchance, that we should produce Quipus computers to replace the computers of China, Japan, or the US? Or that we should produce cars or cell phones to replace the ones we buy abroad? It wouldn’t make any sense to do so. It would be very expensive and we would use resources that are better used in what we can compete in.
And now we turn to the half-truths. The President proudly said that the growth of the third quarter of 2021 was 8.9%, somewhat less than the also bombastic 9.4% of the second quarter that appears on giant billboards next to his face. 8.9% seems high, but it is a lie. All growth is great if the starting point is the bottom of the well. Let us remember that in 2020 the country decreased by almost 9%. After such a strong drop, the recovery will always be high due to a statistical rebound effect. Note, for example, that Chile grew more than 17% during the same period, Colombia more than 13%, Peru more than 11%, and Argentina more than 10%. As you can see, our 8.9% is not as impressive as it is made out to be. According to Arce, we will grow 6% in 2022, but ECLAC and the World Bank expect only 3.2 and 3.5%, respectively. In an external context in which all variables are adjusting downward, it is much more likely that international organizations will be the ones to get it right.
And, of course, the President forgot to say that the country’s sources of growth do not come from a solid production network, but from the art of inflating the famous “internal demand” through deficits and debt. He did not say that we have had deficits for 8 consecutive years at an average of 8% of GDP, that our internal and external debt now comfortably exceeds 50% of our production, that the gas era is over, and that in a couple of years our hydrocarbon imports will be higher than our exports, that our international reserves have suffered a brutal setback and are now barely USD 4.6 billion when they were more than USD 14 billion in 2014, that the vast majority of public companies are in deficit, that we have more than half a million public employees, and that this year’s budget plans to spend 80% of the GDP! No, none of that, just hypocrisy, bad ideas, and half-truths.
Source: https://brujuladigital.net/opinion/hipocresia-malas-ideas-y-medias-verdades
CHANCELLOR BY FORCE
22 January 2022
Chancellor by force
What can be said of a chancellor whose most important visible act has been to fall ill with Covid? For everything else he has been invisible: the shadowy operator of a repressive apparatus motivated by animosity and political revenge.
In the first scene of Molière’s farce “The Doctor in Spite of Himself”, Sganarelle, a poor and drunken lumberjack, is beaten into admitting to being a doctor (which he is not) and assisting a rich man who provides him a fortune. Attracted by that life that he never enjoyed before, Sganarelle decides to forever adopt the disguise of a doctor, although it does not go well for him at the end of the play.
The farce of the clueless and undiplomatic Foreign Minister of Bolivia has not been so amusing. He doesn’t even try to take on the role “by force” for which he was never prepared. When he makes headlines it is always for nefarious reasons, but most of the time he assumes the status of “disappeared”.
It is hard to conceive that at the head of Bolivia’s international relations there is a person who festers thirst for revenge and babbles social resentment, and who, can be noticed from a mile away, shows ignorance on diplomatic issues. Behind him, the shadow of Choquehuanca, his inspiration, and of Evo Morales, who appoints ambassadors from his entourage, can be discerned.
Disrupting and shattering the diplomatic rank, a corollary of an arduous job of classifying career professionals with many years of experience, was one of Mayta’s greatest blunders, as it resulted in the dismissal of 90% of foreign service officials, for being “snub-nosed diplomats, who liked to go to lounges to flex their little fingers while having cocktails,” (as he said). With that bitterness, he fired many career diplomats who worked in MAS governments.
The result of giving priority to his gallbladder was a year of abandonment of the 36 diplomatic missions of Bolivia. He summarily fired career diplomats, but also administrative and consular staff, including secretaries, auxiliaries, and local contract drivers, who had worked for Bolivia for decades. Embassies and consulates were left as empty shells without being able to meet the needs of the Bolivian community, nor maintain a minimum of relations activities with the authorities of the host country.
Much later the MAS supporters arrived with criminal records, who were appointed on the spur of the moment in commissions of the Legislative Assembly where the candidates were not even interviewed, as is mandatory. Approval requests were sent directly to governments, without going through the diplomatic missions as they should be. The few Ambassadors were chosen directly by the “boss”: Pary, Arce Zaconeta, Llorenti, Michel, Aguilar, Tapia, among other unconditional faithful supporters.
For lawyer Mayta, the position is as big as a carnival Pepino costume*, a Pepino that assumed the role of punisher. He is whipping with firecrackers all the diplomats of the administration of President Jeanine Añez and has not even read the reports and recommendations left by the outgoing officials, complying with the regulations.
The Foreign Ministry has dedicated itself with heart and soul to finding excuses to persecute dozens of diplomats, and since it has not found reasons, it does so with banal administrative tricks. For example, he compiled a long list (14 pages) of “prosecuted” for not having submitted their affidavit of assets on the exact date (although almost all of them did so when they handed in their job positions). Others are harassed with administrative letters; simply to quench Mayta’s thirst for revenge who, although he does not appear as a member of the MAS in the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), does not need a political militancy card to behave well with his bosses.
The anonymous Torquemada from the Foreign Ministry, for whom the earth is flat, do not review in their investigations the 15 years of administration by Choquehuanca, Pary, or Huanacuni, where money was squandered by the handful when they organized costly international meetings in Bolivia and used State resources to prescribe for themselves countless international trips, most of them superfluous. An independent audit of the fifteen years of mismanagement is urgently needed.
Source: https://www.paginasiete.bo/opinion/alfonso-gumucio-dagron/2022/1/22/canciller-palos-321417.html
SEA OF MISTAKES
19 January 2022
Sea of mistakes
“Don’t look up.” As in a recent movie, a new mega meteorite is fast approaching that will have a devastating impact on the heart of our relationship -or lack of it- with Chile; all because of an erratic national foreign policy ignorant of the consequences of irresponsibility.
The trajectory of a course of action is followed that tragically led us to the War of the Pacific, or Saltpeter [War], as a result of the unilateral decision of the Government of Hilarión Daza to increase taxes, giving Chile reason to invade Bolivia, and causing us the loss of one of the largest copper reserves in the world, as well as territory and maritime access.
That same irascible and irresponsible logic of Daza led Evo Morales to “release the genie from the bottle”, prosecuting Chile and giving that country a new opportunity to inflict another resounding defeat on us, this time diplomatic, at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague on our more than century-old maritime claim.
And now, as incredible as it may seem, we are headed for a third debacle, the second one at the ICJ in The Hague, against Chile. It began with the public denunciation by Evo Morales that Chile was “stealing” Silala waters from us, in March 2016, and his irresponsible announcement that he would also take this issue to The Hague. But Chile beat us to the punch. After verifying that the Silala waters were, in fact, an international natural course flow, that country sued us before the ICJ in 2017.
Evo used to “just do it anyway”, to shoot and then ask the lawyers to fix the wrongs resulting from his haste and disregard of the law, Bolivia recently had to commission the verification of the nature of the flow of the Silala waters to Danish experts of prestige and international recognition, who confirmed the similar studies previously commissioned by Chile and which were presented in The Hague.
With Bolivia having already presented its counterclaim argument, the ICJ is days away from setting a date for the oral pleadings of both countries.
Given the technical evidence of the natural nature of the international flow of waters, which demolishes the initial Bolivian position contained in Evo Morales’ claim, that 100% of the flow originates in Bolivia and has been artificially canalized towards Chile, the judgment of the Court is predictable, to agree, once again, with Chile. This is going to have devastating political consequences for Potosi in particular, and for all of Bolivia.
The haste and improvisation with which this claim against Chile has been conducted, originally by the Morales Government, but fundamentally now due to the apathy and incompetence of the Arce Catacora administration, is criminal. To date, the Bolivian Foreign Ministry has not designated the diplomatic representative in Santiago. Only recently, after almost more than a year of government, has he appointed the diplomatic agent before the Court of The Hague, a third-rate official, without a professional degree. We do not have a representative before Chile or a defender in The Hague.
In times of peace, the Foreign Service is the only international defense a nation has to assert its rights and move forward in its interests. The current Government has disbanded more than 90% of career diplomatic officials, leaving Bolivia completely unguarded and powerless. This is a crime of high treason, the results of which we will see very soon.
This new “mega meteorite” will hit us head-on in the face of impotence, negligence, and indifference of this misgovernment whose driver is also “asleep at the wheel” of the foreign policy, as well as of the economy and health, among others.
If the previous one “just did things anyway”, the current one is petrified.
Source: https://www.paginasiete.bo/opinion/2022/1/19/mar-de-errores-321101.html
IT IS GETTING MORE DIFFICULT TO OVERTHROW A DICTATOR
16 January 2022
IT IS GETTING MORE DIFFICULT TO OVERTHROW A DICTATOR
A shadow of hopelessness covers the country. Luis Arce, being a small-time leader, heads a dictatorship tougher than that of Evo Morales, and despite the struggles within the Government and the MAS for power quotas in the cabinet and in state-owned companies, the democratic feat of October 2019 seems unrepeatable in the short term.
There are four long years to go before the next elections, enough time to put an end to the opposition in inquisitorial trials and to set up another fraud that will keep them in power in perpetuity.
THE MASTER OF THIS MODEL
The master of fraud, the extermination of the opposition, and the trampling of human rights is called Vladimir Putin, President of Russia since 1999 and quite possibly until 2036 when he will be 83 years old.
The latest blow to Russian democracy was the closure less than a month ago of the Memorial Center that was fighting for the release of political prisoners.
COMMUNISM FELL, BUT THE DICTATORSHIP CONTINUES
After the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the global irradiation of the democratic system was expected. But then Putin arrived and reversed the situation.
“Russia is like the USSR. The difference is that, instead of the communist old hags, we have two dozen millionaires at the helm,” the exiled opposition member Vladimir Osechkin explained clearly to EFE.
And the same thing has happened in Russia’s backyard, in the 15 republics that became independent from the USSR but remain in Putin’s orbit, except for two: Georgia and Ukraine.
THE PINK AND ORANGE REVOLUTIONS
In 2003, the President of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, initiated the transformations that thousands of protesters demanded of him in the streets and in Parliament, which had been occupied by young people who carried roses instead of guns.
Months later, another revolution broke out, the orange one in Ukraine that ended with the annulment of the fraudulent elections that had given victory to Viktor Yanukovych.
However, Yanukovych was appointed Prime Minister until he won the presidential elections in 2010 and submitted as he was to Putin, he refused to sign an agreement with the European Union. This led to an unexpected and huge popular uprising in Kyiv, the capital, in 2014, which ended with Yanukovych’s escape to Moscow.
PUTIN’S VIOLENT REVENGE
That second revolution cost Ukraine the loss of Crimea, invaded and annexed by Putin’s army, and the promotion in the country’s southeast of all kinds of pro-Russian and pro-Kyiv independence actions.
Not satisfied, Putin threatens to invade all of Ukraine, which has no defense capacity against the Russians and depends on the failed negotiations between Putin and the European Union and the United States so far.
NO MORE COLOR REVOLUTIONS
A few days ago, at the request of dictator Tokayev, Putin invaded Almaty, the capital of Kazakhstan, with 2,000 troops and tanks, where he put out the fire of a revolution triggered by the increase in gas prices.
The Russian intervention left 160 dead and about a thousand arrested. A massacre justified by the world “left” for the alleged existence of a coup d’État.
THE FRAUDS OF 2020
As in Bolivia, electoral fraud to favor Putin’s friends has been the reason for two other revolutionary outbursts in 2020.
In Kyrgyzstan, a bloodbath was avoided thanks to the resignation of President Boronov, who wanted to be re-elected in fraudulent elections.
Instead, in Belarus, with the open intervention of Putin, the dictator Lukashenko was reelected for the sixth time after drowning in blood a popular uprising that lasted five months and that moved the entire society against electoral fraud.
There are no figures of deaths, but there were a few hundred who lost their lives, and many more wounded, tortured and nearly seven thousand detained. Maria Kolesnikova, one of the three women who led the August 2020 revolution in Belarus, was sentenced to 11 years in prison.
LATIN AMERICA, RUSSIAN COLONY?
Three days ago, in the dispute over Ukraine, and while Kazakhstan was fresh news, Putin warned Joe Biden, President of the United States, that he would send troops to Venezuela and Cuba. Those referred to, showing complete colonial subordination, did not open their mouths.
As we have described, Putin has learned in his own backyard how to maintain through blood and fire dictators that are loyal to him. That experience has been transferred to our region, which is becoming Putin’s second backyard in the face of the inaction of the decaying North American empire. What would be of Maduro without Putin! And Argentine President Alberto Fernandez, who is always in economic and political trouble, will travel to Russia and China in early February to see if they can save him.
RUSSIAN AND CHINESE ON THE ATTACK
The dictatorial regimes of Russia and China are on the economic and military offensive throughout the world. On the other hand, democracies are threatened even in the United States. A new world order is emerging that discourages anyone.
Both China and Russia, plus the votes of the dictators of the world, neutralize any sanction or condemnation in the United Nations. Ortega who kills with impunity in Nicaragua, arrests all opposition candidates, and wins openly fraudulent elections, could never be sanctioned in the United Nations.
Tokayev, the dictator of Kazakhstan, the one who ordered the firing of demonstrators without warning, the one who allowed the Russian invasion of his country, is the president of the United Nations Security Council.
And the UN Human Rights Council since January 1 is managed by the 10 worst regimes in the world, including China, Russia, Venezuela, and Cuba.
Meanwhile, Luis Almagro’s OAS is losing strength with the repeated victory of the left in several countries in the region.
Yes, we are alone, just like the resistance in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. And yet, a week ago the opposition won the governorship in Barinas, the cradle and apparently the grave of Chavismo in Venezuela. He won despite the fraud, the tanks, the intimidation, and the arrest of candidates. This is encouraging.
Source: http://www.cabildeodigital.com/2022/01/cada-vez-es-mas-dificil-tumbar-un.html
RELEASE JEANINE AÑEZ, NOW!
12 January 2022
Release Jeanine Añez, now!
“From her vulnerable position, Jeanine Añez speaks her truth. Fear does not silence her.”
Roberto Laserna on twitter.
One day before the tenth month of her abusive preventive detention* Jeanine Añez Chávez affirmed: “I know that there is an order to kill me and day by day they are moving forward… I am kidnapped in this prison; I have had many health problems. I have to be under observation; I have many mental gaps… I will probably die in this prison, but the good thing is that I am at peace with my God and my death will end the thirst for revenge and hatred of Evo and his elite. I forgive them and hope they find peace one day. Of course, they will never be able to erase from history that I was the Constitutional President of Bolivia, after the resignation of a fraudulent President.”
These and other statements appear in the extensive interview that the La Paz newspaper Página Siete (La Paz 09.01.2022) conducted with the former President. They are written in her own handwriting. In them, the former acting Constitutional President clarifies doubts and leaves others to talk about them ”before international organizations, when they come to listen to me.” So far they have not listened to her, although the “country needs to understand what happened during the time I took office as President.” She did clarify that they had ”many meetings with different sectors to pacify the country… many ministers made agreements and arrangements for it and it was the right thing to do because Bolivia required peace…” She points out that many of these agreements were not directly coordinated with her, because “they were hard times and of great tension, where many politicians, people, Ministers, authorities acted independently.”
On the subject, she points out that some took advantage of her inexperience and good faith since they believed that everything could be solved by talking and giving in, but she also highlights that “It must be recalled that the MAS had 2/3 in the Assembly. To reach those agreements, we had to give up many things requested by the social movements…”
Página Siete asked her if she thinks she is in prison as part of a MAS strategy to deny the electoral fraud of 2019, clean up the image of the party and former President Evo Morales. Her response was blunt: ”Evo Morales needs to whitewash his image, trying to invent a sordid story of a coup d’état, when the entire country, the world, and international organizations know that what he did was a shameful and blatant electoral fraud… All the situations of violence, terrorist acts such as surrounding the city of La Paz and not allowing food to enter, trying to blow up the Senkata plant, burning police units, private houses, etc., we owe it to his ambition to perpetuate himself in power. That’s where the thirst for revenge comes from. He could not carry out the plan to leave, generate violence, generate a power vacuum, and return as the savior…”
Jeanine Añez adds ”His plans failed, since he came across a woman, me, the one who disrupted his plans. He does not forgive her for that, since he is an abuser of women and must control them and he could not do it with me or with Eva Copa (president of the National Assembly), since it was necessary to pacify the country. He is known for mistreating ladies, young ladies, and girls, and today he mistreats me, the former President of Bolivia. If to avoid a civil war, the one that the MAS was looking for, to pacify the country and give Bolivians peace of mind at a time of so much violence, it resulted in prison for me, that’s what I got. I do not evade responsibilities, I would do it again. I fulfilled my patriotic duty, I have a clear conscience. We confronted the violence and called for new elections.”
In my capacity as a citizen, I stand in solidarity, once again and always, with the former president and I agree with her: the wounded pride of Morales, who resigned and then fled, wants Bolivia and the world to forget that he himself is the origin of everything the democratic mess that Bolivia is experiencing. First, he did not respect the 2016 Referendum, which said NO to his fourth candidacy because it violated Article 168 of the State Political Constitution, which only allows two continuous ones. Second, he wants us to forget the premeditated fraud staged in the 2019 elections to perpetuate himself in power.
Morales wants to erase those origins. And he does so by recycling his leader’s populist practice as head of his party, the Movement Towards Socialism. From there he intends to impose absolute lies as truths, criminalizes justice, judicializes politics and constructs hate speech.
The face of Jeanine Añez already reflects the relentless traces of the suffering to which her executioners subject her, who have turned the administration of justice in Bolivia into a vicious model of administration of justice; with a Prosecutor’s Office at the service of former [President] Morales, of the Executive with Luis Arce President and Iván Lima Minister of Injustices. Thus, they violate human and constitutional rights and procedural transparency in the most arbitrary manner.
The former President faces two processes: Coup d’état I for terrorism, sedition, and conspiracy, about which they have not been able to prove anything. So, they invented a Coup d’état II for resolutions contrary to the Constitution and the laws and non-fulfillment of duties.
Along with Jeanine Añez, there are other civilians from her Government, military, and police officers who are also prisoners, with the same aberrations and procedural abuses.
For her, for all, democratic Bolivia demands justice and freedom.
* 10.03.2021, Trinidad, Beni, and later transferred to La Paz, held incommunicado.
Source: http://www.cabildeodigital.com/2022/01/nunca-podran-borrar-de-la-historia-que.html
A CERTAIN EVO…
9 January 2022
A certain Evo…
He did not wake up one day with a conscience smeared with “morality” and realized that corruption is the worst scourge in the country; in his government, he had exercised it at whim and will, using State assets to distribute them among his followers of the Indigenous Fund with amounts that passed the hundreds of millions of bolivianos that, until now, the exact amount is not fully known. But if that is not all, the favors to his girlfriend, to whom he even recognized a son that was never born, reach the tens of millions of dollars and she was “imprisoned and released and not affected at all” in her personal fortune because they did not take a single penny from her… and we could talk about the Urea plant, with surcharges that exceed $ 200 million, or the sugar mill in San Buena Ventura, or the liquid separation plant in the Rio Grande with a surcharge of $ 40 million, or the so-called Carlos Villegas, to the South, in Tarija; anyway, there are more but the subject is different. Not to mention the capricious and discretionally handling of the ordinary and electoral administration of Justice that even enabled him to an election in which, in the worst style of the 20th century, he committed fraud, counting on a militant Electoral Tribunal and the help of a Mexican group that toured the country’s electoral system, like Juan Evo through the coca-growing Chapare, that is to say, “at pleasure”, so… I move on to another topic.
“That certain Evo”, understanding the weight and value in the economy and political resistance of the Department of Santa Cruz and, above all, aware that the Santa Cruz “Model” is a reality, believes that saddle with the municipal corruption committed by Percy Fernández and “Architect” Sosa at the head, counting on many operators of this corruption, as an expression of the Santa Cruz model will allow him to weaken the Department, aware that, despite some, Santa Cruz is, today, the only one that stands up to political power in the country and shows active political resistance.
Santa Cruz expresses the resistance today, the city of Potosí also; Morales believes that power is his and tries to make the country see in Arce Catacora a ventriloquist doll that says and does what he, Morales, tells him; that is why he has publicly suggested a change of ministers, “taking care to warn” that the President must be protected, his so-called “brother, Lucho.”
From Radio Kawsachun Coca, where he is a tenant because he does not have greater access to capital cities, Morales tries to weaken the Santa Cruz image and after that the opposition political action of Santa Cruz, because he knows that this is the only way to go if he wants to continue having validity in politics.
No one can deny the corruption in the Santa Cruz Mayor’s Office; from the possibility that it gives me in this medium and where I work, I have been denouncing it for years and maintaining, in addition, that without the complicity of the MAS this would not have continued, this could not have been maintained for so long, even if the fled political Judas and former ally of Percy Fernández dared to say that they never had an agreement (“PEVO”, he boasted of repeating on more than one occasion).
And I am not the only one who has denounced the corruption of Percy and the “Architect”; many former city councilmen, former collaborators have done it but the perverse system was invulnerable, until it fell due to a weak link, exploding due to a domestic lawsuit, but that is a well-known story; the important thing is that Santa Cruz had already decided on the punishment for Percy/Sosa: it did not even give them a city councilman. Someone is going to doubt that the corruption of Percy and his allies was stopped, understand all those who benefited from the money that Santa Cruz city generated?
Listening to the “Dandy without a trade” (Richter) say that the Santa Cruz model is exhausted, just the year in which non-traditional exports (agro) surpassed hydrocarbons, is the symbolic slap in the face of such stupidity, but they do not care, they are “sentence shooters”, some “catch on” and others do not.
Morales and his minions may try to weaken us that way, indeed, from his refuge in the Chapare, because he does not dare to say it here, he says that the “ghost items are the Santa Cruz Model” and that … no thanks, that is not what he wants for Bolivia, (thinking of re-running if he manages to weaken Santa Cruz?) when Luis Fernando Camacho mistakenly suggests replicating the model in the rest of the country, as if it could be “copied and pasted” elsewhere, with another history, other connotations.
The Santa Cruz Development Model process dates back to 1825 and exploded in 1957; in all that time we had not only the abandonment of the Department (which was in the “confines”, according to those who administered the State) that suffered from the postponement of demands, that saw fragmentation and loss of territories, not only against foreigners but in the country itself and, of course, with material and infrastructural underdevelopment (hence the struggle for royalties, for water, pavement, and Electricity, in 1957); this is marked very well in several works, by Sergio Antelo, Paula Peña, Ana Carola Traverso (who is about to publish a book of her research), Carlos Valverde Barbery, to name a few, without excluding others who do and did so much for this land.
The Governor of Santa Cruz, to enter this debate, needs to understand it better; he must have the ability to develop an idea that truly expresses the Santa Cruz Model, which is not a slogan, which is a reality, that has been a reality since 1957, when due to civic struggles we began to “be what had been thought” and, after receiving the first money from royalties (1964), we began to take off… of course, before, we already had “think tanks”, we already had the Public Works Committee with a planning structure and everything that put us where we are today, being the base of national development, those of us who supply more than 70% of what the country consumes, being the second city in population-wise of all the country’s Departments; in a nutshell, what Morales and those who do not love us (they will have to excuse us for not crying for that; it causes us laughter because it is inevitable).
In sum: Morales believes that if he weakens Santa Cruz (let him continue to shout at Radio Kawsachun Coca, the radio station of his tenancy) he will come back, that is why he is with one foot inside and the other outside the Government, harassing Luis Alberto Arce who doesn’t know what he is going to do; there it is, that fight is easy if Arce concedes, he ceases to be his own image, of course, the issue is what he does with Del Castillo, Lima Magne, and a few other Ministers who are terribly awful.
Morales looked for a fight with which he will not be able to win, nothing strange that in a short time he flatters us and looks more at Arce. Quiet, he’s not going to stay.
Source: https://www.paginasiete.bo/opinion/2022/1/9/un-tal-evo-320249.html
HAPPY FLIGHT 2022!
2 January 2022
HAPPY FLIGHT 2022!
Many times I imagined life as a finite journey on a ship called planet Earth. A journey of 365 continuous days; in leap years, 366. The flight includes a round-trip around the Sun star. According to statistics, about 60 million, of the more than seven billion on board, will not finish the journey. Another 140 million will board flight 2022 at some date. In sum, the new passengers who get on the ship will be more than those who get off for different reasons.
And who is the Earth pilot? Us. Therefore, it is up to us –the passengers– the comfort of flight 2022 that we started hours ago. We will go through the same months, through the same stations, and (most likely) we will see the same people of flight 2021 during the journey, but the facts and the results may be different if we essentially change some aspects, including hate speech.
The American journalist Susan Benesch, founder of the project “Dangerous Speeches”, developed, supported by the three dimensions of rhetoric according to Aristotle, five criteria to determine when hate speech becomes dangerous language.
- Hate speech is dangerous when the speaker is powerful and has a high degree of influence over the audience.
- It is dangerous when the audience is easily influenced and vulnerable because they have feelings of grievance and fear that the speaker can exploit.
- When in a speech act he clearly calls for violence.
- When the social context or the historical context is conducive to violence.
- When the message is disseminated through a media outlet that is influential in itself, either because it is the only one or because it is the main source of news for the audience.
On flight 2021, in the space called Bolivia, there were powerful speakers with a high degree of influence who spread their message to a vulnerable audience. These messengers of death stirred up feelings (resentments) with accumulated myths and infused fear of the other with fallacies.
At some point during the journey, some of those speakers called frontally to annihilate the different ones. Others created an adequate socio-historical context to meddle the most atavistic feelings in the easily influenced beings. The confluence of the language of hate unleashed violent actions. A little more, [and] we ended flight 2021 badly.
What to do to make 2022 a happy journey? Apply the power of the word against the language of hate. Doesn’t power consist in the ability to get what you want? Therefore, where there is a will, there is a way.
But who gets what, how, where, when. British historian and journalist Timothy Garton Ash quote American geopolitical scientist Joseph Nye and British political scientist Steven Lukes to explain the three dimensions of power.
The first, and most obvious, is to get someone to do something that, at first, was not among their priorities. Get a person to do something.
Second, power involves the setting of an agenda, or “the power to decide what is decided.”
The third dimension, and the most subtle, is the ability to shape people’s initial preferences in such a way that they do not even realize that their choices result from a prior exercise of power by others.
Information and knowledge weigh in on the first and second dimensions. Consequently, people committed to the search for the truth are forced to dismantle every fake news and post-truth so that audiences do not do something that was not among their priorities.
Truth, understood as the exact use of words to describe the facts, is synonymous with democracy; on the other hand, authoritarianism is a friend of lies.
Quality control of messages will raise the quality of audiences. As a result, these audiences will demand including public issues aimed at building and not destroying the public agenda.
During flight 2022, universities and non-governmental organizations (civil society) are obliged to produce and disseminate knowledge aimed at countering the lies fabricated by promoters of hate speech.
The third dimension summons creators who accurately describe reality from fiction: cinema, theater, novel. This group is capable of changing the conception of history and modeling refuting thoughts and erecting critical people.
The challenges are marked. It is up to us that flight 2022 is not turbulent and completes another orbit around the Sun with more humane beings and capable of coexisting on the Earth ship.
Happy journey 2022!
Source: http://www.cabildeodigital.com/2022/01/feliz-vuelo-2022.html
THE ABSURDITY OF THE SPOKESMAN
27 December 2021
The Absurdity of the Spokesman
That the spokesman Richter affirms that the Santa Cruz model is “exhausted” is nameless nonsense. The fact that some crooks in the Santa Cruz Mayor’s Office have stolen many millions has nothing to do with the fact that our development model could be affected by this blatant robbery. Simply, because one thing is the municipal administration and another, very different, the agro-industrial work in the field of entrepreneurs and day laborers, cambas and collas (people from Santa Cruz and La Paz), which produce 70% of the food consumed in Bolivia and that today occupy the highest position in national exports.
Is the Santa Cruz model exhausted by what happened in the Mayor’s Office? Will we have to be sucked into the failed “process of change” then? [Sucked into] by the most corrupt and incapable thing that has been known in Bolivia? We are going to make a recap of the hundreds of million-dollar deals that the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) has committed in its 15 years of government and we would never finish. The greatest thieves who have passed through the country have been, without a doubt, the MAS members.
So, what do they want? What is their wish? Undoubtedly they long for a major scandal, which has already occurred. But they not only want those who committed robberies and embezzlements to go to jail, which, obviously, must stand trial and have their guilt punished, but they want to take advantage of the mess to try to get their hands on COTAS, CRE, Saguapac, and all the Santa Cruz cooperatives. The Andean-centrism, a lover of embezzling the State, never looked favorably upon the companies created by Santa Cruz people and now, more than ever, they want to seize them to bury them.
We already know that spokesman Richter is a huckster, but he is dangerous because, with genteel, seemingly innocent gestures, he makes dangerous suggestions that are supported by President Arce. And we see how he takes pleasure from the disunity that appears on the Santa Cruz scene, to accuse lodges, alleged family clans, and in general against the Santa Cruz business community. We are already warning: the Mayor’s Office is the beginning of the drama and then colla (La Paz) prosecutors will arrive, sent to open a gap and for the Plurinational State to take over our cooperatives.
Source: http://www.cabildeodigital.com/2021/12/los-dislates-del-portavoz.html
OBITUARY OF A DEATH FORETOLD
9 December 2021
Obituary of a death foretold
The time is coming. The obituary of the MAS of Evo Morales has already been written by none other than one of the theoretical fathers of the “process of change”: Raúl Prada.
A man of the left, a respected intellectual, he now reveals to us that he is a man of ethical principles and political honesty.
In a document that could easily have also been signed by Filemón Escobar, Marcelo Quiroga Santa Cruz or Juan Lechín Oquendo, “Chato” Prada titles “The funeral march” to the penultimate political death rattle of the MAS: a march of llunk’us (todies), of a misgovernment that marches to support itself and for the umpteenth time to attack La Paz with the threat of another “siege”, similar to the one that took away its oxygen in the middle of the pandemic.
“When there is nothing left inside, even when what was shown was a pure pose, appearances by exposure of simulations, one resorts to desperately insist on the political theater, even if it does not offer promising results, for the collapse and implosion have reached the crushing level of apocalyptic collapse and spread.
When you have nothing to offer, except what has been left as a dramatic inheritance: the death of the process of change, the dismantling of the Constitution, the destruction of the economy, education, and health, apart from having enriched the Palace environment, converted into rentier bourgeoisie, opts for the show business of a government mounted march, with the eloquent mass of llunk’us (toadies), increasingly similar to a funeral, to bury the political corpse, the despotic leader, and a conglomerate of corporations and labor unions of corruption, pretending to be a party or movement…”
There couldn’t be a more sincere and lapidary judgment than that.
The great assault of Evo Morales’ MAS is hidden in plain sight. The 2022 Budget is nothing less than a justification to cover up the final and definitive corruption of the MAS, before closing suitcases and fleeing to their “socialist paradises” where they will enjoy their ill-gotten wealth.
In addition to million-dollar “investments” in anti-economic companies, the inflation of the payroll of public employees (militants, by statute) has tripled to half a million, of which there are 300,000 new lazybones. Every day [the State] spends $ 21 million on its salaries and three times that on its “operating” expenses. How many of them are “ghosts”?
To prove a point. The former municipal administration of Santa Cruz, coexisting with the MAS during its long past administration, apparently hid a fictitious payroll of 800 public officials, for more than ten years, generating spurious rents estimated at 48 million bolivianos per year or more than 68 million dollars in ten years, for their political leadership.
Only comparable with Cuba or North Korea, the economist Antonio Saravia has estimated that the 2022 Plurinational State Budget absorbs 95% of the Gross Domestic Product (the sum of ALL the goods and services produced in the economy by all of us). Comparatively, Chile absorbs 37% of its GDP, the US 35%, and the average in South America should be below 40%, comparable with the Nordic countries). The State monopoly is complete and is at the disposal and usufruct of the MAS.
This means that the Bolivian economy is ALREADY socialist! The Government absorbs ALL the GDP, including its monopoly access to borrow our retirement contributions from the Pension Fund Administrators (AFP) and the already starving reserves of the Central Bank, which it will never repay. While it has already lost almost all possibility of external credit and it only remains to squeeze the citizens with higher taxes through “cursed laws” and other mechanisms. The country at the service of the party.
Its death is already announced by its own children. But as a friend told me: “I do not fear death, but dying.” To a long agony. How much longer will Evo’s MAS agonize, ruling with hatred and resentment, behind people’s backs and looting our heritage?
Source: https://eldeber.com.bo/opinion/obituario-de-una-muerte-anunciada_258115
MARCHES AND HANGOVERS
6 December 2021
Marches and Hangovers
And the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) march reached La Paz, there were a few effusive speeches, the usual adjectives, the occasional threat of the usual against companies and businessmen, and even a few presidential tears to thank such a demonstration of support, but that’s it.
Not to mention the numbers. In the MAS they said that the march was more than 100 kilometers long, but they did not reveal that between column and column of marchers there were several meters of distance, and between social movements, a few kilometers. So, being relatively precise, it should be noted that it was a march similar to other marches because, in the end, it was only enough to fill the Plaza de San Francisco in La Paz, which even in the best times of the Popular Democratic Unity (UDP) did not exceed 60 to 70 thousand people, a little more than the Hernando Siles, the largest stadium in the country (45 thousand spectators).
Other chronicles mention the tons of garbage accumulated in the city, the desolate public offices whose employees had to clock-in in the streets to avoid being unemployed, the enormous amount of money that is needed to mobilize and feed people, and the feeling of sadness that public spaces always leave behind when the “masses” disappear to continue with the routine of their lives.
The march changed nothing. A week later, the President continues to have the same problems as before the mandatory social walk and does not compensate for the loneliness of power or with the solidary and fleeting embrace of the crowds, or with the proclaimed loyalties of those who accompany him on the front lines.
Perhaps because deep down he knows that not all those who attended did so voluntarily and that even the support of those who were by his side is subject to a variety of conditions, Luis Arce shed a few tears, the kind that only official photographers record and that do not appear on the front pages of the newspapers, because nobody believes much in the cry of the powerful.
The day after the demonstration, Luis Arce returned to silence, the kind that leaders feel when they are left alone at their desks and calculate with more anxiety than ambition the time that still lies ahead. Perhaps he will hear as an echo the “Lucho, you’re not alone, damn it”, but only he knows how far those words can be from reality. Loneliness is not necessarily a weakness. It is a void that surrounds the decision chair.
The marches pass, but the consequences remain. Santa Cruz is further away from the Government than ever after, from the vociferous demands shouted on stage, some clueless union leader threatened to nationalize the companies that the Santa Cruz people created. They are the voices that seek applause, the impact of a phrase, the “comrades we are going to take away their industries from the rich, even if we don’t know what to do with them later”, “create one, two, three Vietnams and so on until they all starve to death”. Talk is cheap!
Beyond the anecdotal, there remains the feeling that, deep down, the other leaders of the march think the same and that, if the conditions were given, they would not hesitate to take that path. The “nationalizers” have not completely disappeared, even in words, because, in fact, their experience has been more than bad. Perhaps, for this reason, the President did not refute the head of the Bolivian Labor Union (COB), nor did he offer an apology. Anger, resentment, and that obsessive desire for revenge are used more than good sense to govern.
There is a sense of disorder in the country that is only aggravated by demonstrations of force. When the international news reports on the events of the past week, they say that Arce led a march that was organized to back him up. It seems like a joke, but it is not, because the President was there, so far from the Palace and so close to disorder and partisan uproar.
Almost at the same time, Evo Morales’ ex-girlfriend was coming out of jail “for good behavior” and “vocation for work.” Gabriela Zapata served part of her sentence for the crime of legitimizing illicit profits and left the prison in the Miraflores neighborhood of La Paz only on the condition that she did not approach anyone who had been part of the scandal.
The main suspect of organizing an influence-peddling network to benefit a Chinese company with millionaire contracts seems to have more rights than a former President, Jeanine Añez, who is accused of having been part of a non-existent coup d’état and remains locked up “preventively”. That is how the disorder is.
A few days after the march, the socialist government left workers from the airport administrator (AASANA) on the street and put airport security at risk because it needed to restructure the office without [having to deal with] strikes or conflicts. In the purest style of the liberal manual, he ordered the creation of a new entity to absorb less personnel than the other one had and thus kill two birds with one stone. And the legal problems? They will be solved along the way.
The pending issues add up for Arce. The arduous discussion with municipalities, regions, and universities about the scope of the Law of the National Development Plan remains ahead. The agreements will not be easy, because two opposing views on how to administer the State are at stake. It is not easy to negotiate after having insulted and that the Head of State knows more than ever after the passing euphoria and the shouts of the Plaza de San Francisco.
Far from the noise of the demonstrations, the news is still “boisterous”. They say that the gas reserves of the Argentine fields of Vaca Muerta will leave us without a market in a very short time and that the hen will stop laying the “golden eggs” that it laid during the blessed decade that filled the public coffers with money. Goodbye to the golden age of gas is very close.
If to all this we add that there is a new variant of COVID 19 (OMICRON) that could put a stop to the recovery and return us to the times of restrictions, the scenario ahead of us is not encouraging at all.
The President learns about all these things in the solitude of his office, where the armored glass prevents the noise of the demonstrations from reaching and only the clink of the spoons in the fine teacups that survive from the old crockery acquired much more than a century ago by President Montes is heard.
No, things are not resolved with large demonstrations and Luis Arce knows it, especially now that, after a year in office, he can no longer compare himself to Jeanine Añez. Lonely, he only has to look at himself in his own mirror. It is the hangover of the marches.
Source: http://www.cabildeodigital.com/2021/12/marchas-y-resacas.html
THE BUDGET OF HORROR
5 December 2021
The budget of horror
The General State Budget (GSB) for 2022 is a horror movie. The horror it produces comes not only from the numbers that, as always, do not add up, but, above all, from the intentions of the Government that they represent. This budget leaves no room for doubt. The Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) wants to completely control the country and lead it unfailingly towards socialism.
Let’s start with the total amount. The consolidated General State Budget for 2022 plans to spend Bs. 235,090 million, that is, US $ 34,000 million. This huge number represents 90% of our GDP. As you read it. The government is planning to spend in 2022 an amount equivalent to almost all the national production of that year. Take the case of the United States for comparison. In that country, the government budget represents only 30% of the GDP. In Chile, it represents 32% of the GDP. In Paraguay, which is a country with which we typically share the last place in development levels in South America, it represents 37% of the GDP. Even in the Nordic countries, which maintain a relatively large government, the government budget does not exceed 50% of the GDP. The General State Budget 2022 is, therefore, and however you want to see it, a real elephant.
Having such a large government produces at least three fundamental problems. The first is that all that money has to come from somewhere. Since 2014, the government has been unable to sustain its huge spending and, therefore, has been accumulating deficits. We come from eight years of consecutive fiscal deficits averaging 7.8% and 2022 will be no exception. The General State Budget 2022 foresees an 8% deficit that will continue to increase the debt that, by now, has already far exceeded 50% of the GDP. The second problem with a huge government is that it generates a huge bureaucracy and an ordeal of paperwork that continues to torture private agents. The government employs half a million people! Public employees alone would be the fifth most populous city in the country. The third problem, and probably the most pernicious, is that a huge government also has a huge influence on the economy. With this budget, the government makes it very clear that it claims economic leadership by deciding what to do and how. The government spends and does not let go of the control, but private agents pay for the dance.
Let’s now look at financing. Here the horror movie reaches a climax. The largest component of the General State Budget 2022 financing is debt! That’s right, 40% of the resources that the government will spend next year comes from internal or external financing (more from the former than the latter). This means credits from multilateral organizations, loans from the Central Bank, sale of bonds to the Pension Fund Administrators (AFPs), and unused money from the past administration. In sum, the government plans to spend 40% more than it will generate as income next year. The second component of financing is operating income (23%) and the third is taxes paid by citizens and ordinary businesses such as Value Added Tax (VAT), Transaction Tax (IT), etc. (18%). Oil revenues (Direct Tax on Hydrocarbons (IDH) and Special Tax on Hydrocarbons and Derivatives (IEHD)) represent only 3% of revenues.
Notice then that the elephantian government is not financed mostly with gas sales but with debt and our taxes. Considering also that only 30% of the economy is formal and pays taxes, the dance is being paid for by a very small segment of the national population.
Let’s now look at the expenditure. 57% goes to current expenses, 17% goes to capital expenses, and 26% to other uses that include debt service. For every dollar invested in capital expenses, therefore, $ 3.5 in current expenses is spent. And where does the capital expenses go to ($ 5 billion)? To the 70 public companies, the vast majority of which are unprofitable and inefficient.
Within current expenses, only the item of wages and salaries reaches $ 6,499 million, which represents 20% of the budget. We spend about $ 18 million a day on wages and salaries alone ($ 25 million per workday). 34% of the $ 6,499 million goes to the teaching profession (which we already know is a nest of corruption and incapacity that keeps our education imprisoned in mediocrity), 9% to health, 6% to the Police, and 6% to the Armed Forces. The rest, more or less 50%, goes to the bureaucrats who occupy a seat in the public administration that includes all the people who occupy the 17 ministries, 53 vice-ministries, and 200 entities that depend on those 53 vice-ministries.
This huge administrative apparatus is also built on very weak and unrealistic assumptions. The budget assumes that our product [GDP] will grow in 2022 at a rate of 5.1% when international organizations such as ECLAC or the World Bank expect only a rate of 3.5%. An oil price of $ 50.5 is also assumed when the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) expects it to reach $ 68.28. Here it is important to remember that a high oil price today hurts us more than benefits us because our gas sales volumes have dropped and we continue to strongly subsidize the domestic price of hydrocarbons.
This is, in short, what the MAS wants to sell us and what it will probably be approved without problem in parliament. Debt and voracious spending when what we need is savings. To add more monsters to the movie, last week we learned that our cash reserves (currencies) are already on the ground at $ 1,769 million. Let’s remember that next year we will have to pay around $ 1.8 billion of previously issued bonds. Ronald MacLean illustrates this whole alarming situation by saying that the car is going over the cliff and the driver is asleep. It seems to me that the driver is not asleep. He knows we are going to the cliff, and even so he does not let go of the accelerator.
Antonio Saravia is PhD in economics (Twitter: @tufisaravia)
Source: https://brujuladigital.net/opinion/el-presupuesto-del-horror
A MULTIFACETED MAN, A NEW MAN
2 December 2021
A multifaceted man, a new man
He was the founder and director of Presencia, an emblematic newspaper. He studied Philosophy and Law and inspired hundreds to teach in these areas. His book on Criminology is a fundamental guide on this subject. He presided over a distinguished Electoral Court, recognized for defending institutionalism. Catholic, humanist, defender of human rights, father, who acted as mother, grandfather. A lover of life, knowledge, and Bolivia.
There is no doubt that Huáscar Cajías Kauffmann was a multifaceted man.
For the same reason, the book that commemorates his centenary bears that name. This Tuesday 30, the publication was presented at the Bolivian Catholic University “San Pablo” (La Paz headquarters), thanks to the efforts of this house of studies and its Department of Social Communication. In the text, presentations and reflections of the protagonist are presented, accompanied by memories of those who shared his multifaceted life with him.
In the writing, it can be recognized that, in addition to being multifaceted, Cajías Kauffmann was a clear representation of the “new man.” That ideal of better beings committed to the Common Good, the defense of human values, the search for truth and freedom.
The “new man” has been conceptualized from different perspectives. But as D. Negro (2008) indicates, this concept is associated with the twentieth century, when “it was proposed to improve, through illustration and scientific knowledge, living conditions, but with an eye toward creating a better man, a new man.”
It is a complex task to define what is “best” in a human being. However, the shared memory of Huáscar as a man with a horizontal gaze, whatever his interlocutor and in all kinds of settings, is an undeniable guideline to be better.
Respect for the other and the search for the Common Good was the practice of Cajías in his daily, personal, and work life. In the book presented, Harold Olmos recalls that the notes from the Director of Presencia were “a reflection of his commitment to a less selfish and more caring world.” Likewise, Armando Mariaca concludes his memory of Huáscar as the one who “was an example in everything to live well, serve better and act for the good of all without any reluctance.”
To live well, serve, and act. An illustrative synthesis of the life of Cajías Kauffmann. His commitment to the Common Good led him to be a servant of society, through a recognized “appreciation of justice, dignity, and law,” as indicated by Alejandro Colanzi.
Throughout the book, Huáscar is remembered for his work ethic and his character as a “public servant.” A concept that seems forgotten. But the biography of this universal Santa Cruz character reminds us to vindicate him.
More so, because his story recalls another virtue of the “new man”: the defense of human values and rights. Cajías’ reading of the biblical passage “The Beatitudes” to strikers for democracy, in 1978, is a postcard in the national history of human rights.
“It was a moment of great emotion, of great strength because he read it convinced, as a Catholic that he was, and the group listened. They say that even the agents were moved to see the scene and the strikers [were] so weakened but firm. They also said that Cajías did not let them mistreat or denigrate them, ‘they are under my protection,’ he said,” wrote Amparo Carvajal in her chapter of the book.
Finally, it is worth highlighting Huáscar’s commitment to truth and freedom, in each of his functions. In the book presented, this principle is particularly translated in one of his texts: “The truth will set us free.”
For all of the above, and for other reasons that readers will find in Huáscar Cajías Kauffmann’s book, he is the semblance of a “new man.” Not only because of the many recognized virtues but because all of them aimed to be a “better man.” Inspiration for so many beings who knew him. Final guideline of one of his texts…” At the end of the day, everything elevated is achieved by arduous roads. The easy is the refuge of those who do not want to be what they should be.”
Thank you so much, grandpa.
Guadalupe Peres-Cajías / Alias Agatha
Source: https://eldeber.com.bo/opinion/un-hombre-multifacetico-un-hombre-nuevo_257195
FROM FRAUD TO FRAUD?
25 November 2021
From fraud to fraud?
In addition to the electoral fraud that Evo Morales carried out in October last year, apparently, another fraud occurred against the people in October 2020; it means that national democracy is not worth a damn, because not even the vote, of which we all brag about, has value. Morales provoked a fraud that the OAS censored, the European Union agreed with, and even Morales himself recognized, who decided to annul those elections and make a new call for elections, which the citizens did not accept. Then, seeing that the electoral trap had no solution, the MAS, in order to clear the dirt from the face of its boss, now declared persona “non grata” in Peru, invented the story of the “coup d’État”, a subject that has remained as an irrefutable dogma within their ranks.
One of the arguments that the MAS maintains in support of the coup’s invention is that a year after those tricky elections, Mr. Arce Catacora won the general elections with a surprising 55%, leaving out Carlos Mesa, the candidate of the moderate line, who, according to the polls, could aspire to obtain the necessary to go to a ballot to define the Presidency.
But nothing is impossible in Bolivia and even more so in politics. It is very likely that there would have been fraud in the elections that Evo Morales won in 2014, as there was certainly in 2019 and, perhaps, in 2020. The surprise for that 55% that Arce obtained was enormous. But Bolivians are either very confident or very slow, because just after a year, Mrs. Rosario Baptista, a former Tribunal member of the Electoral Power, has opened our eyes by having announced the existence of an inflated electoral register, where there would be more than one million and a half “ghost voters.”
But is it possible that we have been taken for a ride again? Frankly, we can’t believe it. We are ashamed of the mere idea that the MAS has regained power with another consecutive trap. And that, in addition, they brag about their triumph and accuse us that we were coup plotters because as Arce won last year, there was no mystery for Morales to win in 2019. They rub this in to our naive people and show it abroad, who stare in amazement at these unstable Bolivians who, according to that, do not know what they want.
If what the former Tribunal member Baptista affirms is true, that there would be no reason for her to lie, it means that we were and that we are in front of a Supreme Electoral Tribunal where dishonest characters swarm to obscenity. If the former Tribunal member Baptista had already warned, some time ago, that there was a “parallel electoral register,” which earned her a sanction from the Tribunal, how was it possible that we remained with the same disaster? Did the Electoral Power reach such an extreme of submission and fear of Morales? As much panic as the Legislative and Judicial Powers have? Is this the democracy we brag about and celebrate every October 10 for almost 40 years? Could it be that Bolivian democracy has become muddy to the neck since the 2009 Constitution and has been sinking more and more into the quagmire? Or as Mrs. Baptista says, could it be that this democracy is nothing more than an illusion generated in the people? Just an illusion for the unwary?
Today we find ourselves before a Government that persecutes and insults, aggressive as none has been seen for a long time. This was demonstrated by Arce last Sunday in the Plan Tres Mil zone, calling the people of Santa Cruz fascists. Every dissident enters his telescopic sight, which is nothing other than obsequious and rotten justice. It is the same method that Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua use. Aiming at the head of the enemy that bothers them to apply the law with a trigger that kills the adversary and benefits the power.
This administration, which is beginning to be questioned, scaring those who exercise it, not only targets Camacho, Calvo, Reyes Villa, and Arias but, due to their fear, they target political leaders, opposition parliamentarians, and all journalists who have the right to be curious; even more so, if there is so much talk that we would be under the grip of an intolerable illegal authority, imposed by a detestable deception. If Rosario Baptista’s denunciation is true, this Government should not expect any submission or respect from Bolivians.
Source: https://eldeber.com.bo/opinion/de-fraude-en-fraude_256357
ROSARIO BAPTISTA: A CALL FOR THE RESCUE OF THE PLURINATIONAL ELECTORAL BODY (OEP)
“The total control of all State Bodies by the ruling party (…) has left the vote as the only surviving element, but under technical, institutional, and legal conditions that make it nominal, since the citizen’s will and sovereignty are manipulated; (…) in the 2020 electoral process the true results were ignored (…) subjecting the citizens to the will of the political party, which under current conditions will never lose an election (…).”
Rosario Baptista C. – Former member of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal
22 November 2021
Rosario Baptista: a call for the rescue of the Plurinational Electoral Body (OEP)
“The total control of all State Bodies by the ruling party (…) has left the vote as the only surviving element, but under technical, institutional, and legal conditions that make it nominal, since the citizen’s will and sovereignty are manipulated; (…) in the 2020 electoral process the true results were ignored (…) subjecting the citizens to the will of the political party, which under current conditions will never lose an election (…).”
This is what the lawyer Rosario Baptista affirms in her resignation letter, which is, at the same time, a very serious denunciation not only against the MAS Government but against the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) itself, now placed in the dock.
The seriousness of what Baptista affirmed will surely be supported, in the coming days and weeks, by data, evidence, or at least indications that the former Tribunal member, who was an integral part of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) for two years, has in her possession, and who, at least three times, has put forward her dissent regarding the handling of the Plurinational Electoral Body (OEP), especially, in regards the Electoral Register.
However, we should not wait for this evidence, which the former Tribunal member must transmit to us, to take initiatives and face what is a deep fissure in the credibility of the Electoral Body that can crumble its precarious structure and, with it, the democratic stability that is based on the majority popular will expressed in the vote, as an essential political right, whose safeguard is in the hands of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), today seriously questioned.
For this reason, because an immediate and true institutional reorganization is required, the statement made by Óscar Hassenteufel, on behalf of the Electoral Body, “vehemently rejecting the reckless and fanciful assertions of former Tribunal member Rosario Baptista” does not seem the best response to the denunciation. As if the national political context and the conduct of the ruling party were not precisely that of the authoritarian exercise of power and the permanent deployment of hegemonic actions that today try to silence the parliamentary minority, which have absolutely subordinated the judicial body and which they try to eliminate, through judicial persecution, the dissent of the departmental and municipal autonomies.
Rather, what is fanciful is to believe that we enjoy the rule of law, independence of powers, democratic institutions, and the full validity of constitutional rights and guarantees.
For this reason, the announcement of the electoral member Francisco Vargas seems more appropriate that the “biometric platform of the electoral register will be updated with a budget close to 30 million bolivianos,” but that update is not enough at all. There are better voices such as those of Comunidad Ciudadana that proposes the formulation of a new electoral register, which should at least oblige the immediate promotion of an external and international audit of the electoral register, to verify its integrity, to correct its deficiencies, or to effectively carry out a new electoral registration about which there is no doubt.
If the biometric basis of the electoral registry of the voting population is in doubt, what is in question is popular sovereignty, enshrined in Article 7 of the Constitution as a State principle and fundamental value, from which “emanate, by delegation, the functions and attributions of governmental bodies (…).” And the popular sovereignty of the vote is under the custody of the Plurinational Electoral Body (OEP), which must become transparent.
For this, a plural, impartial and immediate investigation must be opened by the commission provided for in subsection 19 of Article 158 of the Constitution, to which the lawyer Baptista must be summoned, to whom all personal guarantees must be provided, so that she can explain to the country the components and reasons also for this other blunt statement of her: “The Supreme Electoral Tribunal is kidnapped by interests unrelated to justice, democracy and political rights (…) it is a Body that is neither independent nor impartial (…).” If there is evidence of this kidnapping –which seems to have started in July of this year, with the illegal removal of the departmental electoral members–, it is clear that citizen and popular attention will have to be focused on RESCUE because, in the past, a well-known autocrat affirmed that whoever defines an election is not the one who votes, but the one who counts the votes.
MUCH MORE THAN JUST OCCUPATIONAL HAZARDS
21 November 2021
Much more than just occupational hazards
It is already known that each profession has its own barriers or difficulties to be overcome by those who exercise it. They are barriers and difficulties, we could say, specific to each one of them, according to their nature. These barriers and difficulties are faced by park rangers in the middle of lonely and inhospitable places, firefighters or doctors when attending an emergency, parliamentarians or public officials in their interventions, press workers when investigating the facts in search of the truth. And the list of examples continues of what we usually say that they are just occupational hazards. Only that, for some time now, barriers or difficulties are no longer simple occupational hazards, but major obstacles turned into serious threats.
What was seen in the Las Londras case helps to illustrate what was said: a score of people, including six press workers and four policemen, including no less than the Chiquitania Commander, were kidnapped and subjected to seven hours of verbal and physical torture by an armed group that did not hesitate in shooting many times, destroying press kits, and damaging the vehicles used to reach the scene. The Police Commander fainted from the blows he received and another of the troops had to be admitted to a medical center, with three broken ribs, according to the testimony given by each of those affected by the violence.
This violence is no longer just an occupational hazard, neither for policemen, nor for journalists, because it is not only about difficulties or risks that are part of both professions, but rather a criminal action that is being undermined, and probably encouraged, by officials of the State institutions, which are rather called to protect citizens, everyone without a single exception, and to ensure constitutional guarantees for the exercise of their work. It is the evidence of this arrangement from the State bodies that leads to affirming that it is no longer a question of occupational hazards, but of real and serious threats, which can even be lethal, which are facing –in this case– policemen and journalists.
I am going to emphasize the case of the press workers, because it is no longer an isolated case and, furthermore, because of the danger that this reality entails for freedom of press and expression in Bolivia and, therefore, for democracy. It is clear that there is an excessive desire to restrict the work of the media as much as possible and thus prevent irregular events that are occurring in the country from coming to light, under the protection and encouragement of the ruling party. They will say that in this effort there are many more, and that is also true: power, be it political or economic, is uncomfortable with the control of their actions and that what they often hide is revealed. But in recent times, it is also evident that this desire is greater and with more violence from the central power.
It is not just about what was seen in Las Londras. This violence at the hands of irregular groups, which also threatens other sectors of civil society, as has already been denounced by firefighters, park rangers, and indigenous peoples who suffer the illegal occupation of their lands and territories, is also perceived in other areas and through other manifestations, such as verbal violence, of which there are plenty of examples among the official spokespersons who do not tire of feeding feelings of hatred and resentment among their peers. Undoubtedly, this type of violence is part of the statement of a supranational MAS deputy in which he advocates economic asphyxiation of the media that do not submit to the official account of the events. Threats that are increasing in tone and aggravate a problem that no longer concerns only the media or press workers, but also society, because information, recognized as a common good by UNESCO, is at risk.
A major problem to which we should give the greatest possible attention, not only in a testimonial way, with verbal complaints or public pronouncements, but with de facto and coordinated actions among all institutions and sectors of civil society. Something that will have to begin by demanding the media themselves, whose owners seem to have not yet perceived the real danger that their companies are at as a business, as their main capital is in serious danger, which is none other than human capital, its workforce, which makes it possible to reach their audiences and sponsors with information.
We are in a high-risk situation. The threat against freedom of press and expression is real; it is not a fictional story. That this threat does not reach greater proportions. Let it be stopped now! There is no time to lose. In reality, we have already wasted too much time waiting for the actions of authorities and institutions called by law to stop and punish the excesses of those who have passed, without any dissimulation, from threatening to the consummation of these threats. And it is good to note: here we all lose.
Source: https://eldeber.com.bo/opinion/mucho-mas-que-solo-gajes-del-oficio_255806
THE ELECTORAL REGISTER THAT WE HAVE
20 November 2021
The electoral register that we have
Memories of the present
“Thanks to this spectacular growth in the electoral register, the goal of President Morales of September 7th was finally reached. From 2,616,846 registered voters on September 9th, it went to 5,088,924 on October 22nd: 2,472,078 additional registered voters. 94% growth in just 6 weeks!”
Fernando Bazúa – Center for Studies on Public Problems of Mexico
The denunciations of the Tribunal Member Rosario Baptista have been described as “fanciful” by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), where those whom she denounced as MAS militants have decided that the current electoral register is “quite safe and reliable.”
The history of the current electoral register dates back to 2007, according to a very detailed inspection made by Fernando Bazúa, from the Center for Studies on Public Problems of Mexico, in 2009. Bazúa is Professor of Political Economy and Public Policy at the Autonomous Metropolitan University and at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO), Mexico.
The coca grower Morales, in the position of President since 2006, had decided that a free, fast, and complete issuing of identity cards should be carried out in the country. The European Union then observed that the National Electoral Court (CNE) should be in charge of doing this, since the method decided by the Government lacked transparency.
On 07/08/08, La Razón [newspaper] denounced that the issuing of identity cards in Cochabamba was being carried out at the MAS [Political] Campaign House.
On 05/10/09, 34 companies were invited to make the new electoral register. According to El Deber [newspaper], the National Electoral Court reports that the famous Venezuelan company Smartmatic was not chosen. However, on 11/24/09, La Razón reports that Smartmatic did participate in the development of the biometric [system].
On 09/07/09, Morales ordered to reach the number of 5 million registered. Amazing miracles began to occur during the registration.
On 09/11/09, Luis Pereira, director of the biometric [system], said that the registrants totaled 2,616,846, which was 91,318 more than Antonio Costas had reported the day before!
Eleven days later, the figures released by those responsible for the feat cause the author of the study to exclaim: “At an ultrasonic speed, between 09/09/09 and 09/20/09, the total number of registered voters went from 2,616,846 to 3,568,906 registrants. That is, in just 11 days, the electoral register grew by 1,043,378 registered voters!”
And about the figures of 10/12/09, Bazúa states: “At a similar speed, from 09/20/09 to 10/12/09, the total number of registered voters went from 3,568,906 to 4,561,300 people. That is, in just three weeks, the electoral register grew by 992,394 registered voters!”
On 10/15/09, the Mexican expert increased the tone of his amazement: “Accelerating the pace, only three days after 10/12/09, the electoral register grew by 268,638 registered voters! From 4,561,300 to 4,829,938 registered voters. 89,546 daily!”
“And it exceeded its expected total on 09/11/09 by 1,312,672. But it almost reached the goal of President Morales.”
I give the floor to Bazúa, whose amazement was as inflated as the figures of the new electoral register.
“Thanks to this spectacular growth in the electoral register, the goal of President Morales of September 7th was finally reached. From 2,616,846 registered voters on September 9th, it went to 5,088,924 on October 22nd: 2,472,078 additional registered voters. 94% growth in just 6 weeks!”
The Mexican expert must have seen many miracles of this type on the part of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), but when reviewing the figures of the Bolivian electoral register it seemed to him that such levels of impudence had never been reached.
Well, that’s how the current electoral register was made, “reliable and safe.”
Very safe for the MAS.
A LIE HAS NO LEGS, BUT…
19 November 2021
A lie has no legs, but…
When the lie becomes a resource of State management, there are moments, in which the lie is constantly reproduced, that it seems to be true.
The issue is relevant when observing the behavior of the MAS leadership in the face of pressure to abrogate Law 1386. If even the leader of the MAS and escaped former President advised to abrogate it after the social mobilization that led to its enactment, the Government authorities and the MAS leadership may have realized that they were once again presented with the opportunity to recover democratic values and open spaces for dialogue that, on the one hand, allow them to adequately face the acute crisis that the country is experiencing and, on the other hand, to regain legitimacy.
Unfortunately, once again they misunderstood the message of society, as is shown in the statement of reasons for abrogating the regulation that contains a pack of lies that even affects them in order to avoid the recognition of mistakes; rather, like roguish adolescents, they decided to approve in the Legislative Assembly other regulations that were also resisted by the people, after having mobilized their radical and violent followers, and uttering in a threatening tone that “be careful that the Inca resurrect.”
In other words, the Government authorities and the MAS fail to calibrate the mood of the citizens, but rather blindly believe the lies that they themselves believe.
This attitude is not exhibited only by the Bolivian militants of the 21st-Century socialism. The Argentine case, if possible, is more pathetic. As was foreseeable, the ruling party lost patently in the mid-term legislative elections and despite this, its President, the ineffable Alberto Fernández, summoned his followers to “celebrate victory” and one of its main candidates, who came second in the Kirchnerista main electoral stronghold, very loose of body, declared that there are those who win by losing (they) and others lose by winning (the opposition).
Not to mention Maduro, Díaz-Canel, Ortega, who are sure, feeling anointed, that reality is what they believe it to be and in that way, they lead their peoples to situations of intolerable misery and violence.
Regardless of the damage that attitudes of this nature do to society as a whole, where distrust grows in everyone and everything, ideals are also lost in the construction of modern, inclusive, deliberative societies, and power is conceptualized as simple enjoyment of those who assume it, who also take advantage of this mistrust to prevent society from organizing itself according to their interests.
In one way or another, that authoritarian black hand is also felt in the spaces of society. In the case of the mobilization against Law 1386, once it was abrogated, the Civic Committee for Santa Cruz lifted the indefinite strike, against the position of radicalized groups that wanted to maintain it, which could lead to situations of violence. Surely under these circumstances the president of the civic institution, Rómulo Calvo, recalling former Governor Rubén Costas that, when the MAS managed to put Santa Cruz under siege in 2009, assumed a responsible attitude that avoided a violent confrontation.
Once again, it is learned that above any demand that is pursued to build a better society is that of guaranteeing people’s lives, a lesson that must always be remembered in the difficult handling of social mobilizations.
In addition, history shows us that despite the lies, which sometimes have long legs, it is through the use of the resources of democracy and the commitment to solidarity that it will be possible to recover values of peaceful coexistence to face inclusive development. This is how we are shown by the attitude of the native peoples of the lowlands, the 2016 referendum, the rejection to the fraud of 2019, [and] the elections of 2020 and 2021.
Source: https://eldeber.com.bo/opinion/la-mentira-tiene-patas-cortas-pero_255569
HOW ARE WE AND WHERE ARE WE HEADING?
15 November 2021
How are we and where are we heading?
In the political sphere, the Bolivian population finds itself on opposite positions, between an ethnocentric socialist approach, which seeks to reach radicalism to sustain a political instrument arguing the sovereignty of the peoples as if they were subjugated or subjected while in the exercise of power.
The other position defends an autonomous progressive thought with connotations contrary to those of socialist thought, in which it perceives that it violates their rights and, therefore, violates the Constitution, because it endangers their work, their undertakings, and their patrimony, among other things, but fundamentally, they feel that the education of their children takes place in a framework of absorbent statism that undermines their will to choose and to function.
As regards the Electoral issue. In the October 2020 elections, the governing party obtained 55% of the citizen vote (percentage, currently questioned by Rosario Baptista, a Tribunal member of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal and several different actors) and the opposition obtained 45%.
As a conclusion, it should be mentioned that the MAS cannot govern as if it had obtained 100% of the votes and pretend that there is no counterweight of minorities; and [they should understand that] that 45% is far from being an absent minority.
From the point of view of Baptista (Member of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal), there is a serious questioning about the actions of some members of this Court that, with the knowledge of Salvador Romero, who in the past administration served as President of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, could be that this 55% in favor of the governing party be challenged again due to irregularities that could soon come to light, which would constitute a second fraud. Therefore, it is essential that a forensic audit be carried out on the electoral register.
As regards the Economic sphere. Beyond the figures cited in an inconsiderate, bellicose, confrontational, and ethnocentric speech in which President Arce accused 45% of the population (possibly this percentage being higher) of being coup-mongers; obviously there is uncertainty in regards precise data of the economic situation, information such as the Net International Reserves, the monetary issue, the Bolivian Fiscal Oil Fields (YPFB) budget execution, and the budget execution of the rest of State companies.
The National Statistics Institute is currently a politicized institution, whose data do not coincide with the analysis of other economists (such as, for example, with that of Dr. Gonzalo Chávez and his prediction of 1.36% annual GDP growth) and the Government figures of around 4% growth for the current year.
Therefore, the economic data is very uncertain, and proposed bill 342 on the Economic and Social Development Plan 2021-2025, intends that the reactivation processes go through the embargo of resources from governorships, city halls, universities, and autarkic institutions so that they survive with the minimum [budget]. To date, there is no report on the profitability of the State companies (Cartonbol, Evabol, Lacteosbol, San Buenaventura [Sugar Mill], Urea Plant, etc.).
In regards Health and Education. Relying on a health event that is conducted by way of necessity in the case of Covid 19, without taking into account the efforts of the governorships, city halls, and other health institutions, says absolutely nothing. There is no information on patients with other pathologies (kidney pathologies, cancer, Acute Respiratory Infections, Acute Diarrheal Diseases, birth rates, morbidity, and other endemic pathologies such as Chagas, AIDS, etc.). Of course, we have data on the vaccines that were discarded due to an uncoordinated vaccination plan by the central and regional governments.
In the area of education, the results of the teaching/learning processes, especially of previous years, will become evident when students go on to high school or face an option for higher education. This also shows that former Minister of Education, Adrian Quelca, resigned due to acts of corruption.
Opportunities for young people. With regard to this important age group, the figures on the development of educational, professional, technical, or learning competence are not known. Data on whether young people are satisfied with their work, with their daily lives, their goals, their hopes, their future projects, and, even less, with regard to their expectations about the future of the country, is unknown.
Popular demand. It is no coincidence that the Bolivian population is organizing against the package of laws that the MAS Government intends to enact, without first promoting a consensus process, as it should be in a democratic government.
What is the solution to the current conflict? The crisis situation that the country is going through, as a result of the rejection of part of the population to the enactment of the package of laws that the Government of Luis Arce intends, requires a solution. First, the population wants Bolivia to have stability and that happens through politics in current times. Second, if the MAS Government is sure of its 55% vote, it must exercise its ability to convince the population from two-thirds of the vote in the Plurinational Assembly, restoring the equilibrium of checks and balances mandated by the State Political Constitution. On the other hand, it must institutionalize the judicial system and carry out an audit of the electoral register and of the servers used to count the votes. Finally, it is necessary to sit down with Bolivians to discuss a new State-Government administration model, since the current one neither manages to bring the population closer together nor meets their basic needs.
The solution to the current problems is in the hands of the Government, which must consider the abrogation of laws 1386 and 342 and others, and get to work.
Work on what? Govern with equity, equality, and respect for free expression.
The Government must make amends for its mistakes and must gentlemanly acknowledge its mistakes, in this way it will be recognized as a democratic Government that emerged from the popular vote. Otherwise, it will be remembered as the new Nicolás Maduro, Hugo Chávez’s successor.
Source: https://eldeber.com.bo/opinion/como-estamos-y-adonde-vamos_254952
LICENSE TO KILL
12 November 2021
License to kill
“It is not just a law… it is a much more serious problem that points to an authoritarian government, determined to impose its will over the national interest and without any predisposition to dialogue. The Government of Luis Arce intends to control society, the economy, and law enforcement agencies.”
Senator Rodrigo Paz Pereyra, in ‘Journalism without Photoshop – MT’.
The bosses of the Bolivian regime, Luis Arce, Evo Morales, David Choquehuanca, and their minions, believe that having obtained 55% of the votes in the October 2020 elections gives them the license to kill democracy.
The Assembly-member of Tarija José Yucra, affirmed that “…if we have to kill, we will do it” (Página Siete Digital 12.X.2021). Or with the deployment of Police, para-police forces, soldiers in the streets, or peasants mobilized by the regime, with excessive use of force as in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, in Potosí, in Tarija, with tear gases, with Neptuno anti-riot cars, paid gang members, threatening women, adolescents, and disabled people. The life of a young peasant has already ceased to exist, there are dozens of injured, and more than 120 detainees.
It is the “raw power”, Levi-Strauss would say, to repress road blockades, marches, and multisectoral work stoppages of union members, transporters, cooperative miners, health sector, civic and democratic platforms against laws that only seek, as the opposition Senator says, the total control of society. The peaceful protests are against the National Strategy Law to Fight the Legitimization of Illicit Profits and the Financing of Terrorism, better known as “mother law” and others, plus its bulky annexes that would allow the President to rule through [supreme] decrees. This ‘package’ paves the way for the seizure of goods and properties by the State/Government, discards rules of professional and financial secrecy to a simple complaint without a fiscal order, and can be used in the persecution of political adversaries.
It is domination to ‘equalize’ society downwards and thus lead Bolivia towards socialism “as in Cuba,” Arce’s own words: https://fb.watch/9dLk7wvpeb/.
They were never democrats, that is why Morales violated the Constitution by running for a fourth election in 2019, when in fact the Law only allows two continuous elections, and that is why he also ignored the 2016 Referendum that told him NO. They got on the bandwagon of history using the democratic method, that is, the vote, like so many populists, but they discarded the social condition of democracy, which is political pluralism so that citizens participate in the construction of the destiny of their own society.
The MAS and its leaders have opted for anti-politics from power, not only to dismantle the plural foundations of reality as a synthesis of multiple determinations but in its most radical form: the total concentration of power, in the old Stalinist way: “outside the political sphere,” as Hannah Arendt wrote in the “Origins of Totalitarianism”.
In other words, anti-politics leads to the unreasonableness of violence and brute force. That is, without democratic commitments, without dialogues, without debates, without seeking consensus, without respect for democratic institutions, there is no peaceful coexistence between different people, there is no independence of powers, there isn’t an honest and fair Judicial Power, with transparency and accountability.
The MAS of Luis Arce, of former [President] Morales and his Jacobin former Vice[-President], believe that winning elections gives them the power to despise the Indigenous Peoples of the East and to impose decisions that threaten personal freedoms, and to go against socio-economic identities of life and survival of around 80% of the economically active population. It is informality, most of them without sufficient resources to reproduce their workforce and that of their family.
Members of the MAS abuse their majority and go against the political rights of minorities, turned into disposable, that is why they don’t take them into account in the conformation of chamber directives. They are poisoning democracy because they want a unique [political] party and monolithic thinking, to the point that they encourage political turncoats who go from the opposition to the ruling party in Parliament without respecting the regulations or minorities.
We must “steal their souls,” the former Vice-President García Linera must be repeating, through the judicialization of politics, the criminalization of the opposition, and the generation of a Leninist-style press and propaganda structure. They make use of the selective use of political cruelty that they apply mercilessly to former President Jeanine Añez, through an invented coup d’État. The regime has 52 political prisoners, an unknown number of people persecuted, and more than 1,200 former exiles, plus the new ones. It is the “revenge” of the populist coca grower Morales.
Researchers studying the tentacles of the First Capital Command of São Paulo, Brazil, qualify Bolivia as a sanctuary for Narcosur (drug trafficking in the south), in addition to being a transit country for cocaine from Peru and Colombia to Brazil and Europe. One of the reasons for this illegal collusion, according to the investigations, is that drug traffickers have protection from the police and the military, given the high levels of corruption in Bolivia. According to the Corruption Perception Index for 2020, Bolivia obtains only 31 points out of 100, the same as Mexico, surpassed by Venezuela (17), Haiti (18), and Nicaragua (22).
The MAS and its followers are stealing the present and the future of Bolivian society, which we always want with freedom. Not even with 55% of votes are they licensed to kill democracy.
Source: http://www.cabildeodigital.com/2021/11/licencia-para-matar.html
Tik Tok DIPLOMACY
9 November 2021
Tik Tok Diplomacy
By: Iván Camarlinghi – Diplomat and Journalist
A few days ago, the former Ambassador to Paraguay Mario Cronenbold was dismissed from his duties for the mockery he made of one of the traditions of the Guaraní people: the Tereré, as important as tea in England, Yerba-Mate in Argentina and Uruguay or mid-morning Salteñas time in Bolivia.
Cronenbold had the curtness to believe that he was with Tachuelita or any other clown, to record a Tik Tok video in which he distorted his voice to make a fool of not the tradition of the tereré, but the Bolivian diplomacy before Paraguay, a noble and combative people that faced Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay in a war (that of the Triple Alliance) in the 19th century and Bolivia in the 20th century.
It is shameful (also for the Mayta Foreign Ministry) that an administration in 12 months of management has been so conspicuously absent, just as we warned eleven months ago in this same [opinion] column. The only “epic” battle won by the management has been to have exterminated institutionalized diplomacy in less than 24 hours, by means of a communiqué that ordered all career diplomats to leave their positions, under penalty of being prosecuted for those who did not proceed in this way. They tell me that now several former diplomats of the Añez administration are being prosecuted.
We do not know what the Chancellor intended to do with the previous measure. Exterminate career diplomats with one stroke of the pen? He must have already realized that that will not be easy. What’s more, here we are more than 250 professionals trained by the Bolivian State to defend its interests, and we will continue to do so even if Mayta does not return our items back to us (which he should do if the judges who heard our three lawsuits against the Chancellor for having dismissed us without any motive, other than politics, had extended a just mandate).
Mayta says there is no diplomatic career (how will there be? If one of his first measures was to lay off 90% of career diplomatic personnel) and that is why it is justified to send the most rancid and rickety MAS militants to our consulates and embassies, e.g.: Mario Cronenbold. Will all ambassadors appointed by Evo and appointed by Mayta be tested? Or is the political membership card enough? Although they cannot answer even with which countries Bolivia borders.
Diplomacy is a matter of personalities. The great difference between the Ambassadors of the traditional parties and those appointed by Evo is that the traditional parties were concerned with appointing militants who had experience and merits in the activity such as Manfredo Kempff, Valentín Abecia, Guido Riveros, Lidia Gueiller, Fernando Messmer, Jorge Soruco, Jorge Gumucio, to name just a few; the difference is abysmal in relation to Evo’s Ambassadors: Mario Cronenbold, Jerjes Justiniano, Arce Zaconeta, Sacha Llorenti, Norma Brito, Diego Pary, Gringo Gonzáles, Felipe Cáceres and others who have to their credit, the ridiculous record of having tried to prosecute the Secretary-General of the OAS, with the support of 3 countries (obviously Bolivia among them), Luis Almagro, something that not even the most recalcitrant Cubans had tried at the height of the Cuban Revolution.
Is what happened to Cronenbold in Paraguay by chance? We don’t think so. Ambassadors who were not even given instructions for the mission, because that old but effective practice of the Republican Chancellery has been discarded, like most of the procedures of traditional diplomacy for having been demonized since, “supposedly,” it was employed “during neoliberal governments.” It is worth remembering that these norms are of universal use and are common to all Foreign Ministries of the world, except ours.
Mayta had to dismiss Cronenbold as soon as the offensive Tik Tok towards Paraguay was known, but the Chancellor is so badly advised that he waited for the Chamber of Deputies of that country to approve a declaration of “persona non grata” to dismiss the former “diplomat” from his position, an act that made diplomats from other countries laugh, because of how grotesque it was, but it made us cry.
Cronenbold’s outburst is by no means an isolated case. Like this case, there are many others that can be remembered in the 15 years of the Choquehuanca, Huanacuni, Pary, and Mayta administrations, such as the accusations of sexual harassment against the former Bolivian Ambassador in Moscow; the case of former Ambassador Nardi Suxo, whose daughter (former Consul in Berlin) was reported to the German Chancellery because she had confiscated the passport of the domestic worker that she brought to her destination and she seized her salary for several months without valid reason; something very similar to the confiscation that Mayta has made of more than 250 public servants whom he dismissed without justification. These are just some of the many scandals in the MAS Foreign Service, not counting other irregularities such as the payment of tickets and per diem to leaders of social movements, without these belonging to the Ministry’s payroll.
Much was said in the past about the Diplomacy of the National Revolution, of the Diplomacy of the Mining-Feudal Cronyism, of the Diplomacy of the Peoples (fantasy of the MAS), the Diplomacy of the Military Uprising, the Career Diplomacy, but nothing was ever said about the Tik Tok Diplomacy until now because the Tik Tok App did not exist, but now that it exists, it can be said, without any doubts, that the Diplomacy of Arce Catacora and Rogelio Mayta will be known as the “Tik Tok Diplomacy”. Hopefully, there is time to rectify this “diplomacy”, before the Bicentennial of Bolivia in 2025, because our great and heroic homeland and people deserve a better and more serious diplomatic and consular representation before the world.
Source: https://www.paginasiete.bo/opinion/2021/11/9/la-diplomacia-del-tik-tok-314623.html
The diplo(MAS)cy
5 November 2021
The diplo(MAS)cy
“In the world of international relations, where ‘misunderstandings’ are generally the best understandings, this phenomenon is exacerbated by the hardly reversible effect of the term used,” says Benoit Turcat in his foreword to the Basic Dictionary of International Relations, by author Aitor Iraegui.
That of the “term” is extended to the acts, actions, and gestures of diplomatic agents who represent their States in their respective legations and the highest authorities in foreign policy matters —Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Chancellors—. At times, silence can be thunderous; other times, the greatest grievances can be uttered in language so elegant that they seem like buds about to bloom. That’s how delicate the matter is.
Each government has the right to imprint its style on the relations with “other powers”, as was said before, in such a way that it is possible that each new administration generates its own particular approach on macro policies or on certain disputes. Historically, the maritime case has been a source of diplomatic formulas regarding the peer State: we have gone and returned from bilateralism to multilateralism, from vindicationism to practicalism and its nuances, the “fresh approach”, the “maritime quality”, up to a final solution that cost us the definitive loss, by a Judgment of the Court of The Hague, of sovereign access to the coasts of the Pacific.
What cannot happen, and if it does, already becomes, at least, an irregularity, is to incur in improvisation, picturesqueness, or plain rudeness. And the last fifteen years they have been prodigal at it.
The quality of the Foreign Service of a State not only depends on its policies in the matter but, fundamentally, on the preparation of the personnel that represents it. While there is a kind of tacit agreement to assign career officials and others, among prominent intellectuals and recipients of political favors, through discretionary appointments, today the Foreign Service is at its worst. A part of the diplomatic corps is made up of former judicial officials who gave the green light to the desire for indefinite reelection of their jefazo (boss); another, as if being a candidate for Mayor or Governor for the MAS was political insurance for former candidates defeated at the polls.
Mr. Morales Ayma coined “The diplomacy of the peoples”, implying that foreign relations were a matter of the “social movements”, going over regular and official channels, for this purpose. Demagoguery of colossal proportions.
The one who held the reins of Bolivian diplomacy, at least formally, for most of this period of time was the current Vice-President, David Choquehuanca Céspedes, acting as Chancellor, he went against reading, pontificated regarding the sex of rocks, and prepared papaliza in a UN assembly inviting attendees to try it because it was the “Andean Viagra”; he is also the mastermind of the “reverse clock” of the Legislative Palace. Now, the one who led the Foreign Affairs of Bolivia, confirming his flat-Earth short-vision, refuses to be vaccinated: we might as well call him Covid Choquehuanca.
The most recent episode of the impoverished diplo(MAS)cy is the one starring the adventurer who, in clear offense to the nation who gave him an undeserved approval, produced a burlesque video believing that removing it from circulation would settle the mess.
In 2015, shortly after his appointment as Ambassador to the Holy See, career public officer Armando Loayza gave an interview to a Chilean media outlet in which he referred to Morales Ayma’s “anti-Catholic trauma”. The journalist exploited the statement towards the maritime issue, but, although what the Ambassador said is absolutely true, it was not appropriate for him to mention it given the mission he held. Loayza resigned before being asked to do so. The adventurer in question does not think of doing it.
Source: https://www.paginasiete.bo/opinion/puka-reyesvilla/2021/11/5/la-diplomasia-314254.html
TikTok LEVEL FOREIGN SERVICE
4 November 2021
TikTok level Foreign Service
El Deber Newspaper Editorial
The Bolivian Government yesterday dismissed Mario Cronenbold from his functions as extraordinary and plenipotentiary Ambassador in Paraguay as a result of a publication by him on the social entertainment platform TikTok, in which the Bolivian politician is seen representing a trending video that was considered offensive in the neighboring country.
The incident, beyond the shameful considerations that they imply for the former Mayor of Warnes and former candidate for Governor of Santa Cruz for the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), unreservedly reveals the decadence of the Bolivian foreign service, politicized in the extreme and converted by the Governments of Evo Morales and Luis Arce in “awards” for party loyalty, for former ministers and former candidates.
The current Foreign Ministry does not recognize career officials, those who have dedicated several years of their lives to training professionally as diplomats to work in the foreign service, and prefers to appoint MAS militants regardless of whether or not they have diplomacy knowledge or whether they have, at least, the basic conditions to represent the Bolivian State before nations of the world.
All the States of the world, except Bolivia, appoint professionals trained in the diplomatic specialty as ambassadors, and if there are some politicians, they are very few and, even so, usually they are people with a certain level of preparation, adequate to fulfill the delicate mission of representing a country.
In Bolivia, there is a Law of the Foreign Service and the Diplomatic Rank that is not complied with; the Foreign Ministry is completely deinstitutionalized and the universal principle that a diplomat represents the interests of the State and not of a specific government seems unknown to the authorities of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The consequences of extreme politicization and improvisation are observed in cases such as Mario Cronenbold who, without any diplomatic training, experience, or preparation for the position, lasted only 24 days in his mission.
In this specific case, Cronenbold put forward the playful sense of his presence in Paraguay, and a childish gesture to add acolytes or make his followers laugh, led him to commit an offensive act for the Paraguayan republic, touching nothing less than one aspect vital in the identity of the peoples, as is their language and the accent so characteristic and different in each country.
The incident debunks that old axiom that is often repeated by certain political marketing strategists, who believe that the most important thing is to be known and therefore you have to have a high public profile, no matter what you have to do to achieve that goal.
Cronenbold strictly complied with that rule and there he is, back in Santa Cruz, without having had enough time to do absolutely nothing for the benefit of the country in the three weeks that he held the diplomatic mission was held in a country important to Bolivia, for its vicinity, for the commercial ties, and for the historical ties that have nothing less than a war in their book of common events.
If there is anything positive that the Government could draw from this painful incident, it is to reconsider its diplomatic policy to review appointments and resume the institutional route that prioritizes the presence of professional officials, who work in missions to defend the interests of the Bolivian State, and not the MAS.
Source: https://eldeber.com.bo/opinion/servicio-exterior-nivel-tiktok_253605
FIDEL, PINOCHET AND PROSPERITY
2 November 2021
Fidel, Pinochet and Prosperity
I have extracted from my memoirs a colossal incident. In the early 1990s, the Cuban Ambassador to Chile visited Andrónico Luksic Abaroa, the great-grandson of the Bolivian hero Eduardo Abaroa Hidalgo and an important businessman, to extend an invitation to visit his country. As Andrónico was about to accept the proposal, the Cuban Ambassador clarified that the businessman would be received by Fidel Castro.
Faced with this singular invitation, Andrónico and his son Guillermo flew to Havana and were received by Fidel at the House of the Revolution late at night. Andrónico, who expected to face the tropical heat, wore a thread guayabera shirt, while Castro received them in an olive green uniform and military cap, warmly clothed for the freezing, fully air-conditioned room.
Andrónico, who in addition to his son was accompanied by the Chilean Ambassador to Cuba and his counterpart in Santiago, had been warned that he had to expect long monologues from the Commander. Nothing like that happened. Castro was all ears that night. He asked Andrónico about the economy in Chile, private investments, the business climate, etc. And he raised the possibility that Luksic Abaroa could invest in Cuba in the beer industry.
Towards the end of the night, Castro asked Andrónico to summarize the economic and social situation in Chile in his opinion. Andrónico explained to Castro the dynamics of economic reforms in Chile during the previous two decades and how this country had achieved a degree of economic progress with its consequent social transformation translated into general prosperity of the middle classes and a radical reduction in poverty. Andrónico explained that this new situation that placed Chile at the head of South America had also generated high expectations in the people, who would not accept in the future anything less than maintaining economic progress and sustaining the prosperity achieved.
Andrónico said that Castro kept a long silence, after which he said verbatim: “That, boy, prosperity, you owe it to Pinochet!” Andrónico, very confused, believed he had misheard, and to his disbelief, Castro repeated his statement: “Yes, boy, you owe it to Pinochet.”
Back in Santiago, a few days later, Andrónico received an invitation from Pinochet to a formal dinner. The dinner was attended by the entire military hierarchy, the Chilean Ambassador in Havana and Andrónico. At dessert time, Pinochet addressed the latter and asked him to tell the audience what Castro had said. Surely the Chilean diplomat accredited to Cuba had reported that curious as well as implausible conversation. Unsure, Andrónico asked Pinochet to specify what he was asking him to tell. To which Pinochet clarified: “That, what Castro said about me and prosperity.”
For many years I have kept this family anecdote, reserved for my memoirs. But in these unfortunate moments for Bolivia, with a tyrannical, abusive, inept, and arrogant government, I wonder if Castro, deep down inside, was not questioning himself about the path he adopted for his miserable Cuba, unlike the one chosen by the other dictator that transformed Chile. Pinochet was also a tyrant, but he made his country modernize and develop, not impoverished, as was the case with Castro. And, in addition, he kept his word, respected the result of the referendum, organized free elections, and left power.
I sense that Andrónico was correct in his diagnosis: Chileans have already tasted prosperity, and no matter how unhappy they may be today, they will not hand over their fate to the Chilean left-wing. Between the extremes, they will choose who will continue along the capitalist route that has modernized Chile.
Source: http://www.cabildeodigital.com/2021/11/fidel-pinochet-y-la-prosperidad.html
PROTECTION AND COVER-UP FOR LAS LONDRAS ASSAILANTS
1 November 2021
PROTECTION AND COVER-UP FOR LAS LONDRAS ASSAILANTS
CRIMINALS IN POWER
Dulfredo Suárez do Santos is identified as the ringleader of the gang of land-grabbers that operates in Guarayos.
For a case prior to Las Londras, he was arrested and released. He had threatened the prosecutors of San Julián, Grobert Vega, and of Guarayos, Basilio Villca, with their dismissal and so it happened, without further explanation the dismissal memorandum came to both of them, and the judge, out of fear, only gave him a month in Palmasola [prision].
They also run the National Institute of Agrarian Reform (INRA). After taking over any property, using firearms and dynamites, the INRA Regional Director, Adalberto Rojas, hands them the concession.
Rojas, the INRA Regional Director, was sharing lunch with the assailants in Las Londras on October 29, a day after the massive kidnapping of four policemen, journalists, and producers who, in addition to torture, suffered gunshot wounds.
And they also manage the Police who gave them 72 hours to escape and leave the camp where drugs were possibly manufactured. When the 200 policemen sent from Santa Cruz arrived in Las Londras, what a surprise, they did not find anyone.
Dulfredo Suarez do Santos and his group of land-grabbers and kidnappers are part of the Federation of Interculturalists and the Confederation of Peasants, social instruments of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) Government. They are the Government. This explains the protection and impunity with which they act.
The use of people with criminal records in “collectives” to beat up and murder opposition members is a “Chavista” practice that the Arce Government is copying. They are the ones who are leading the armed land-grabbing assaults, but also the prison riots against the “privileges” of Jeanine Añez, as seen in the last hours by the official television channel.
In addition, this Government is denounced for tolerating (and who knows what else) the powerful and dangerous Brazilian drug trafficking cartel, the First Capital Command (PCC).
Thus, it is understood why in four days the Government would not have detained any armed assailant, but it did apprehend Adolfo Chávez at the Viru Viru airport, former president of the Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of Bolivia (CIDOB), the organization of the native peoples of the East that was seized this Sunday by the MAS. People that marched against the illegal occupation and that obviously the Government did not want to listen to them.
This Monday, Chávez was sentenced in record time to five years in prison for an alleged crime in the Indigenous Fund.
The armed militias used by the land-grabbers are a reality in the current Government, a disastrous component for the rule of law, and we dedicate the following subtitles to them.
LAS LONDRAS AND THE MAS ARMED MILITIAS
They were exposed. We saw them in action, they exist and they are the most dangerous threat to the lives of those who go out to protest, for those who defend their property, for those who practice journalism, for anyone who crosses their path. The armed groups of the MAS are the true gravediggers of Democracy.
LAS LONDRAS
It is a farm property located in Guarayos taken over by the interculturalists of Evo Morales who in Santa Cruz have the outposts of the MAS in San Julián and Yapacaní. From there they head out, organize, get supplies, and, now we can say with certainty, they arm themselves to illegally occupy the lands of native peoples, businessmen, and nature reserves.
OCTOBER 28
Thanks to short videos and the testimony of ATB cameraman, Percy Suárez, the country was able to see an armed militia in action, a very well-armed militia. You had to see to believe. It is the copy of the drug trafficking security groups that operate in Mexico, Colombia, and the Chapare.
They have no mercy. Using gunfire bursts and striking with rifle butts, they ambushed and kidnapped 17 people, including journalists, four policemen, and the owner and employees of the farm property. They all ended up face down in a shed, where they were tortured and beaten. The worst part was suffered by the employer and his workers, who suffered repeated blows with rifle butts and withering kicks. They are miraculously alive. Suddenly the kidnappers were ordered to release them. They had suffered seven hours of terror. Percy Suarez’s voice breaks when he remembers those eternal hours in which he entrusted himself to God while death haunted that shed smelling of blood.
His camera with a bullet entry and exit mark will be the proof of this criminal episode.
Cynicism hurts too. The next day one of the kidnappers told a local television station: “It was a misunderstanding, we scared them, there was no kidnapping.” Backing up this version, the Police Commander, Johnny Aguilera, defined what happened as an “ALTERCATION” and consequently assured that no one was going to be evicted.
Aguilera responds to the Minister [of Government], Del Castillo, the latter to President Arce, and the latter -in turn- to Evo Morales. Hence, there is no doubt that illegal land occupation and irregular armed groups are a Government policy.
GOVERNMENT POLICY
In June of this year, when there was a clamor in Santa Cruz to stop the illegal occupation of lands in four municipalities of Chiquitania, Vice-President David Choquehuanca met with the interculturalists and there endorsed and promoted the illegal taking of land. On that occasion, he said:
“It is not possible for the lands to be seized by a few. We have sworn to recover our land and territory… Those of us who have roots are the majority in this country. We are the owners of this land and territory.”
With this discourse, the interculturalists obtained the right to occupy whatever land they wanted.
At a press conference, the leader of the Federation of Interculturalists of Chiquitania, Oscar Castro said:
“We are organizing a defense group and we will defend ourselves, even if we have to die.”
And this October 28 we saw them in action. They were not so willing to die, but rather to kill.
28% of the cleared land belongs to peasants and interculturalists of the MAS, that is, 24.8 million hectares, according to the Santa Cruz Governorship.
The illegal occupation of lands also affects Cochabamba, where at least 50 properties have been affected in recent months.
COX WANTS TO BEAT ABOUT THE BUSH
For the Vice-Minister of Government, Nelson Cox, the irregular groups that the Government has to dismantle are the Cochala Resistance and the Cruceñista Youth.
These two organizations were protagonists of the peaceful resistance to the electoral fraud of 2019 and had to face the violent offensive of the armed groups of the MAS that tried to siege cities to starve millions of citizens.
The Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI), issued a report on Human Rights in Bolivia that recommends that the Government dismantle the irregular groups.
Cox ignored the existence of violent groups of the MAS, those who wear lluch’us or red ponchos, the self-organized groups that he himself armed in K’ara K’ara, those existing in Chapare, and now -evidently- in Santa Cruz.
Instead, he attacked a dozen activists and leaders of the Cochala Resistance until they were detained and prosecuted. Mario Tonchy Bascopé was sentenced to 10 years in prison on a fabricated drug trafficking charge. The same has happened in Cuba with a participant in the protests of July 11, they also gave him 10 years in prison.
So, on the one hand, they use the most vicious repression against opposition organizations while gearing up armed militias of the MAS, which will have the task of violently crushing protests against the Government and, in return, have carte blanche to commit misdeeds. Since they were given weapons, they are going to use them in kidnappings, assaults, and illegal occupation of lands and other properties.
SELF-CONFESSED AUTHOR
I refer to the evidence, judge. That piece of evidence is the video of Evo Morales recorded in January 2020 in Buenos Aires. Openly, Evo Morales gave the MAS the task of organizing armed militias, as in Venezuela, he said. With that public instruction, the denial of a democratic leader was shown as it is.
Already in October and November 2019, the MAS armed social organizations with clubs and used them as riot squads.
But also in that period of time, trained, structured, and armed groups came to light. They carried out operations in Montero, Sacaba, Senkata, and Vila Vila. But these operations were insufficient.
Evo wants more, as in Venezuela where in 2017 they killed 163 students who protested in the streets against the Maduro dictatorship, and in Nicaragua where in 2018 they took the lives of around 400 young protesters.
In Las Londras we have seen that Evo Morales has moved forward with his purpose of organizing armed people who will come out to defend him at all costs, as in Venezuela.
The New York Times described the actions of Maduro’s “collectives” as follows:
“The motorcyclists came with a loud noise; they were a phalanx of red jackets with dark clothes. Some had their faces covered as they revved their engines in front of the protesters. They threw tear gas bombs to disperse the crowd and, according to witnesses, they then drew their pistols and open fire.”
We have entered a very violent phase of the political struggle, where the undemocratic side has all the strength of the State and also with these groups that allow the Government to carry out criminal acts of which it will always wash its hands of these matters, as it already happened in the La Paz Coca Leaf Producers Association (ADEPCOCA) conflict, and now in Las Londras.
Source: http://www.cabildeodigital.com/2021/11/proteccion-y-encubrimiento-los.html
THE FAILED SPECTACLE OF THE MAS AT THE OAS
24 October 2021
The failed spectacle of the MAS at the OAS
A curious fauna of colorful characters: nostalgic for Che Guevara, statistical scholars under a contract of a radical NGO, compulsive liars, and a North American activist defender of the coca leaf to whom the wise phrase of Oscar Wilde applies that “every time a person says something completely stupid, it is always for the noblest reasons,” were summoned to the headquarters of the Organization of American States (OAS), by the permanent missions of the populist regimes of Argentina, Bolivia, and Mexico, in order to evaluate the fraudulent Bolivian elections of 2019.
In this event, some actors have put on the table their resentments, their visceral hatred towards liberal democracies and their ghosts about conspiracies, alleged arms trafficking from Argentina and Ecuador to Bolivia in a non-existent new Condor Plan, fictions about plots of the financial capitalism to destroy them, imaginary schemes attributed to Luis Almagro to destabilize them and other fantasies to collectively victimize themselves in a group therapy session.
Statistical experts, authors of reports that were already rejected by the OAS two years ago, were not well trained and were unable to deny the breaks in the voting trend after the cut-off of the data transmission from the Transmission of Preliminary Electoral Results (TREP), but they limited themselves to merely justify them. But what effectively invalidates all their analysis is that they only analyzed graphs and statistics, and left aside the evidence provided by the OAS on the innumerable electoral crimes that irreversibly contaminated the election.
This spectacle by the Puebla Group, aimed at discrediting the Report and the binding Audit of the OAS on the presidential elections in Bolivia, meant a new diplomatic setback for the Government of Luis Arce, which insists on trying to hide the electoral crimes duly proven by the OAS audit, as well as the shameful escape of Evo Morales to Mexico. However, the intention of the delegations of Argentina, Mexico, and Nicaragua to dismantle and weaken the electoral observation system of the OAS, the most solid, independent, and professional in the world, along with that of the European Union, is still worrying. That fact and that attitude is the one that should concern the international community the most. The Electoral Observation Missions (EOMs) of the OAS, which are the only guarantee that elections in the region are credible and transparent.
The strategy of using international events for circumstantial domestic policy purposes never favors the objective of a professional foreign policy, which is the defense and promotion of the permanent interests of a State. Proof of this improvisation is that they have chosen the OAS headquarters to organize a political event aimed at victimizing Evo Morales, discrediting the OAS electoral observation missions, and personally attacking the OAS Secretary-General. None of these objectives has been achieved: First, because the presentation did not have a significant audience and even Bolivians who wanted to participate were not allowed to enter. Second, the limited virtual participation was overwhelmingly from the opposition and forced the moderator to cancel the questions. Third, the political speeches left no doubt that it was a gathering between representatives of Latin American populism for the purposes of propaganda and spreading false narratives. The Argentine Representative, a dilettante of radical Kirchnerism, punished the audience with accusations of conspiracy against the former Argentine President, Mauricio Macri, and a speech from the sixties that confirms the idea of how dangerous it is to leave the destiny of our freedom in the hands of noisy demagogues.
Another dangerous element that reveals the true objective of the event is a phenomenon that transcends the very issue of the Bolivian elections and is that of the increasingly widespread practice of misrepresenting the truth. Populists presume that, currently, it is not the facts that matter but who dominates the narrative with which they acquire meaning. Under this vision, they try to impose their narrative using the lie repeated and disseminated countless times through different media. This practice generates what the Oxford Dictionary considered the word of the year for 2016: The “post-truth” or false narratives that prevail in the current global information system.
One of those gears of post-truth in the region is that of the Puebla Group and its machinery that, with the support of extra-continental powers and other obscure financings, uses propaganda for the dissemination of false narratives, actions, and coordinated speeches among its operators in governments, the international press, certain NGOs, some human rights organizations, organic intellectuals, bureaucrats, the Cuban intelligence service, whose objective is to consolidate a hegemonic power project of mafia populism in Latin America. These strategies, both left-wing and right-wing, are nourished by the methods of 20th-century European fascism and Cuban Castroism. It is not a fantasy that the ghost of that fascism is once again threatening our societies and the reality is that liberal democracies in the region are at risk of becoming their opposite: democracies of masses deprived of democratic behaviors.
Source: https://publico.bo/internacional/el-fallido-espectaculo-del-mas-en-la-oea/
IMPRISONED DUE TO A CELL PHONE NUMBER
24 October 2021
Imprisoned due to a cell phone number
Martín Luque felt an infinite emptiness in his stomach the moment the Anti-Corruption and Anti-Violence against Women investigating judge 2 from El Alto, Miriam Tarqui Flores, ordered his arrest in the San Pedro prison. A numbness of helplessness crept from his feet to his head. His vision blurred and he felt [that he was] in an unknown dimension. He did not know, at that moment, if time was moving forward or moving backward.
Until today, he cannot explain to himself that the prosecutor Favio Maldonado Parada has not heard his statement. Isn’t the word of the defendant his main defense?
Nor is it explained, a year after the fact, that the prosecutor did not take into account the statements of his witnesses who assured that on October 2, 2020, the day of Mónica’s murder, he was kilometers away from the scene of the crime. How is it possible that prosecutor Maldonado has charged him and Judge Tarqui has imprisoned him if he (Martín) did not even know the victim?
The imputation, of terrible and poor writing, says: “the existence of sufficient elements of conviction has been established, the accused Martín Luque with probability perpetrators of the crime (sic) that he is accused of (Femicide Art. 252 Bis Num. 1 of the CC) of the Criminal Code (Art. 233 Num. 1 CPC)”
What are those elements of conviction? In the imputation, there is not even one. The “piece of paper” only reflects the confirmation of the Prosecutor’s bias that fits his evil imagination into an event that never happened.
Martín said, on Compañera radio, that the Prosecutor based his accusation on alleged chats between the victim and the number: 69782496. The Tigo Company reported, in response to a request, that this number was registered in the name of Martín Luque.
“All together we have photographic plates of WhatsApp messages where the now accused had a love relationship with the now-deceased victim of which there are conversations held from September 13 to September 24, who would be the last person with whom the victim would maintain a conversation, which is obtained through collected elements and there is the verification of number 69782496 registered under the name of Mr. Martín Luque, who would have maintained a relationship with the victim in the month of September in which he is the last person who would have been communicated with her ensuring coexistence with the now victim (sic),” says the indictment.
Martín affirmed that the prosecutor did not request the extract of calls from [the number] 69782496 from the beginning of its activation (2018). Even worse, he never found the victim’s cell phone. So how did he access those chats? He wonders. He just found out that in the chats there was a photo of Monica’s partner. And despite this serious evidence, “he accused me anyway,” he adds. The “investigator” did not investigate anything.
The laziness, stupidity, and bad blood of the policeman, the prosecutor, and the judge, responsible for demonstrating the “historical truth” and guaranteeing rights, sent an innocent man to jail.
Martín Luque assured that in 2018 he never registered [the phone] line 69782496 to his name. In that case, who did? He remembers losing his identity card in 2017. He suspects that the person who found it used his identity card to register that number with Tigo [Company].
In his informative statement, Martín said that he never saw the victim in his life. The owner of the house where Mónica lived, [in] Alto de la Alianza area, Mejillones street, El Alto, said that the couple with whom the 23-year-old woman lived was a tall man. Martín is short.
In his accusation, prosecutor Maldonado mentions 23 “elements of conviction”, among them: the first report of preventive police intervention, the autopsy report, and the WhatsApp messages. None of these elements seriously involves Martín.
The incident occurred in the Alto Alianza area, District 3, and Martín was at his home at the moment of the crime, in the Villa Adela [area], miles away from the [crime] scene.
The prosecutor and the judge believed in these “23 elements of conviction” that did not demonstrate anything other than the incapacity of both, and they imprisoned him.
Martín stayed five months and a week in San Pedro. Defeated by the evidence, the Prosecutor ordered the dismissal of the case. He released him after having caused him serious psychological, economic damage (he had debts in the bank and could not pay and spent about $ 15,000 in his defense), and social because he lost friends and family, who turned away from him when they learned of an event that never happened. His two daughters and his wife were also psychologically affected.
Martín, a 35-year-old industrial engineer, asks for financial and civil compensation. Does it correspond? Yes.
Martín doesn’t want anyone else to suffer his bad experience. He doesn’t want anyone else to feel vertigo and fear when passing through the threshold of jail being innocent.
Source: https://brujuladigital.net/opinion/encarcelado-por-un-numero-de-celular
WHAT MAGNICIDE?
21 October 2021
What magnicide?
Minister Eduardo Del Castillo reports that between October 16 and 23 of last year, former Captain Germán Rivera García was passing through Bolivia. A Colombian national and known as “Mike”, his military nickname, this 40-year-old retired military man would have stayed in a room located on the 14th floor of the “Presidente” hotel in La Paz.
He wasn’t alone. According to Del Castillo, he was accompanied by a former police officer, the Colombian Ronald Alexander Ramírez Salamanca, and two businessmen: Arcángel Pretel Ortiz, better known as “Gabriel”, and the Venezuelan Antonio Intriago Valera, “Tony”, both from a Miami suburb called Doral. Everything indicates that they did not come to Bolivia to follow up on the elections held two days after their arrival. The composition of the delegation suggests a business trip. What do these gentlemen sell?: Violence.
Eight months after passing through Bolivia, former Captain Rivera and Sergeant Duberney Capador arrived in Haiti with a contract in their suitcase. From Miami, they were convinced to risk their lives on a mission that would open the doors to a stable job as members of the Haitian presidential guard. To achieve this, they had to first arrest Jovenel Moïse, the acting Head of State. The commando made up of 21 men, six trucks, and 16 rifles had a set date and time for the incursion: July 7 at dawn. CTU, Tony and Gabriel’s company, openly purchased the remaining 19 airline tickets. None of the intruders concealed their identity or used any ingenious method to mislead the Police; so sure were they of the change of government and subsequent official protection in Port-au-Prince.
Distributed in five groups of four, the attackers took 30 minutes to complete the operation. It should be noted that three days before, the order had been modified. It was no longer going to be an arrest, but an assassination. Moïse was riddled that morning with 12 projectiles aimed by the Colombian Víctor Pineda in the unprotected room he shared with his wife, a miraculous survivor of the assassination. The attackers took with them two boxes and two suitcases, which contained 45 million dollars. That was the succulent loot calculated from Miami. It was to be distributed among the 21 participants and the CTU.
When, as planned, the caravan approached the presidential palace to greet the change of command, it was repelled by the guard. Something had started to go wrong. The Colombians roamed the capital without a clear direction. They ended up hiding in the Taiwanese Embassy, where Haitian troops came to hunt them down. The siege was preceded by the explosion of two war grenades. Former Sergeant Capador and two other men lost their lives in this unexpected counterattack. The 18 rented combatants are in jail today, including former Captain Rivera García.
These retired soldiers expected money and impunity. Did they seek a similar treatment in Bolivia? It is clear that they did not succeed. Their contractors in Haiti showed them a false arrest warrant for Moïse and it was Haitian politicians who pushed them into the abyss.
It is estimated that Miami has served as a recruiting platform for at least 6,000 former Colombian military and police officers, people desired by Arab monarchies or security companies in places as diverse as Dubai or Kabul. Dimitri Hërard, the head of security for the assassinated president, traveled to Colombia seven times this year. It is assumed that he did it to supervise the implementation of the plot. With the Government’s permission, he had set up an arms import company to the island. In this way, he provided lethal material to the Caribbean criminal gangs, thanks to which he multiplied his fortune.
The previous description proves that the CTU delegation that was in Bolivia last year did not represent an amateur club. It was the spearhead of what could be defined as the privatization of geopolitical action. Minister Del Castillo assumes that the group arrived in Bolivia to sign a contract, the central clause of which was the assassination of Arce Catacora. The denunciation suffers from an absence of evidence that borders on a public spectacle. Even worse. The case awakens memories of the speedy annihilation in 2009 of the group led by Eduardo Rózsa Flores in a hotel in Santa Cruz. Could it be that soon we will see the photo of former Captain Rivera with some leader of the opposition to the MAS?
Source: https://www.paginasiete.bo/opinion/2021/10/21/cual-magnicidio-312747.html
WHEN THERE IS NO MORAL
20 October 2021
When there is no moral
Bolivia is not only experiencing a crisis of excessive State patronage and prebendalism, what we are looking at in the present is deeper than that, it is about the moral degradation of power due to the absence of ethics, due to the total loss of the values that guide daily coexistence. The efforts to maintain power, the anguish for it, have blinded the rulers, who live not to seek the common good, nor to meet the needs of the people, they live to accumulate, to deify themselves, and make us believe that they are the predestined ones to take us to the future, when in fact they have pushed us back. Power is blind, which is something that Evo Morales shows us every day by ordering the presidential delegate Arce Catacora to do whatever is necessary for the Jefaso (Boss) to return to power. The reality does not exist for Morales, he only looks at his own imagination of returning to the presidency; his followers, including the President, are in charge of covering the sun with a finger to tell the Supreme [Leader] that everything is going smoothly in that project.
They came to power in 2006 as bearers of new values, of the new man, they spoke about ethics, they talked about caring for mother earth, and the empowering of the indigenous people. In fifteen years, corruption is greater than in the past, respect for Mother Earth does not exist, extractive developmentalism is imposed; it is important to build roads in national parks to expand the agricultural frontier in favor of the coca growers: the current center of power, with all that that implies. The indigenous people were repressed and the “intercultural” [representatives], that is, the coca growers, took away their lands. The Constitutional Court is ordered to say that the Government of Jeanine Añez was unconstitutional, when in fact two years ago that same Court ruled that the transitional government was fully constitutional; the tribunes in 2021 have not blushed when they erase with their elbow what they wrote with their hand when deciding that the Government of Añez was constitutional. It is because when there are no values, there can be no blush when you lie and falsify reality.
They fill their mouths talking about social inclusion, applauded by the international cooperation, when the country has 80% of informal employment; they express that the public administration is in the hands of popular sectors, they forget to say that, in the hands of union leaders, MAS leaders, neighborhood leaders with criminal records, none of them with the necessary expertise to handle the responsibilities of their positions. These leaderships, including that of the Bolivian Workers’ Union (COB), have been co-opted with exorbitant sums, but without having any idea in regards to public administration. As in the time of the agreed democracy, the public administration is chosen through a party-quota system, some leaders of the MAS or ministers are owners of many departments, among them those that have to do with the management of the land, which is handed over to the coca growers without embarrassment, stripping the indigenous peoples of their territory. Is that defending mother earth?
The moral degradation clearly shows how with sophisms they wanted us to believe that in the Zapata case there was no influence peddling, that in the Indigenous Fund there was no corruption but sacrifice in favor of the poorest, with sophisms they told us that the Draft [Law] for the Legitimation of Illicit Profits was to put Bolivia at the global forefront in the fight against illicit money laundering, when in fact the MAS governments are the ones who had a very soft hand to act against the coca-cocaine circuit, the one that originates in the Chapare.
But, the most publicized sophism by the power is the coup d’Etat, a self-serving hoax that is used to enable Evo Morales as a future candidate for the presidency. All of Bolivia saw him cry when he said goodbye to the country, crying accompanied by the tears of García Linera when he accepted that they had resigned from power. The hoax of all the resignations was put together by the MAS to leave the country in a power vacuum in 2019 that would incite the “people’s” petition for Morales to return to power. Their calculations failed; now, they are trying to correct their mistakes by resorting to the sophism of the coup d’État. They act that way because they don’t have a millimeter of ethics or shame.
The summary of what we see indicates that we are living in a time of moral degradation of power.
Source: https://www.paginasiete.bo/opinion/carlos-toranzo-roca/2021/10/20/cuando-no-existe-moral-312664.html
STRIKES. THE POT CALLING THE KETTLE BLACK
17 October 2021
Strikes. The pot calling the kettle black
The previous Sunday I had promised to write about another of the speakers, JH Chang, from the 14th meeting of economists organized by the Central Bank of Bolivia. The political situation forces us to speak of the civic strike and its economic impact. I apologize. I’ll leave the Cambridge University Professor’s article on industrialization for next week.
The Government, outraged, has denounced that in the one-day strike the economy would have lost 112 million dollars. We fully agree that this social and political practice does enormous harm to the country, regardless of who is promoting it.
But let’s look at a bit of history and let’s make a recount of who were the people responsible for hundreds of days lost due to strikes or work stoppages in the past. In this perspective, we are going to see how the old saying is applied to this case: The pot calling the kettle black.
According to the Observatory and Analysis of Social Conflicts in Bolivia, of the Center for the Study of Economic and Social Reality (CERES), in the period 1970-2010, there were 13,897 conflicts. The bulk of these conflicts had the participation of groups, unions, actors, or people who are now within the Government. It is they who are crying out to heaven for the recent strike on October 11.
In 40 years of economic and social history, there was practically one conflict per day; this result comes from dividing the 13,897 conflicts between 40 years, which records 347 strikes or work stoppages per year; that is to say, every day someone, in all this time, was protesting with good or bad reasons.
Let’s suppose, very conservatively, that only 5% of these social conflicts (rounded to 14,000) involved a one-day stoppage. There may be cases in which there was a general strike, or joining various social problems, they are equivalent to a day’s work stoppage. Let us modestly accept that we lost 700 days in 40 years and if we multiply this by 112 million dollars, the loss figure reported by the Government is equivalent to 78,400,000,000 dollars today. It reads: seventy-eight thousand four hundred million “Washingtons”. An 11-digit figure. In other words, we lost twice the size of our current GDP through strikes and work stoppages. Whoever has a glass or thatched roof should not throw stones at the other.
In the democratic era, the administration of the Government of Hernán Siles had the record of strikes, work stoppages, and other events: 1,825. Again, let us suppose that only 5% of these social problems involved the loss of a day, this is equal to 91 days. As I have mentioned, the Government affirms that in a one-day strike –in 2021– 112 million dollars are lost. But, it should be clarified that this is equivalent to 33 million in the 80s. Therefore, during the Siles Government, we lost 3,003 million dollars of that time.
During Paz Estenssoro’s administration, there were 1,180 social problems. Here the neoliberal period began. Again, only 5% was a day of loss. It means that during the Paz Government 59 days were lost, which in 1987 dollars would be equal to 59 times 47 million, equal to 2,773 million missing dollars.
Paz Zamora had 968 strikes. Same reasoning: 5% equals a one-day loss. That is, 48 days times 54 million, equals 2,592 million dollars of loss to the period’s value.
In the first Government of Sánchez de Lozada, 631 conflicts were verified. 5% is equivalent to 32 days times 64 million dollars in 1997, equivalent to 112 million in 2021. Loss: 2,048 million greens (dollars).
The democratic Government of General Banzer had 1,364 conflicts, the same as before 5% of these social problems. This translated into the loss of 68 days, which multiplied by 72 million dollars per day, is equal to 4,896 million dollars in 2000, which vanished.
Jorge Quiroga 355 and the second Government of Sánchez de Lozada had 518 strikes and social demonstrations. 42 days lost multiplied by 72 million, is equal to 3,024 million dollars of the period, which went down the drain.
The Government of Carlos Mesa also registered a high conflict rate with 1,042 events. 5% of the total of 1,042 days lost is 52 multiplied by 82 million per day, it is equal to 4,264,000,000 of economic loss.
The short administration of President Eduardo Rodríguez recorded 248 social problems. 12 days lost multiplied by 82 million dollars per day in 2005 is equivalent to 984 million dollars that disappeared.
Ugh, what a way to pull the rug from under them! Right? Now, the new owners of power who caused turmoil in the past, before they tear their hair out due to the last strike, they should put their hands to their chests –or is it their pocket?– and ask themselves: What percentage of these 78.4 billion dollars of economic loss at today´s value is the responsibility of Evo Morales and the coca growers, other social movements, the Bolivian Workers’ Union (COB), the various unions, civic committees, and other actors? I guess those who still have blood on their faces will turn red. Others will say that they were making the revolution. This is not intended to criminalize or discredit the social protest. The conflict is part of a democratic society, but it must be resolved through institutional means and not always in the streets. But, without a doubt, when authoritarianism shows its face, strikes and work stoppages are not an expense but an investment in democracy, justice, and freedom.
Source: https://www.paginasiete.bo/opinion/gonzalo-chavez/2021/10/17/paros-cuando-el-muerto-se-rie-del-degollado-312393.html?fbclid=IwAR1TsyUiehgh6lv5-X-qMY0AH9fgVs7NnH9_ZiZWA1Ih0EwLsRWi6SlWxu0
GOVERNMENT, WITHOUT LEADERSHIP OR TRUST
17 October 2021
Government, without leadership or trust
Seeing President Arce as the main agitator of a MAS concentration, calling for street confrontations, portrays well the stature of a leadership that, without even fully addressing the health and economic crises, has chosen to maintain and exacerbate polarization. If in 11 months the Government has not assumed the mandate of the polls –i.e. pandemic, reactivation, and pacification– it is very difficult to encourage it to pay attention to the pending democratic agenda: the fight against impunity and corruption, the construction of institutions, the comprehensive reform of justice, the eradication of sexist violence, and the protection of the environment.
55% of the votes are trickling down, and citizen mistrust is growing, putting every Government decision into suspicion, presuming the authoritarian guilt of its representatives. That is why the bill on “illicit profits” was rejected, withdrawn this Thursday, the 14th, despite the fact that it had to be approved “yes or yes until mid-November.”
It was a project that was not only unconstitutional and suspicious but also blatantly probative of the authoritarian vision of the Government. As the media reported, the project violated the privacy and property of all people, put freedom at risk by eliminating the presumption of innocence and the right to defense and, to consummate the citizen defenselessness, it abolished jurisdictional control over prosecutors, who had become employees of the Financial System Supervision Authority (ASFI).
There was not even the urgency to comply with international agreements since, as the lawyer Ramiro Orias demonstrated, the Bolivian State continues to fail to comply with the “recommendations” of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) which requires, in order to effectively fight against the laundering of illicit money, a solid, suitable, and independent justice administration system, impervious not only to the corruption of ill-gotten great fortunes, but also to the manipulation of authoritarian governments that use an alleged fight against crime to invade individual freedom, control society and persecute political opposition.
The fact is that a Government that uses the Police Force to assault the private property of the coca growers of La Paz and turn it over to an unrepresentative side is no longer trustworthy, while “officially” ignoring and disregarding a demanding and peaceful march of indigenous peoples from the East. It is difficult to trust a government that, while denying a true Judicial Reform, lives comfortably with a genuflecting judicial leadership, where sentences and records disappear, or where “rulings” are issued and communicated to the desire and taste of each authoritarian government.
Surely the FATF experts, who will arrive in the country at the end of November, will be shocked by our “national capacities to fight crime,” when they verify that judges and prosecutors lack competence and independence and that the ASFI officials, from the Ministry of Finance or the Comptroller’s Office, are improvised militants of the ruling party without any professional background.
With leadership and confidence adrift, the horizon is clouded, not so much for the Government, but for the country that, approaching 2 years after the outbreak of the crisis, cannot find the way out. The main responsibility lies with the Government, but also in the opposition there are signs of a resurgence of dangerous visions, embodied in the “leadership” of some civic Santa Cruz citizens or their Governor, who are threatening to finish off “the rags” and “the crows” in a “2nd round”, forgetting that we lost the 1st round with 37 deaths, hundreds of wounded and the entire country unhinged.
We cannot accept that the opposition leadership is assumed by reactionary minds, perfectly functional to the MAS and that cause great harm to Santa Cruz; and therefore discourages seeing democratic personalities mixed with retrograde people. After 39 years of democratic life, it is no longer swallowable that “unity” is built by swallowing toads and snakes, which then definitively indigestible alternative projects.
Indeed, by digging trenches, we will not get out of the hole either, but the construction of a different opposition involves reestablishing the horizon we are aiming for, which is none other than that of inclusion, popular leadership, democratic tolerance, the rule of law, the sovereignty of the vote, and the production of sustainable wealth.
Source: http://www.cabildeodigital.com/2021/10/gobierno-sin-liderazgo-ni-confianza.html
LINERA’S FIERCE RESENTMENT
16 October 2021
Linera’s Fierce Resentment
On top of all this mess that we’ve had with the Wiphala and with the cursed laws, as well as with some folk speeches by President Arce, we have suddenly come across some statements by former Vice-President García Linera, which exude concentrated hatred, but above all, gives us the right measure of his twisted Marxist-populist mentality that has caused so much damage to the country.
He has publicly stated that (my apologies) he screwed up Santa Cruz businessmen using political and not economic reasons. He stated that there was no need to nationalize agriculture because cutting the production chain weakened them; that is what the MAS did with soy and that soy “was never a problem again.” And how did he do it? We already knew it in Santa Cruz. He said that, resorting to blackmail, because if the soy producers bother you, “you suspend exports” because the Government has the monopoly of deciding who exports or not. He is trying to do the same with beef, which has hardly opened important markets. Isn’t that a tremendous scoundrel and a warning?
Well, this venerated intellectual of the Latin American left (only comparable to López Obrador) has exposed in his interview, full of insolence, that “where the power of the (business) veto is too strong, you simply bankrupt it: you go in and build a State-owned company.” Easy! In other words, you do what the MAS did: create inefficient and unprofitable State-owned companies that ate up a good part of the gas profits and left us poor.
How much has Linera’s social resentment cost Santa Cruz and Bolivia? According to an expert in numbers like José Luis Parada, with the restrictions on soy exports, around 380 million dollars were lost annually, that is, about 4,000 million dollars from 2008 to 2018. And all this happened with the businessmen sitting solicitously at the table with the Vice-President, skilled with flattery, with deliberately tangled dialectics, and with an easy but sinister smile. Let it not happen again, because it is very dangerous and it costs money to make the wrong friends.
Source: http://www.cabildeodigital.com/2021/10/el-feroz-resentimiento-de-linera.html
CIVIC STRIKE AGAIN, NOW WHAT?
13 October 2021
Civic strike again, now what?
This Monday the country experienced a 24-hour strike that was felt mainly in the main cities. This national strike was carried out as a protest measure against Law 218, which, if enacted, would allow the investigation of bank accounts and the search of properties and businesses belonging to citizens due to a simple complaint, without a court order. Some opposition leaders considered this strike as successful, while the Government described it as a failure. The following day, the central government called for street demonstrations in what analysts considered as a clear response to Monday’s national protest. It is obvious that we are experiencing demonstrations of strength between the two main power groups in the country. The question that remains in the air for thousands of Bolivians, whether or not they participated in these demonstrations, is what now?
Law 218, like many other measures of the current Government, effectively violates the rights of citizens and we have every right to protest against it. In the same way, the demand for the release of political prisoners in the country and for respect and response to the indigenous march that the Government is ignoring, are also rightful demands. Precisely because our requests are legitimate and necessary, they must be demanded in a way that allows the constant and sustained participation of citizens. This should open the question of whether civic strikes are the most strategic way to continue to confront the Government’s abuse, or whether the country’s political leadership should begin to renew its forms of protest.
Non-violence as a strategic fighting technique indicates that there are three main methods or “types” of protest: persuasion, non-cooperation, and intervention. These three methods should be applied in a staggered manner and in sequence. The first, the persuasion method, are all the protests that are responsible for transmitting a message and adding numbers to the cause: in the case of Bolivia, we have recently seen them with the marches for the 21F (Referendum of 21-February-2016) or other types of rights, or with graffiti or symbol campaigns on the streets. Persuasion protests can be effective with one, ten, or a thousand people since the goal is to get a message across. This method should be useful to inform and unite the general public, before moving on to more massive methods of protest.
The second method, that of non-cooperation, is useful to interrupt the flow of power going towards the authoritarian opponent. As its name implies, non-cooperation protests are based on disobedience to unjust laws and therefore this method does need large numbers of people to be effective. An example that we have used in Bolivia is the work strikes since we stopped obeying the system. However, other forms of non-cooperation protests, such as the very effective economic boycotts or the denial of tax payments, have not been explored in the country.
The third and highest-risk method is the intervention protests method, which involves not only stop cooperating with the system but also intervening in the flow of power of institutions. Civic strikes, by including roadblocks, fall within this type of protest. The cost of protests of this type is very high for citizens, mainly because there is an economic loss not only for the opponent but also for whoever participates as well, therefore, they should only be carried out when the opposition actors are united and when there is a strategy with a clear exit to the solution of the problem.
However, opposition leaders in Bolivia, especially those who constantly call for civic strikes, do not have unity among themselves or a clear strategy of what the next steps should be; therefore, they are wearing down the general public, when we need them stronger. If there is an opposition strategy made in unity, it is not clear to the people themselves who are participating in the strikes, and that already does a lot of damage to the legitimacy of the cause. Going to constant strikes without a strategy is like giving chemotherapy to a patient directly without having a previous analysis or a treatment with drugs afterward. It may cause more harm than it is trying to remedy.
Bolivian citizens who very bravely abide by the strikes and protests of leaders they trust have the right to demand transparency, unity, and [a] strategy from opposition leaders. I dare say that the lack of political renewal in these parties is noticeable, because they continue to use the same three forms of protest from 30 years ago (marches, strikes, roadblocks) instead of learning new strategies and applying the more than 198 forms of protest that non-violence raises. Democracy must also be defended with new forms [of protest], new discourses, and new leaderships, always from [the point of view of] non-violence. Authoritarian governments never lose the power in battles they already know.
Source: https://www.paginasiete.bo/opinion/2021/10/13/paro-civico-de-nuevo-y-ahora-que-311969.html
THE ROAD TO SOCIALISM IN BOLIVIA
6 October 2021
The road to socialism in Bolivia
The political panorama that we live in shows clear symptoms of having reached a threshold point. The false certainty of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), according to which 55% of the electoral victory was a blank check that enabled them to do whatever they wanted, has come to an end, unleashing a citizen response very similar to the one that ended with the resignation and escape of Morales in 2019.
At the base of this type of procedure lies the idea, very typical of the retrograde left, that the people are made up of only them, and that the rest (that 45% of the population that did not vote for the MAS) is an entelechy not worth taking into account. In general, in universal history, these types of errors end very badly, for the simple but overwhelming reason that the people are all of us, to which, in the case of the MAS, it must be added that the same assessment led them to the debacle a few days after Morales –contemptuously– judged that the “others” were a weak “pitita” (string). The “pititas” (strings) took him out of power.
If we remember, the power accumulated by Evo Morales in 14 years collapsed like a house of cards when citizens, regarding the Penal Code, decided to put an end to the idea of subduing an entire nation for the mere charisma of the caudillo, or for the empire of covert repression that the MAS regime ruthlessly deployed through its repressive judicial forces, transformed into squads very similar to Benito Mussolini’s fascio di combatimento. The lesson that the current MAS leaders have not learned is that this country is much more than them and that, unlike societies such as Venezuelan or Cuban, ignoring social impulses and violating their rights has a very high price that, due to national experience, is not decided in the servile courtrooms, but in the streets.
How do we get to the point where citizens are forced again to go out and defend their rights? The critical path of the totalitarian project that the MAS is putting together began with the purification of its ranks. All those who were not determined to suppress democracy and impose an ethnocentric autocracy around Evo Morales came out. It was followed by the Law of Promotions in the Police, by which that institution is now commanded by the Minister of Government, in other words, they transformed it into a repressive device of political order. Until then, the Police had as a principle the defense of citizens, now they must defend an ideology. The invention of an unprecedented figure “the effective collaborator”, protects whoever offers to file a complaint against any citizen that the regime considers harmful to their interests, in other words, any citizen in need becomes a repressive agent.
The Law of the Commercial Registry that co-opts the Bolivian Commercial Registry (Fundempresa) and allows them to submit to the private company in all its ranks and activities, that is, it exercises control over assets, capital, investments, patrimony, etc., and the Law against the Legitimation of Illicit Profits that, without the participation of judicial instances (prosecutors, judges, etc.) can initiate an investigation without prior notice and behind the back of the investigated, it is authorized to instruct accounts to be frozen, homes requisitioned, virtual message systems and telephony intervened, inspections of movements in Real Rights, Internal Taxes and other State instances, it eliminates all forms of information confidentiality, there is no bank secrecy and neither are the press media protected by the secret of the source, that is, under a parallel extrajudicial and extra-police system, the Government will be able to subdue and repress whoever it considers to be a real or potential opponent. It is possible that this law contributes to the fight against illicit profits, arms trafficking, white slave trafficking, drugs trafficking, etc. but that is neither the spirit nor the intention, these laws are designed to Cubanize Bolivian society.
The citizen reaction has not been long in coming. A broad democratic movement based on citizenship is preparing for other days of resistance whose scope and consequences are unpredictable; in reality, the only sure thing is that imposing a regime similar to the failed socialism of the 21st century in Bolivia does not seem to be so easy, in a society whose democratic conscience has always been far superior than its dictatorial expressions.
Source: https://www.paginasiete.bo/opinion/2021/10/5/la-ruta-hacia-el-socialismo-en-bolivia-311143.html
ARCE OR THE GIANT WITH FEET OF CLAY
Lessons from two weeks of a hard battle to recover the Departmental Association of Coca Producers (ADEPCOCA)
5 October 2021
Arce or the giant with feet of clay
The powerful MAS Government is weak on the streets. They enraged the Yungas coca growers by taking away their coca leaf trading market to hand it over to a pro-government leader. After two weeks of conflict, this Monday thousands of coca growers arrived in La Paz, defeated the police in the final battle, and recovered the Departmental Association of Coca Producers (Adepcoca).
In humiliating images for the Bolivian Police, the country’s television networks showed live how the troops left the conflict zone running. As happened in the previous two weeks, they fired hundreds of tear gas, but fell back and were unable to maintain security on the Adepcoca perimeter.
It is a political, social, and strategic defeat for the Government that planned the assault on a private institution, with the objective of politically subduing the Yungas coca growers, whom they could never domesticate since the Evo Morales regime and are the stone in the shoe of the Chapare coca growers and their lifetime leader.
And it is a strategic defeat because the Government decided to cancel the parallel market for the commercialization of coca leaf that operated in a union of transporters in the Kalajahuira area, convinced that it had taken over Adepcoca two weeks ago.
There are direct people responsible. The main one is the Minister of Government, Eduardo Del Castillo, who publicly recognized the pro-government leader Arnold Alanes as the new President of Adepcoca, but also the General Commander of the Police and the Departmental Commander of La Paz because the takeover of the coca-producing entity, the protection of infiltrators, the excessive repression, and the abuses of journalists took place under their command.
What would correspond in a Government that respects itself is for the Minister of the area to present his resignation from office because he revealed that the current administration of Luis Arce is something similar to a giant with feet of clay, that all the power that he shows in his media speeches is nothing more than a shell without substance.
The colonels who command the Police at the national and departmental level would also have to be ousted due to their inability to comply with the political order to consolidate the usurpation of Adepcoca, but above all because of the anxiety and terror that they caused in the villages of Fatima and El Carmen, with the gasification of hospitals and the repression even of neighbors who had nothing to do with the coca-growing conflict.
In these 11 months, since Luis Arce assumed the Presidency on 8 November 2020, he removed commanders in the Armed Forces three times without thinking twice. It is time for the Police to stand firm, which in almost 40 years of democracy is commanded by a colonel when the Government has at its disposal the Law of Promotions to Generals of the Olive Green.
President Arce will be in power for one year in a month and it is clear that he will reach November 8th, 2021, at his worst, not because of effective opposition strategies, but because of the fronts that his own administration opened up in recent weeks, provoking alert from coca growers, indigenous people, union members, businessmen, transporters, civic [members], doctors, journalists, regional authorities, citizen platforms and the diversity of churches.
It is imperative that the President explain to the country how he intends to deal with the multiplicity of conflicts that he faces and that they can begin to converge and strengthen one another, putting the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) in a difficult situation in the exercise of power. Arce cannot remain silent, as he usually does, because uncertainty or even doubt can begin to pierce the considered hard core of the MAS.
What happened this Monday at noon in Adepcoca, after an hour of hard confrontation in Villa Fatima, has been the first defeat of the MAS in the streets, a scenario in which it was invincible. In the short term, new victories may come for the sectors opposed to the Arce government because it is already known that it has the appearance of a colossus, but deep down it is weak and fearful.
Source: http://www.cabildeodigital.com/2021/10/arce-o-el-gigante-con-pies-de-barro.html
JUDICIAL REFORM FOR DEMOCRACY
29 September 2021
Judicial Reform for Democracy
Since continuing Bolivian democracy was recovered in 1982, one of the greatest institutional challenges -still pending almost 40 years later- is the reform of the justice administration system.
In these last four decades, the political system responded with some initiatives –unfortunately, only a few– that contributed to the progress of democratic institutions in the country. The political agreements of 1990 made possible impartial electoral courts and made possible the constitutional reforms of 1997 and 2004. Within the framework of these consensuses, for example, progress was made in matters of administrative decentralization, municipalism, and popular participation, as well as the creation of the Constitutional Court and the Office of the Ombudsman.
Afterward, the political agreements at the end of 2008 made possible the approval of a new constitutional text, which was taken to a popular referendum, opening an agenda of inclusion, pluralism, rights, guarantees, and indigenous participation. Among the most striking innovations, there is the election of the highest judicial authorities by popular vote and the constitutional recognition of indigenous justice in the same hierarchy as ordinary justice, which today – after more than ten years of its approval – need to be reviewed and improved, since the mechanisms adopted for their implementation were dysfunctional for their purposes.
At present, the justice system is experiencing one of its worst crises, aggravated by its political instrumentalization, as has just been documented in the GIEI Bolivia Report. Given the context of high political and social polarization, this time the political actors have not responded to the challenge of building basic agreements to repair the judicial institutions, so contaminated and weakened. It is that the reform of Bolivian justice is definitely not outside the political game that the country is experiencing, marked by authoritarian practices of abuse, the concentration of power, and political dominance.
Reforming justice is not only changing laws as if the legal modifications by themselves were to transform the judicial reality. If there is no genuine political will to build an independent and transparent justice, it doesn’t matter how many plans and commissions are created, it doesn’t matter how many laws or codes are approved, the sustainability of the reforms will always be weak and ephemeral; efforts will be dispersed and impacts will not be seen. We have seen that in these years various attempts were made, different patches were applied, but in the end, they were not durable and their results were diluted. It is not just about having more judges, but rather it is about how to have better judges; neither is it about buying more equipment and coming up with digital solutions if the rationale and way of functioning of these organizations are not changed.
Given the depth of the judicial crisis, it has to do more than with a problem of dysfunctionality or lack of management in its resources, with weaknesses in its structure and institutional setup. New bodies have been created, new and many laws have been passed; but the institutions have not been reformed; no budgets have been allocated nor have the old practices of justice administration been changed. The country requires a process of judicial cleansing and purification, respecting and ensuring international standards for an independent judiciary.
The process of reform of the justice system must be one of democratic reform. It is not only reforming its forms and procedures, but also its contents; therefore, it must constitute a participatory process, based on public dialogue and deliberation among all actors, between the State and the civil society.
The system of justice administration materializes the arbitration function of the State in the resolution of conflicts that occur between members of society, and between them and the public powers. For this reason, it is essential to guarantee equal access to independent, transparent and predictable justice, an essential cornerstone to strengthen the rule of law and democratic order on the basis of the rule of the constitution, which obliges everyone equally, the rulers and the ruled.
The process of reform of the justice system must be aimed at creating conditions that guarantee the effective protection of fundamental rights and constitutional guarantees, against possible abuses or violations from public, judicial or administrative authorities, as well as from individuals. Thus, a genuinely democratic reform of justice is one that seeks to place itself within the framework of a robust and plural democracy, with checks and balances to power.
The justice system reform process should also focus its efforts on contributing to social cohesion and inclusion, eliminating situations of discrimination and unequal opportunities, creating conditions of equity for the most disadvantaged social groups, and with the fewest resources to defend their rights, such as women, girls, boys, adolescents, the elderly and people with disabilities, as well as indigenous peoples. In this sense, it must build the conditions that guarantee the rights of indigenous, native, and peasant peoples, as well as the interculturality and multilingualism of the justice administration bodies.
The justice system in Bolivia is in a situation of prolonged structural crisis. As the IACHR’s GIEI-Bolivia Report has just ratified, the lack of independence, suitability, transparency, and access are the obstacles that most affect citizens. It is necessary to build the conditions that ensure that the reform of the justice system is a genuine process of democratic reform; otherwise, the process of judicial change will repeat the vices of short-term political calculation. Although in the electoral debate prior to the last General Elections of 18 October 2020, there was high agreement among all the presidential candidates on the need for a profound reform of the justice system, it has not been able to move forward and the initial efforts were shipwrecked by the lack of political will. Faced with this new failed attempt, and the failure of political actors to move forward in the construction of agreements, the time for the citizens has arrived.
It is from this scenario that a plural group of lawyers, members of indigenous nations and peoples, academics, and human rights activists, who participate in a personal and independent capacity, proceeded to develop a proposal for reforms to the justice system through a partial reform of the State Political Constitution via citizen referendum, which has been presented to the country, and which aims to address the judicial crisis from the heart of the problems.
The proposal puts forward three main objectives to the citizen vote:
1. Reform to have independent, impartial and suitable judges
The submission of judges to political power and their lack of impartiality and suitability have their origin in the political-party selection of applicants, especially supreme judges. Professional and personal suitability, experience, and specialized knowledge should be the only parameters for choosing judges, members, and magistrates. For this, it is proposed that the selection and qualification of applicants for magistrates be in charge of a National Nominations Commission, made up of six citizens of recognized personal prestige, two nominated by the majority and minority in parliament, two by the National University System, one by the National Bar Association, and one by the native indigenous system, who, based on merits and competence examinations, must prepare closed shortlists on which, initially, the Legislative Assembly, by 2/3 from the total of its members, nominate the magistrates of the Supreme, Agro-environmental, Constitutional Courts and of the Judiciary Council. However, this parliamentary nomination will not be final. Those nominated by the Legislative Assembly will have to submit to the citizen’s verdict within 45 days, by means of a Popular Referendum that ratifies or denies them.
2. Reform for a decent and well-managed judicial budget
The annual judicial budget does not even reach 0.5% of the general state budget. Good judicial service for the citizens is not possible without a decent budget. For this reason, it is proposed that at least 3% of the annual general budget be allocated to the Judicial Branch, resources that will be administered by an efficient and new Judiciary Council that has the technical competence and is endowed with all the budgetary and disciplinary powers, for the appointment of judges and for the management of a true judicial career, which guarantees us suitable and independent judges in the entire judicial structure of the country.
3. Reform for an accessible justice, revaluing the native indigenous peasant justice, and establishing the Justice of Peace
Today we have justice for a few, not only because of its costs or because we do not have enough judges, but because every conflict is turned into a lawsuit, in an endless judicial process by judges and lawyers. For this, it is proposed to revalue the native indigenous peasant justice that has been distorted, in the Constitution itself, by the concept and the so-called “demarcation law” which once again subordinates the native legal systems to ordinary justice, forcing our peoples and nations to turn to judges and laws that are alien to them and that do not solve their problems. Likewise, it is proposed to recognize the Justice of the Peace, which is that which is imparted, in urban centers, by citizen judges, elected by the community itself, resolving all minor conflicts based on criteria of equity, friendly composition, and citizen mediation, preventing disputes between neighbors from getting stuck in the courts.
Thus, a judicial reform for democracy is proposed, not only substantively, but a democratic procedure is also proposed for its approval, through the citizens’ initiative and a popular referendum. Today, Bolivian society has a new opportunity.
Ramiro Orias is a lawyer, member of the Inter-American Juridical Committee, and Senior Program Officer of the Foundation for Due Process (DPLF). The opinions of the author are of a personal nature and do not bind the institutions to which he belongs.
Source:
Is Bolivia near the precipice?
26 September 2021
Is Bolivia near the precipice?
The Government of Añez is not qualifiable to argue that Bolivia was taken into bankruptcy, just as this Government (Añez) was not constituted by angels either, however, saddle it with the economic or health disaster is clearly politicking, with a clear objective, the disappearance of the State as we conceptually know it, by a territory harshly subjugated under a legal system, disguised, by a degraded and impoverished paralegal and pseudo-justice system, based on terror, manipulation and everything that is based on extraction and extortion of the scarce social-economic base, of the one who falls in the sights as an objective.
If this paragraph contains the truth as a hypothetical basis, it means that the path of the State’s disappearance that we know, torn, beaten, decontextualized, and philosophically shattered will continue; [they] will continue to approve laws such as the anti-terrorism law or the illicit enrichment law, [thus] individualizing people considered enemies of the State; or laws such as the health law, to import foreign health providers (which seems more like political control), or proprietary registry laws to be able to assault that citizen who, as a result of his effort, was a prolific/talented entrepreneur, who generated a profit, and, surely, also generated employment, paid taxes, and provided contributions to the State and society.
Let’s see a very small historical account (for those young people who only knew the face of a president for 14 years), bonanza due to a law promulgated by a non-MAS congressman, H. Hormando Vaca Diez. Results obtained by the beneficiary Government of Evo Morales, non-productive spending, useless to list the State companies in deficit or bankruptcy… they are all [bankrupted]; soccer fields as an emblem of bad State spending versus the need for health [infrastructure].
A great disservice to Bolivians was the political calculation of Añez’s nomination, it is evident that beyond the infringement of her rights, she has her own historical framework of responsibility. But, returning to the constructive base of society, it is time to summon the agreement of all the opposition political forces, of those young people with no opportunity in the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), of those used as a staircase to support the Government party, of those who realize the lie and believe the truth. It is the moment of the legacy of the young people, for those experienced politicians, for those who still believe in the homeland, for those who suffered for Bolivia and should not leave it without fighting the opportunity for personal, political, collective, constructive, interrogative vindication, but mostly patriotic.
It must be understood that after 14 years of government, many or few want to overlook this issue, [it is a] mistake… to consider that in 1, 2, or 3 years this will pass and a new political, social and economic scenario of free thought and free electoral competition will be created… [it is a] mistake [to believe] that polarization will disappear… [it is a] mistake. Just as these preconceptions are clear and indisputable objectives, we young people call on young people, because Bolivia will not fall to the precipice! That they took away the opportunities… enough, but take away our hope…, when will the autocratic leadership fall due to their chaotic chronology… never.
Today the political opposition has an unquestionable responsibility, to unite and be rebellious, for that well-known speech that was once publicly shouted, a better Bolivia for our children and for their children.
It is certain that the one who takes the first step towards this unification will achieve the Bolivian historical and democratic renewal.
Diplomatic fiasco at the CELAC Summit
26 September 2021
Diplomatic fiasco at the CELAC Summit
States with a professional foreign service know that it is never wise to announce a foreign policy initiative whose chances of failure are far greater than those of success. In Bolivia, the opposite happens, both during the Government of Evo Morales and in the current one of Luis Arce, both enthusiastically embarked on all the ships with the possibility of sinking. It seems that it has become a custom of the foreign policy of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) to go for wool and get shorn.
It began with the failed maritime strategy designed by the Government of Evo Morales, to present a claim against Chile before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), under the strange premise that they would achieve a Judgment at The Hague that would force Chile to negotiate a sovereign outlet to the Pacific Ocean by virtue of unilateral commitments that Chile would have historically and unilaterally contracted with Bolivia. This maneuver, similar to buying a lottery ticket or betting on roulette, was publicized urbi et orbi (to the city and the world) and they thought that its success would secure Evo Morales into power until the end of time. The result was that Evo Morales will go down in history as the gravedigger of the maritime issue.
This tendency to disgrace the foreign policy continues with the current Government. They announce a series of international actions and all they obtain are embarrassing setbacks. They mount a political and media show to announce the presentation of the report of the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) regarding the events of violence that occurred in Bolivia between September and December 2019, until they find the unpleasant surprise that among the findings of the GIEI, there are also serious human rights violations attributable to Evo Morales and a recommendation that responsibilities should be established in all acts of violence that occurred during the last two governments. As if that was not enough, the GIEI adds that the Bolivian judicial system is not in a position to provide the minimum guarantees for a fair trial, of impartiality and of due process, due to structural problems and in particular of its consolidation and that “it verified its lack of independence from the Public Ministry, the abuse of preventive detention and its use for the purposes of political persecution.” For this reason, the silence and oblivion in which the GIEI’s recommendations have been confined is not surprising.
These failures would have led any sensible government to reflection, not the Bolivian one. A few weeks ago they invented another international strategy for domestic policy purposes: to go to the Permanent Council (PC) of the Organization of American States (OAS) to denounce the Secretary-General of the OAS, Luis Almagro, and the Secretariat for Strengthening Democracy (SSD) due to a public statement confirming that the Government of Evo Morales committed serious malicious manipulations in the presidential elections of October 2019, at all stages of the process. The failed attempt to attack the OAS was counterproductive for the Bolivian delegation made up of the Ministers of Justice and Foreign Affairs. Except for the support of Argentina, Mexico, and the Nicaraguan dictatorship, the rest of the countries praised the OAS Electoral Observation Missions (EOMs) for the excellent role they play in the region in defense of democracy. As if that was not enough, Francisco Guerrero, Secretary of the SSD, recited the rosary of malicious manipulations committed throughout that election, each of them verified and documented by the electoral forensic experts who went to Bolivia to carry out the binding audit of the OAS and solidly dismissed the little or no value of the report by the lonely professor at the University of Salamanca and two of his students, who for some time made the wise decision to disappear from the map.
Finally, as it seems that the current authorities do not learn by the experience of their continuous disasters and that, to add insult to injury, they lack career diplomats since at the beginning of their government they decimated the Diplomatic Career, they dedicated themselves to announce to everyone that at the Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) in Mexico, they would present a joint initiative with Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Mexico, to replace the OAS with another organization and thus end Luis Almagro. As expected, they were again ridiculed and none of that happened. Rather, the OAS came out strengthened in the face of an incoherent organization such as the CELAC, which claims to be a defender of democracy and invites the dictatorships of Diaz Canel, Ortega, and Maduro to its Summit and the candidate to be admitted to that club, Evo Morales’ scribe, Luis Arce.
These constant failures damage the country’s already precarious image and its ability to act in good faith in its relations with the world.
Source: https://publico.bo/internacional/fiasco-diplomatico-en-cumbre-de-celac/
THE REVOLUTION OF THE PITITAS BOOK
THE REVOLUTION OF THE PITITAS BOOK
21 June 2021
PAGINA SIETE NEWSPAPER EDITORIAL
Former President Jeanine Añez has based part of her statement before the Prosecutor’s Office on the book La revolucion de las Pititas [The Revolution of the Pititas], which was prepared by the journalists of Pagina Siete after the crisis of October and November 2019. It must be remembered that Evo Morales’s resignation was produced on November 10 and that this publication was published on December 19 of that year, therefore, its content is only a reflection of what journalists saw or heard during that crisis, without time to create rhetoric that has nothing to do with reality.
The book contains 34 journalistic chronicles, whose authors are or were Página Siete journalists at that time, except for our two former directors, Raúl Peñaranda and Juan Carlos Salazar, who were no longer part of the staff, but who very graciously agreed to collaborate with a chronicle each. one.
The story begins with the structural causes of the conflict that have to do with the decision of Evo Morales and the MAS [Movement Toward Socialism] to ignore the result of the referendum of February 21, 2016, and to prolong themselves in power. It continues with the chronicles of the elections, the allegations of fraud, the violence unleashed after the TREP cut-off, the 21-day protest, the deaths of Montero, and the OAS report on the malicious acts committed in the elections.
Now entering the most critical days, the chronicles of the book reflect the mutiny of the Police, the role of the armed forces, the resignation of Evo Morales and the entire chain of command, the acts of violence that affected groups on both sides. There are reflected the atrocities committed in Vila Vila against the civics that traveled to La Paz to reinforce the protest, the burned houses of the MAS representatives, and then the overflowing violence in La Paz, which led to the burning of the houses of Waldo Albarracín, Casimira Lema and Puma Katari buses.
Of course, there are also chronicles about the attempts of the Church and the European Union to pacify the country, the assumption of Jeanine Añez, and, later, the violence unleashed by the security forces in Sacaba and Senkata. It is a plural book, which includes the list of the dead on both sides and which even reflects the IACHR report, which talks about “the massacres” committed by the Añez Government.
The title of the book was inspired by Evo Morales himself because in full citizen protest he made fun of the pititas [common household threads] that the protesters used to block the streets, so the popular revolt was renamed the revolution of the pititas. It is not a panegyric book, as some MAS supporters wanted to believe, on the contrary, it has a plural look at the facts, so much so that now the MAS supporters themselves highlight it and value it because that is how it suits them for their purposes.
Página Siete journalists are proud to have produced this and other books throughout their short history, but at the same time, it is striking that former President Añez has decided to read that document as part of her statement because it is assumed that a witness only testifies to those facts that he or she has witnessed (worth the triple redundancy).
Añez is based on the book until the events of November 10 because she was in Trinidad and she only became the protagonist of the events as of November 11, when she arrived in La Paz to become temporary president.
Based on Raúl Peñaranda’s chronicle, the former president says that Mesa, via telephone and through radio, rejected the idea that Adriana Salvatierra or any other low-level senator could assume the presidency, in the first case because the protests would not cease and in the second because it would be unconstitutional.
In any case, it is not only surprising that Añez has relied on the book to testify, but that the Prosecutor’s Office itself has admitted it and that it has transcribed some episodes of the book as such. The revolution of the Pititas is a journalistic book and does not claim, in any case, to be a legal document.
Control the past?
20 June 2021
Control the past?
I have the habit of re-reading Orwell from time to time, so it is not difficult for me to go to him every time the MAS tries to “write the past” to justify the present and, to a certain extent, ensure its future; today the Government tries to cause doubts on the Report of the Dialogue Facilitation Process 2019-2020 published by the Bolivian Episcopal Conference.
From time to time it gives the impression that at that time there were only a couple of meetings and that from all sides there was pressure for the cornered Masism of November 2019 to accept what they imposed on it; when actually there were several meetings and the representatives of the ruling party were treated with respect and with the proper considerations because that is what a negotiation is about.
I am going to limit myself to giving the reader the details of each of the meetings and who was present in them, making a minimum of clarifications (those who read will know if they value them).
1. The dialogue process began on 7 November 2019, and ended on December 5th, leaving an accompaniment that lasted until approximately 20 January 2020. In other words, Evo Morales was in government, and “solutions” to the crisis were already being provided.
On November 8th, a commission of the Bolivian Episcopal Conference: Monsignor Toribio Cardinal Ticona, Monsignor Edmundo Abastoflor, and Monsignor Percy Galvan met with Evo Morales, who insistently asked them to publish a call for peace. The Bolivian Episcopal Conference (CEB) agreed to his request.
The CEB attended a meeting called by the Brazilian Ambassador Octavio Enrique Cortez on November 9th. Meeting in which diplomatic delegations, concerned about the uncertain climate and growing national violence, consulted the Church if it could be the one to convene a dialogue process, protecting the safety of those who would intervene, especially that of government agents and the sectors in protest and, of course, that of the dialogue facilitators.
First meeting: Sunday, November 10th, in the late afternoon, at the Catholic University. Attendants: for the Bolivian Episcopal Conference (CEB): Monsignor Aurelio Pesoa; Eugenio Scarpellini; Monsignor Giovani Arana, Father Jose Fuentes Cano and Juan Carlos Nuñez. For the diplomatic corps: Ambassador of Brazil, Octavio Henrique Cortes; Ambassador of the European Union, Leon de la Torre; Ambassador of Spain, Emilio Perez de Agreda and the former Ambassador of Spain, Carmelo Angulo. For the civic committees: Jerjes Justiniano; for the National Committee for the Defense of Democracy (CONADE), Waldo Albarracin and for Comunidad Ciudadana (CC): Ricardo Paz. It was very clear to all the participants that without the presence of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) it was not possible to find viable proposals.
November 11th: In addition to the facilitators; for the parties: MAS, Adriana Salvatierra, and Teresa Morales; for (CC), C. Mesa and Ricardo Paz; for (UN): Samuel Doria Medina (invited by Hector Arce); Jorge Quiroga and Luis Vasquez; Civic Committees: Jerjes Justiniano did not arrive (he excused himself) and for the CONADE, Rolando Villena.
November 12th: Former President Evo Morales arrived in Mexico. They met, for the MAS, A. Salvatierra, S. Rivero and T. Morales; for CC, C. Mesa, R. Paz and C. Alarcon; for UN, Samuel Doria Medina, and Roberto Moscoso; for UD, Oscar Ortiz. Jorge Quiroga, Luis Vasquez, Jerjes Justiniano for the civic committees, and Rolando Villena for the CONADE, were also present.
The country had a president
Agreements that allow the pacification of the country. This stage was the longest and represented the continuity of the dialogue process already in place. It had more participants among the facilitators in addition to the clergy. For the parties: MAS: A. Salvatierra, B. Yañiquez, and P. Menacho; for CC: R. Paz; for UN, S. Doria Medina and R. Moscoso; for UD, O. Ortiz and S. Franco. Also L. Vasquez; for the Government, the Minister of the Presidency, J. Justiniano.
November 16, Carlos Romero contacted the dialogue facilitation group. He expresses the need to create dialogue roundtables with political parties, to agree on a law calling for elections, as well as the members of a renewed Electoral Tribunal. On the occasion, the former Minister stressed that former President Evo Morales was the key political actor because everything depended on him. Romero participated in all the preparation of the dialogue roundtables to agree on the law.
November 18. It was evident to the dialogue facilitators that there were two positions in the MAS: that of the former authorities and that of those who were in office. Participants, on behalf of the MAS: Javier Zabaleta, Hector Arce, Carlos Romero and Adriana Salvatierra; Omar Aguilar; Eva Copa, Milton Baron, Betty Yañiquez, Efrain Chambi. On behalf of the Government: the Minister of Justice, Alvaro Coimbra, and the Minister of the Presidency, Jerjes Justiniano. On the part of the facilitators, the commission of the Bolivian Episcopal Conference and the European Union (EU). Is it necessary to add something else? The MAS proposed the law to call for elections and they negotiated and managed; they went in and out of the Mexican Embassy; the dialogue worked. The details can continue to be explored, but the country has been pacified. There was a fraud and then he resigned and then there was a constitutional succession.
Source: https://eldeber.com.bo/opinion/controlar-el-pasado_236001
My Word to the Country
16 June 2021
My Word to the Country
Throughout my life I have been committed to Bolivia and to democracy, I have practiced it, I have defended it and I have detached myself from power when I had it, because of my conviction that respect for human rights and life is one of its most important values.
Evo Morales is the author of the largest electoral fraud in democracy and of having mocked the Bolivian people on 21F [21 February 2016] by not respecting its decision against his indefinite re-election. Not satisfied with these irreparable damages, he decided to subordinate the interests of the country and the dramatic health and unemployment problems that citizens face, to his own interest, which is none other than his unhealthy obsession to return to the presidency at any cost. For this he wants to whitewash the fraud he perpetrated, inventing a non-existent coup d’État.
By accusing me of being the author of the alleged coup, Morales has decided to complete his plan, destroy me and destroy the main democratic opposition force in the country, represented by Comunidad Ciudadana.
The one who fled Bolivia after resigning the presidency, the one that organized a plan to interrupt the constitutional line of succession and generate chaos and civil confrontation between compatriots, the one who instructed his militants to block and cause shortages in our main cities, speaks today shamelessly about a coup and coup plotters.
Morales, the government, and the MAS want me to lower my head and provide explanations. I won’t do either. There is no explanation for those who, like me, have done and would do a hundred times what must be done in defense of peace, democracy, and the Constitution, which is what I did between 2018 and 2020. As a presidential candidate, I faced the autocracy and as a democrat, I supported the recomposition of the constitutional line of succession that Morales tried to destroy in order to lead us to an internal war. A task that included the participation as facilitators of the Catholic Church, the European Union, the United Nations, and the Embassy of Spain.
It was my candidacy in 2019 that forced Morales to make a [electoral] fraud to avoid his certain defeat in a second round. His resignation and escape were the product of desperation to remain in the presidency at any price, in this case, to circumvent the popular sovereignty expressed through the vote.
Now, on Morales’ orders, orders accepted by Luis Arce, the Public Ministry and the Judicial Branch, proven executing arms of the governing autocracy, have put together in the most sloppy way a “case”, that of the delirious invention called the coup d’État. The district attorney’s office, at the height of the illegality of form and substance, gives more credibility to the pages of a book than to two State laws: Law 1266 that annulled the fraudulent elections and Law 1270 called “Exceptional Extension Law of the CONSTITUTIONAL mandate of elected authorities,” which prolonged the term of the then President Añez.
Both laws enacted by the Legislative Assembly –controlled by the MAS– on 24 November 2019 and 20 January 2020, generate State jurisprudence and recognize the full legitimacy and constitutional legality of the Government of Jeanine Añez and of its origin. To open a process invented by a coup d’État, the unconstitutionality of both norms should be previously declared and the president of the Senate Eva Copa, the president of the Deputies Sergio Choque, and the other five members of the board of the Plurinational Legislative Assembly and all the legislators who approved these laws should be prosecuted as co-authors of the alleged coup d’État.
Precisely because of these terrible events, I ask President Luis Arce: Will you continue to support the actions filled with hatred and ambition of power of Evo Morales? Will you continue to send your ministers and spokesmen to lie to the Bolivian people by denying the constitutional succession that you yourself publicly admitted? Are you willing to remain subordinated to Morales, even at the risk of leading your administration to disaster? I accuse Evo Morales, Luis Arce, and the MAS of lying, of distorting the facts, of inventing a crime to destroy the opposition, destroy me, and lead the country into a spiral of confrontation in the midst of a profound health and unemployment crisis. All planned and forced by the disproportionated ambition of a man who has already done too much harm to Bolivia before fleeing on 10 November 2019 in a foreign-flagged plane.
Source: https://carlosdmesa.com/2021/06/16/mi-palabra-al-pais/
Reunión Biden-Putin: de los ataques cibernéticos a la política energética, el Presidente debe enfrentarse a Rusia
Biden está malgastando la ventaja con relación a Rusia que heredó de la administración Trump
El Presidente Biden se reunirá con el Presidente ruso Vladimir Putin en las próximas 25 horas. Lamentablemente, para la seguridad estadounidense, se presenta con una mano débil auto-repartida que pudo haber sido mucho más fuerte.
Nosotros, en la administración Trump, creamos una ventaja real contra Rusia que él podría haber utilizado. En cambio, ha optado por abandonar dicha ventaja. Incluso en solo unos meses en el cargo, Biden ya le ha señalado a Putin que es tímido y no está preparado para enfrentar el desafío ruso, una debilidad que el ex-agente de la KGB Putin seguramente presiente.
Espero que Biden ejerza las opciones disponibles para enderezar este barco y proteger a los Estados Unidos de la actividad maligna rusa.
La administración Trump fue más dura con Rusia que cualquier otra desde el final de la Guerra Fría, algo que nunca oirás reconocer a los medios. Ya sea imponiendo una campaña de sanciones sin precedentes contra entidades rusas, armando a nuestros amigos en Ucrania con armas de guerra para resistir la agresión rusa, convenciendo a nuestros aliados de la OTAN de aportar 400.000 millones de dólares en nuevos gastos de defensa u otras medidas, reafirmamos la fuerza estadounidense para frustrar el sueño de Putin de un imperio ruso restaurado.
Pero Biden ya ha comenzado a malgastar esta ventaja, en parte al telegrafiar el cambio climático como su principal prioridad de seguridad nacional. En comentarios sobre este viaje a las tropas estadounidenses estacionadas en el Reino Unido, contó una historia de sus días de vicepresidente. Dijo que el Estado Mayor Conjunto, los principales generales del ejército, le dijeron que el “calentamiento global” era “la mayor amenaza que enfrenta Estados Unidos”.
Alentar a nuestros combatientes a adoptar esta ridícula mentalidad, aparentemente compartida por los que se supone que son algunos de los líderes militares más talentosos de los Estados Unidos, es extremadamente peligroso. Les dice a los agresores que nuestras prioridades estratégicas están fuera de lugar y que estamos listos para que se aprovechen de nosotros. Biden debe dejar en claro a Putin que nuestro ejército coloca una agresión rusa en el escalón más alto de las amenazas, y apoyará a nuestras fuerzas armadas para disuadirla.
En la misma línea, el Presidente Biden debe dejar en claro que el cambio climático no es en absoluto el único tema que Rusia debe abordar para complacerlo. De hecho, Biden debe darse cuenta de que a Putin nada le encantaría más que ver materializarse el Nuevo Acuerdo Ecológico de la izquierda estadounidense.
Cualquier promesa que haga Putin de abordar juntos el cambio climático es falsa. Rusia es una de las principales naciones productoras de petróleo que ganará influencia geopolítica en todo el mundo si Estados Unidos recorta su producción de petróleo y gas. Una agenda de que priorice el cambio climático es una estupidez en más de un sentido. En el frente cibernético, Biden debe decirle a Putin que los ataques cibernéticos se los tratarán de la misma manera que a cualquier otro ataque contra los Estados Unidos desde suelo ruso. El mes pasado, los ciberdelincuentes llevaron a cabo un ataque de cibersecuestro de datos dirigido al oleoducto Colonial, una arteria energética esencial que transporta casi la mitad del suministro de combustible de la Costa Este. La evidencia apunta a esos piratas informáticos que operan dentro de Rusia, al igual que muchos delincuentes informáticos que buscan extorsionar y robar a los estadounidenses.
Biden también debería amenazar con una respuesta cibernética despiadada contra Rusia si continúan los ataques cibernéticos respaldados por el gobierno y su intromisión en nuestra democracia.
El equipo de seguridad nacional del Presidente Trump coordinó para otorgar al Poder Ejecutivo mayor autoridad para responder a tales ataques. Biden debe utilizar esa laxitud para perseguir y paralizar a estos terroristas digitales, y exigir que Putin también se niegue a permitirles operar con impunidad dentro de Rusia.
Biden también debería amenazar con una respuesta cibernética despiadada contra Rusia si continúan los ciberataques respaldados por el gobierno y su intromisión en nuestra democracia, un ataque que debería llegar al corazón del aparato de seguridad de Rusia y al círculo íntimo de cleptócratas de Putin, si es necesario.
El equipo de seguridad nacional del Presidente Trump coordinó para otorgar al Poder Ejecutivo mayor autoridad para responder a tales ataques. Biden debe utilizar esa laxitud para perseguir y paralizar a estos terroristas digitales, y exigir que Putin también se niegue a permitirles operar con impunidad dentro de Rusia.
El Presidente Biden debe dejar en claro que está preparado a revertir su indecisión para proyectar unilateralmente el poder estadounidense. Biden mostró una gran hipocresía al cancelar el Oleoducto Keystone XL, al mismo tiempo que permitió que Rusia completara el gasoducto Nord Stream 2 que suministra gas a Alemania. Este movimiento sin sentido hará que los aliados de Estados Unidos se vuelvan más dependientes de la energía rusa.
El nepotismo también apesta. El Director General de Nord Stream, Matthias Warnig, era un agente de la policía secreta de Alemania Oriental que, según los informes, trabajó con Putin cuando era un agente de la KGB destinado en Alemania.
Biden debería detener Nord Stream 2 en seco imponiendo sanciones a las entidades involucradas en su financiamiento y construcción, incluido Gazprom, el gigante estatal ruso del gas natural. Las personas que se verán más gravemente afectadas por detener el proyecto son las élites alemanas corrompidas por el dinero de Moscú.
Habiendo dicho todo esto, todavía hay margen para cooperar en intereses comunes estrechos. Biden debe exigir que continúen las áreas críticas de cooperación en materia de seguridad.
En 2017, cuando dirigía la Agencia Central de Inteligencia, informamos a Rusia sobre un inminente ataque terrorista en San Petersburgo que habría matado a muchos, posiblemente incluidos estadounidenses. Pese a que la CIA y el Servicio de Inteligencia Exterior de Rusia estaban lejos de ser amigos, nunca puse la política antes que salvar vidas inocentes.
La cooperación entre estas dos agencias fue fuerte en la administración Trump, lo que hizo que los estadounidenses estuvieran mejor protegidos de las amenazas. El intercambio continuo de inteligencia recíproca sobre actividades terroristas es crucial para nuestra seguridad nacional.
Finalmente, Biden debería argumentar a Putin que el acercamiento a China hará de su país un Estado tributario del Partido Comunista Chino. A largo plazo, la mejor apuesta de Rusia es separarse del Partido Comunista de China (PCCh).
Biden debería presionar a Putin para que presione al PCCh para que se una al tratado de armas nucleares Nuevo START entre Estados Unidos y Rusia. Al ayudar a detener una acumulación nuclear china en curso, Putin ayudará a salvarse a sí mismo y al mundo de una posible devastación a manos de un régimen incluso más agresivo que el suyo.
Putin también podría ganarse un poco de buena voluntad de Occidente al liberar al activista demócrata encarcelado Alexei Navalny y honrar las libertades básicas de su pueblo, un punto que Biden también debería plantear.
En la década de 1980, yo comandaba una unidad de tanques que patrullaba la Cortina de Hierro. Nuestros ejercicios incluían demostraciones precisas y sin complejos de potencia de fuego, porque sabíamos que los rusos respetaban la fuerza por encima de todo. Esa misma actitud rusa se manifestó una y otra vez cuando serví en el Congreso, como jefe de la Agencia Central de Inteligencia y Secretario de Estado. Durante años, los Demócratas se quejaron de que el Presidente Trump no fue duro con Rusia, mientras ignoraban los hechos. Ahora el Presidente Biden tiene la oportunidad de predicar con el ejemplo. Si Biden se disculpa por Estados Unidos o proyecta visiones de cooperación como castillos en el aire, Putin sentirá debilidad y la política de Estados Unidos con Rusia tendrá unos largos tres años y medio de incertidumbre.
ANGELA FROM HER OWN DARKNESS: A TALE BY RENÉ BASCOPÉ ASPIAZU
ANGELA FROM HER OWN DARKNESS: A TALE BY RENÉ BASCOPÉ ASPIAZU
I cannot recall when I began to feel fear for that room in the second courtyard. However, I think I remember an afternoon when we were playing soccer, when the rag ball hit the closed door with force, making its worn-out structure creak. Suddenly it seemed to me that the noise that had entered the room was slowly transforming itself into a resounding echo that kicked up dust, stirred cobwebs, and shifted things. Then I felt how it quieted and took hold of the air, filling it and absorbing everything, in such a way that if the door were suddenly opened, the overgrown noise would have overflown into the patio, dragging and drowning us.
Never before, until the day the house keeper’s son swallowed poison to kill himself for Yolanda, did I realize that the room was occupied by two old women and a tall, pale girl named Angela. Just that day, as my mother and I watched Roso rolled on the cobblestones, vomiting and screaming in pain, I was surprised to see the door open imperceptibly. The blood froze in my veins, because I had the intimate assurance that this room was uninhabited. Luckily Roso was slow to die until night fell, and I took the opportunity to look in more detail through the small opening left as if on purpose. Angela was motionless in a chair and the two old women took turns watching the spectacle of the poisoned young man who did not allow himself to be touched by anyone, while his father cried hysterically in a corner. Just as I had unconsciously assumed, the objects I saw were older than my imagination could tolerate. What depressed me the most was the large number of pictures of saints with faces that were satisfied with so much suffering that were hung on the back wall, and a small, crucified Christ, bleeding everywhere and with so long a hair that it scared me and made me nauseous. We stayed that way until Roso died and we still remained that way until the police arrived to take the body away. By then the door had closed completely, pretending that no one existed behind it.
(During All Saints’ Day, my mother and my grandmother spread a black cloth on the small table in the darkest corner of my room. On top of it, they slowly place the portrait of my grandfather who had died fifteen or twenty years ago, while they dust it off with a cloth; then they light a candle and fix it with the melted wax that drips from it in a porcelain saucer. The portrait is dazzled. My grandmother brings a glass full of crystal clear water and places it on the cloth; then we all pray while I chew a piece of bread. At night I cannot sleep with the candle lit and with the fear of seeing the sad look of my grandfather enclosed in his photograph, while his soul drinks the water from the glass crying and in great gulps. Flame sizzles and my mother doesn’t realize my fear, so she sleeps instead of hugging me.)
My childish cunningness, with truculence, made me devise a thousand ways to be able to carefully observe the interior of that room. Sometimes, however, the door would remain closed for several days, although I knew from the smell that came from the cracks that Angela and the old women were inside.
In time, the features of the three women became familiar to me; I looked at them without their noticing, while playing anything. When they went out, she always walked between the two old women, and it seemed that she was suffering so deeply, that I began to love her with all the strength that fear allowed me. I was sure that the hair in a bun, the black veil, the hump and the coat down to the shins, were imposed by the women to make her look like them. But Angela had an original pallor that totally differentiated her from them.
When my mother realized that I liked to stay longer than necessary in the yard, she inexplicably began to demand that I leave the games before dark. But it was precisely at the time of the beginning of the night when Angela left guarded by the old women. So the first few times, I refused to obey with gambling pretexts, but later, in the winter, when the night came earlier, my excuses ended. I hence decided to tell her that I wanted to go to the bathroom. That was how I deceived mother, by making her see me enter, and then sneak out and hide in the darkness of the alley that connected my patio with the second, until Angela went out to the street.
I cannot remember when I found out that Angela was not her name; that it was Elvira, that the old women were her mother and aunt, and that every night, inevitably, they went to the 7 o’clock San Francisco mass. Since then I dared to approach the door, shamelessly, as they were leaving, to see each night, from different angles, the room; I would mentally put together the interior images, until I knew well the location of the table, the two beds, the pictures, the wooden trunks, the old chairs, and all the other things.
(In the mornings of All Saints’ day, my mother is the first to wake up, she gets up and looks indifferently at the almost empty glass, picks up the remains of the burning candle and throws them into the garbage can. I still feel my grandfather’s soul crying deeply when we go out. In the courtyard, the dog looks at us with the eyes full of rheum because it has seen the spirits roaming the house all night. In the cemetery I still hear the distant crying, interspersed with the tolling of the bells that bring the smell of corpses and flowers. When we are done praying rain begins to fall on the graves and the morning seems late.)
A long time ago, due to bad luck, while I was hiding waiting for Angela to leave, Mrs. Juana and Carlos’s father appeared at the other end of the alley. Without seeing me they began to hug and kiss and touch everywhere, hastily. But when Carlos’s father aw me, I only managed to run towards Angela’s door, while he chased me tying up his pants. Just as he reached me, the three women were leaving the room. That day I saw for the first time that Angela was looking at me, that’s why I didn’t feel the blows that Carlos’s father gave me as he dragged me to my room.
From that moment on, my mother would not let me go out to the patio, because I was corrupted. But the only good thing that happened was that she didn’t find out that I loved Angela or that I was afraid of the room on the second patio.
I thought my confinement would not last long, but my mother did not forget that night in the alley, and she even thought about us going to live somewhere else, because she was way too ashamed of Carlos’s father. But my grandmother, who advocated for me a bit, told her not to do crazy things, that nowhere would we find a room for rent so cheap, and that she should finally stop bothering, that it was not a big deal. It seems this made my mother settle.
For Christmas I found, under the bed, a wooden truck, painted purple and blue. I believed that by giving me that gift, my mother forgave me, because she also was so happy that she got distracted and I went out to the patio dragging my toy towards the alley. When my mother found out, she called out to me, angry, but I could see that Angela’s door was locked with a large, half-bolted padlock.
Since the morning in which we heard an infernal shouting in the courtyard, because Carlos’s father had split his wife’s head with an ax, while Mrs. Juana cried out, taking her hands to the deep wound the dead woman had inflicted on her face, my mother breathed calmly and let me go out to play for a few moments. However, the longtime of confinement prevented me from having fun as before, and, what was even worse, I found out that my friend Carlos had been in the hospice since his mother died and his father had been imprisoned. In the moments when I could go to the second patio, I always found the door closed, as if no one had ever lived in that room. There was a moment when I wanted to beg my mother to let me go out, even for five minutes, at nightfall, on condition that I did not go out all day, but I could never do so. (During All Saints’ day [Todos Santos festivity], I run to the room on the second patio and when the door opens, I see in the background, on top of a black table, a candle burning in front of Angela’s portrait. At night my mother makes me pray and gives me cookies. I can’t sleep afterwards because, while my grandfather’s soul drinks the water from the glass, Angela slowly places herself on a spot lying down, from which she stares at me and whispers to me with her soft voice. I see her paler and more hunched over than before. At dawn, she begins to cry silently and leaves. My mother wakes up, prepares breakfast and changes the candle that is about to go out. My grandmother gets up and scrapes with her nails the fly excrement that has accumulated in the portrait. As we left for the cemetery we found the dog asleep, with a great deal of rheum in its eyes, my mother comments that if you want to see the spirits of the dead, you just need to smear your eyes with the rheum of a dog’s eyes. In the cemetery, we pray a great deal and my mother greets the two old women in Angela’s room as it starts to rain, I look at them with hatred. Then we put the white illusions in an antique vase. My grandmother says that her husband’s grave deteriorates more every year. Upon returning to the house, it rains harder and the rain does not let the tremulous sound of the bell tower be heard. I mentally pray for old women to never die. The moment my mother opens the door to our room, I take the eye-rheum from the dog that is still sleeping.)
‘SYSTEMATIC FRAUD’
13 June 2021
‘Systematic Fraud’
The three times defeated presidential candidate in Peru, Keiko Fujimori, coined a new expression in the already long list of (unproven) complaints in electoral processes in the region: “systematic fraud.” And with that flag, she intends to annul 200,000 votes to reverse the narrow victory of Pedro Castillo (just over 60,000 votes, with 100% of the minutes processed). Conveniently, Fujimori spoke of “fraud” only when Castillo surpassed her in the official count.
Regardless of how the electoral authority resolves the challenges of the alleged “election board fraud”, as well as the observed records, with errors or incompleteness, it is a matter of concern that political actors agitate the “fraud” narrative instead of accepting the result of the elections: the public will manifested at the ballot box. In 2016, when Kuczynski beat her in the second round with just a 41,000 votes difference, Keiko acknowledged her defeat without alleging fraud.
In order not to go further back or stay in the region, let us remember that another losing candidate, Donald Trump, insisted until the end, without any evidence of course, that the elections had been stolen from him. The Republican spoke of “large-scale fraud”, assuring that it was “statistically impossible” that he lost. And he declared that there were “illegal votes” against him. In his failed attempt to reverse the outcome, he even degraded the American electoral system.
In Bolivia, we also know these stories. I will mention only two. After coming third in the 2002 elections, the presidential candidate Manfred Reyes Villa denounced “informatics fraud” (sic). He obviously couldn’t prove it. It also happened recently, in the 2019 elections, when one day after the vote, without the results for the official count, “monumental fraud” was sung. The same formula was replicated by the CC candidate for Mayor of Santa Cruz uttering: “colossal fraud.”
Systematic, election-board, large-scale, informatics, monumental, scandalous fraud… and so on, fraud. And the evidence, ladies, and gentlemen? In general, electoral regulations in the region establish mechanisms, procedures, and legal deadlines to file appeals against possible anomalies and irregularities in all phases of the process, especially in voting, counting, and computer counting. Of course, it is more comfortable and profitable for the defeated to shout “fraud” in front of the audience and the media spotlight.
Any indication of electoral fraud must be reported, investigated, verified, and, where appropriate, receive the maximum penalty. We should also think about sanctions for those who proclaim “fraud” without evidence, damaging the legitimacy of the result and democracy.
Curious Fadocracy
Jeanine Áñez’s recent statement to the Prosecutor’s Office raises valid questions about the events of 2019. Let us see: 1. Who called her on the phone on November 10, on loudspeaker, from the Catholic University, to offer her the presidency? Ricardo Paz, according to Áñez herself, or Tuto Quiroga, as Father Fuentes swears? Someone is lying. 2. Why, on November 11, when the senator arrived in La Paz, was an Air Force helicopter waiting for her at the airport!? Who sent it? 3. Why did the man in uniform who received her “have instructions” to take her to the Military College? Yes, to the Military College. 4. Why did they “tell” her to go to the Hotel Casa Grande to meet Luis Fernando Camacho (and nine other men) and talk about “taking office”? 5. Why, after meeting with her keen in the Assembly that afternoon, was she taken to the Police Academy, where she was waiting for Camacho, Murillo, Ortiz? 6. Who organized the operation, in short, on November 12, to “instrumentalize the norms” (including the unprecedented TCP communiqué) and force the presidential self-proclamation ipso facto? 7. Was this how Plan B worked?
José Luís Exeni Rodríguez is a political scientist
Source: https://www.la-razon.com/voces/2021/06/13/fraude-sistematico/
JORGE TUTO QUIROGA, THE ‘YUPPIE’ THAT DAZZLED GENERAL BANZER
Tuto has not stopped losing, although he takes the consolation of having participated in the successful conspiracy that ousted Morales from the presidency in November 2019.
13 June 2021
JORGE TUTO QUIROGA, THE ‘YUPPIE’ THAT DAZZLED GENERAL BANZER
It is an interesting challenge to establish which of Jorge Quiroga Ramírez’s paternal references has most influenced his life as a winner, who graduated from a Texas university and returned to Bolivia to work in the financial system and then be recruited by the Foreign Minister of the Republic, Carlos Iturralde Ballivián, during the government of Jaime Paz Zamora.
Quiroga’s takeoff begins in foreign trade, undertaking a public career with that winning vocation that is instilled in the redoubts of individualistic competition, from La Salle school, through the practice of basketball in the Nonis de Santa Cruz de la Sierra and later climbing mountains, wiphala in hand, to prove to himself that if he had a vocation for marathons and the horizontal conquest of the world, he could also do it vertically, seeking to reach the highest peak.
Fernando Ramírez Velarde, Quiroga’s maternal grandfather, who died at the age of 35, is the author of Socavones de Angustia [Caverns of Angst] (1947), a mining novel that narrates the daily suffering and sacrifice of that workers’ vanguard in Bolivia and that, according to a critical review by Guillermo Lora (Revolutionary Working Party), bets on a depoliticized vision in which the conflict seen from the Marxist analysis of class contradictions does not appear on its pages. For Ramírez Velarde, according to Lora, the salvation of the miners is found in education, not in social struggle. In these terms, the working class was never an issue that may have taken away the sleep of this second Tuto, because the first, his father, is called Jorge Joaquín Quiroga Luizaga (1933).
Tuto the son learned from his father, and to verify this assertion, only elementary deductions are needed, insofar as he became the ambassador of the dictatorship of Colonel-General Hugo Banzer Suárez before the International Tin Council based in Malaysia, a country to which he moved with his entire family to exercise said commercial diplomatic representation, with his eldest son moving from childhood to adolescence.
If the maternal grandfather, the writer of a single and well-known novel, did not particularly influence the life of Tuto Jr., Tuto Sr. did, who in 1987 was part of the board of directors of the National Electricity Company (ENDE) together with personalities such as Carlos Morales. Landívar, alias Quinciño, General José Antonio Zelaya, Joaquín Aguirre Lavayén, Iván Guzmán de Rojas and Roger Levy. Two decades later, already in his capacity as Vice President of recycling Banzer to Democracy, Tuto Jr. organizes the Strategic Affairs Unit of the Presidency (Unasep), conformed with the same criteria by his own younger brother, Luis Fernando –later Vice Minister of the Coordination Sector (Ministry of Economic Development)–, José Luis Lupo, Salvador Romero, Raúl Peñaranda, Alberto Valdés, and Alberto Leytón.
The criteria for Tuto father and Tuto son appear to be identical: formin teams in which surnames and professional qualifications are tied. The Unasep conceived by Vice President Quiroga is constituted, in this logic, in the thinking team of the second Banzer government for the purposes of early warning, monitoring, conducting opinion studies, and other investigative methods, all aiming at improving levels of governance.
The link with Banzer
We already have that the novelist grandfather did not leave a deep mark on the grandson, but instead, the father stood as the link that allowed him, years later, to approach General Banzer, who was very excited to have found his dolphin, who would lead him in 1997 to the vice-presidential candidacy. For Banzer —that wolf in sheep’s clothing that from his dictatorship-era became obsessed with moving toward democracy and that discovered this systems engineer, the son of a friend whom he made ambassador during the dictatorial seven years—, Tuto is the complement of the new generation, who had already shown his accounting and organizational skills as Undersecretary of Public Investment and International Cooperation and as Minister of Finance of the government of the so-called Patriotic Agreement chaired by Jaime Paz Zamora, which has the General as its main partner.
Tuto was fast. He was a minister at 32 years old. Paz Zamora was delighted with the efficiency of this yuppie who, according to some urban legend, was capable of mentally adding eight-digit figures. A prodigy that in 1993 had been appointed campaign manager of the Banzer-Zamora Medinacelli binomial, in 1995 Tuto assumed the national sub-presidency of the party –the Nationalist Democratic Action (ADN)– and in 1997 he formed an electoral tandem with the General to come to power with a 22, 26% of the votes, with the return of favors from Jaime Paz Zamora and his party, the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), to become president. By then, the Banzer executioners of the dictatorship and its victims, the MIR member, had already crossed closely together and several times the so-called “rivers of blood”, from a coalition that was expanded with the participation of other political parties such as Condepa (Carlos Palenque), UCS (Jhonny Fernández), NFR (Manfred Reyes Villa) and FRI (Óscar Zamora Medinacelli).
With the fortitude of Forrest Gump, but with the ego of the handsome boy at a party, Tuto became president (2001-2002) because his political mentor and father resigned to die of lung cancer. With the General buried, the story began to take another flight after being part of a government, three years as vice president and one as the first president. From then on, over time, he will stop citing Banzer and will sabotage the binomial of his own party –Ronald MacLean-Tito Hoz de Vila (+)– for the 2002 elections, when the ADNhad entered the line end of its existence, on the way to disappearance. The ADN binomial obtained 3.4% of the votes.
[…]
Against Latin American progressivism
In his systematic purpose of detracting from the authenticity of the achievements of the governments of Evo Morales, Quiroga declared in 2014: “Enough with the lies that the bonanza is due to nationalization. It is absolutely false. Today the country exports 10 times more than a decade ago. Nationalization has nothing to do with it. There is an economic bonanza due to high prices. Neighbors buy more raw material from us (…) In addition, there is money due to the gas bonanza that occurred due to various factors … There is a bonanza due to the sale contract to Brazil entered into by Herbert Müller (his Minister of Hydrocarbons), which stipulates the costs and volumes with which it is sold today; to the gas pipelines that were laid during my government; due to the Hydrocarbon law proposed by Hormando Vaca Díez (president of the Senate) and there is a boom in the sale of raw materials.”
For Tuto no actual nationalization took place and therefore there was no transformative action in the Bolivian State-foreign investors’ relationship, a topic on which he has been replied the following: The executive president of YPFB, Carlos Villegas, accused Jorge Quiroga, candidate of the Christian Democratic Party (PDC, for its Spanish acronyms) of trying to give away all the “rich gas” that today benefits Bolivians through the nationalization of hydrocarbons.
“You, Mr. Jorge Quiroga, are the main promoter of giving away our gas with all its components to Brazil,” he emphasized when recalling that throughout the privatization period that Bolivia experienced at the end of the 1990s and the middle of the decade In 2000, neither his government nor other allied parties took steps to recover the liquid fractions contained in the rich gas exported at dry gas prices.
Based on the steps taken personally by President Evo Morales, as of 2006, we have made recoveries; Petrobras has just paid YPFB $ 434 million for the debt of the components of the “rich gas”; and the Río Grande Liquid Separation Plants, which are in full operation in Santa Cruz, and the new Gran Chaco, soon to be inaugurated in Tarija, allow the separation of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) and gasoline that stay in and self-supply Bolivia and also facilitate the export of surpluses to several countries in the region.
On the other hand, Carlos Villegas said that in the dark pages of our history have recorded the way in which Jorge Quiroga Ramírez finished off or privatized the Gualberto Villarroel de Cochabamba and Guillermo Elder Bell de Santa Cruz refineries, in addition to the transfer of private wholesalers of the powers of fuel marketing in Bolivia.
“I am sure that if we did not recover our refineries, an energy crisis of magnitude was imminent in Bolivia today,” Villegas stressed. (Press release of August 31, 2009, YPFB).
In the presidential elections of 2014 –he did not participate in the 2009-elections–, when Tuto was already perched on social networks to embark on a new career, this time with always adjectival disqualifications against Evo Morales, the MAS, and a large part of Latin American progressivism, Tuto stood once again as a candidate for the presidency without Podemos but with the acronym borrowed from the old Christian Democratic Party (PDC) and forming a binomial with Tomasa Yarhui, who was his Minister of Indigenous Affairs in 2002. On this occasion, Morales won elections with 61% and Tuto finished third with only 9.02% of the votes.
True to his style of stepped-participation in elections, Tuto did not appear on the 2014 ballot and was re-enabled for 2020. Then things looked much worse for him: the polls did not give him more than 1% of citizen preferences, much less under Luis Arce (MAS) and even Carlos Mesa (CC), a harsh reality that led him to get off the candidacy, after having been a fundamental strategist in the constitutional interruption perpetrated between November 10 and 12, 2019 with the indispensable advice from his lawyer and friend, Luis Vásquez Villamor, the one who was president of the Chamber of Deputies and specified the expulsion of Evo Morales in 2002. Tuto walked through the Murillo square on Saturday, November 9 and was the one who directed key operations such as the exit of Evo Morales, after his defenestration, with the Military High Command headed by General Williams Kaliman.
Tuto is the prodigal son of Bolivia, a country in which, by class or caste, those above must command. Those below have historically obeyed until they learned to win elections in 2005. For historical memory, it is always necessary to emphasize that when citizens resisted the instructions based on the manual for good citizens, they ended up massacred, dead without names, without German or Jew surnames surviving, and undeserving of portraits for their services to the nation by the Establishment newspapers.
Tuto enters his old age with his friend Raúl Garafulic Lehm, owner of Página Siete, asking that we should not vote for him because Mesa represents the useful vote to beat the MAS. Garafulic says that Tuto is the best, but that he will not win, and in the logic and vital itinerary of Banzer’s heir, what counts is winning and since 2005 he has been dedicated to losing, and losing against the MAS is strictly prohibited. This close friend of the United States Embassy has not stopped losing, although he has the consolation of having participated in the successful conspiracy that ousted Evo Morales from the presidency on 10 November 2019.
La Razón publishes a series of articles related to power and the media in Bolivia. The journalist Julio Peñaloza Bretel investigates trajectories of the political sphere with specific weight, as well as the complex and conflictive relationships between public figures and the dominant urban media structure in the country. The basis of this proposal is inspired by the need to remember to combat forgetfulness and ignorance.
Source: https://www.la-razon.com/nacional/2021/06/13/tuto-quiroga-el-yuppie-que-encandilo-al-gral-banzer/
THE JOKER, FRANKENSTEIN, OR CONCURRENCE
12 June 2021
THE JOKER, FRANKENSTEIN, OR CONCURRENCE
At the outset of the 19th century, Mary Shelley wrote and portrayed the character created (with good intentions) by Dr. Frankenstein, from whom the latter’s creation receives the name, and who has become an “evil” being due to his ugliness and marginality (social process of interaction and labeling).
Recently, a character of the last century has allowed the actor portraying it to obtain an Oscar award: the Joker (the last version that is worth watching more than once). Beyond the evident psychosocial positivist tendency of how the child victim is constructed and its process (of marginality) towards the adult victimizer, the film Joker shows us the complex circumstances in which the character develops, the values that are constructed, the marking labels, and the ultimately self-marking labels, etc., from the perspective of the influence on individuality and the criminalization of socioeconomic marginality.
Along the same lines of “monsters”, it is possible to make mention to the children who are kidnapped by irregular groups that force them (without any option of choice in freedom) to kill their parents as a process of initiation, to later become “murderous perverts”.
A few days ago I heard an old criminologist friend, Chisthopher Birkbeck, handle the novel category of “concurrence” to show how an old victim also incarnates and transforms into the new victimizer. I believe that a long seminar where we also made presentations, but heard more, was properly justified with this category: concurrence.
It is from this double condition of victim and victimizer that doubts about freedom and free will assail us. Which is the freedom of the marked victim, induced to a kind of social gap (those woods that mark the narrow path for the cattle to be able to mark them, vaccinate them, etc.)? And where does it come from? Which is the freedom of choice between good and evil displayed by the “free will” of the former victim turned —not freely— into a victimizer? And where does it come from? How can we, criminologists, contribute to understanding this situation and thus make proposals for the implementation of public policies that do not replicate this perverse vicious circle?
How can we from the perspective of criminology analyze this situation in societies like ours, where there is more than 60% of poverty, without criminalizing and falling into social determinisms that only replicate this vicious circle?
How can we translate it into the Penal Code, when there is awareness of it? What is the standing of guilt? What is the standing of the co-responsibility by the omission of society and the State apparatus that it must protect by constitutional mandate? If the state’s sense of existence is the protection of the “social being”, does it delegitimize itself in the face of the failure to protect? Is democracy being delegitimized?
Without trying, in the least, to justify the existing violence, or to alarm about the actual de-legitimization of the state institutions, social responsibility by omission, and the natural consequence of an alarming decrease in democratic values, it is fitting to stop and reflect on this matter to come up with answers. It is obvious that I have become a deep questioner of the existence of freedom and free will. Since the past constrains us to the point of being able to question the existence of freedom and free will, and the present is determined by said past, of what capacity to choose freedom are we talking about?
Alejandro Colanzi is a criminologist and a fanatic destroyan.
Source: https://www.la-razon.com/voces/2021/06/12/guason-frankenstein-o-concurrencia/
Prosecutors of hatred and submission
10 June 2021
Prosecutors of hatred and submission
All the powerful, throughout the ages, have had justice under their feet. Surely, in the last century, Hitler and Stalin were the most notorious masters of justice, although surely that Trujillo, Somoza, Castro and other banana autocrats had it in our Latin America. Today Maduro, Ortega and Morales (from his Chapare[1] power) strut vaingloriously as prototypes for whom justice is their own, and which can be used to eliminate adversaries without having to kill them; locking them up until they rot is enough and looks less messy.
Among the most brutal totalitarianisms of the last century, when the victims were counted by the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, were –undoubtedly– those of Hitler and Stalin. It was political hatred that kept them awake, but, perhaps more than hatred, [it was] fear. They dreaded even their shadow –more the Russian than the German– and for that very reason they distrusted the people who were close to them. They were permanently spied on by State Security, and as soon as they became a nuisance, they were passed on to the people’s justice system or shot. It goes without saying that those who were in the hands of the prosecutors ended their public life, because they had already set up a case and that could not be revoked even with the best legal arguments.
Among all this lower ranked “prosecuting”, there were untouchables, the subjects who had the entire trust of the power, who did not discern between good or bad, fair or unfair, when an order came from the supreme chief. Nazism had among its great scoundrels Judge Roland Freisler, later also in the office of prosecutor. And the Soviet Communist Party had Andrey Vyshinsky, a great actor in the purges that took place in Moscow in 1937 and 1938. For Vyshinsky, confession was the main proof of guilt, even if it was [obtained] through torture. Nothing had to be proved; instead, declarations had to be forced to hear what they wanted to hear. He imposed aggressive and rude interrogations to extract confessions.
However, Freisler, president of the People’s Court in times of Nazism, has been the judge whose worst memories are of defeated Germany. He enjoyed the trust and sympathy of the leaders who were closest to Hitler, and the Fuehrer himself was fond of him, according to historians. After the failure of von Stauffemberg’s attempt on Hitler in July 1944, fierce persecution against the regime’s enemies was unleashed. At least a hundred defendants passed through the hands of the robed Freisler, turned prosecutor. There was not enough rudeness or humiliation for those who were guilty of the attack. Great personalities, military and civilian, were forced to declare without belts, so that they would be permanently gripping their underwear or else their pants would fall to the ground. It was the best way to humiliate and hang the undesirables. A building collapsed on Freisler at the end of the war, as a result of the bombing, giving him his well-deserved end.
In Bolivia there is neither Hitler nor Freisler, but there are bosses in justice, those who finger-appoint mediocre strangers as robed and then stage a sham election to sanctify them. Therefore, justice is totally subject to power. Corrupted from top to bottom. Greedy for the defendant’s bribery or for forced extortion which is worse. Those who are summoned to testify, better bring their toothbrushes and blankets, because, surely, they will spend a long “preventive” imprisonment in the cells of San Pedro or Palmasola. We are living a terrible judicial ordeal, because there is no respect for anyone who is undesirable to the regime. A Minister of Justice is appointed who, due to so much lies and ignorance, is a source of ridicule. But his lies hurt society, they create confusion. They imprison former President Añez because they feel like it, out of sheer revenge, being scoundrels. And they do the same with those who have collaborated with her. No matter how responsible they are, the important thing is to get revenge for what they call a “coup”, which was just a well-deserved little peaceful push because Morales wanted to be a smartass blinded by his desire to stay in power eternally through fraud. That is the justice we have and the one that must be changed by punishing, in due course, those who administer it today.
[1] Chapare, (…) is a rural province in the northern region of Cochabamba Department in central Bolivia (…) In recent decades, the Chapare province has become a haven for illegal cultivation of the coca plant, which can be used to produce cocaine. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapare_Province. Visited on 14 June 2021.
* Translator’s note: All footnotes are introduced by the translator in order to help clarify unfamiliar terms.
Source: https://eldeber.com.bo/opinion/fiscales-del-odio-y-el-sometimiento_234829
The Scam
9 June 2021
The Scam
“In the end, what is the future?” reflects the curator, “an excuse to talk about the present.” Gregorio Belinchon.
To speak, also, of the past. In today’s Bolivia, since the current Covid-19 pandemic, it is impossible not to remember the burden of the past almost 14 years of President Evo Morales. It is a past that is cast as a dark shadow over the present and the future, no matter how much the regime and its men deny it. Consummate deniers.
However, some people remind the current President, Luis Arce, strongly: “Shut up, Mr. Arce, you’ve already done a lot of harm to our country… For years he was the cashier of the MAS [Government’s] waste that left us a health system, almost in ruins… he preferred spending on helicopters, museums, and palaces for his boss, rather than spending on hospital beds… he preferred spending on Persian carpets for his office rather than spending on intensive care units…”
This was reminded by the current Mayor of La Paz, Ivan Arias[1], who beat the candidate appointed by Morales himself, in the municipal elections of last March. And there is much more to remind the “cashier of the waste.” He was Minister of Economy for 12 years of the Morales era, 2006/2019, in times of hyper commodity prices. He believed that it was all due to his merit; perhaps, that’s why he was his heir apparent in the 2020 elections.
The Mayor of La Paz rubbed salt into the wound in this ill-fated third wave of the pandemic, without [the appropriate] health infrastructure to face this virus that infects and kills relentlessly, without beds for intensive care, without oxygen, without medicines, doctors without contracts and vaccines, against a legitimate desire to survive.
Today we are suffering the consequences of that enormous waste. In reality, it is a scam against the Bolivian society through the deceptive propaganda of the “process of change” and of the “native-indigenous-peasant” ethnic imposture, which did not lift the indigenous people or peasants out of their ancestral poverty. For economist Gonzalo Chavez, “in Bolivia, poverty, social exclusion, centralism, and racism were and are long-standing and just causes.” Morales deepened extractivism, he points out, taking advantage of the external boom in commodity prices. Oil expert Carlos Delius corroborates this, because the prices of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil, which influence the price formula for gas exported by Bolivia, “were on the rise.” From $14.24 per barrel in 1998, it rose to $66.05, at the beginning of exports to Brazil, in 2006. “The highest average price of the decade 2010-2019, was 93.28 dollars, that is, multiplied (93.28/14.24) = 6.55 times.” This variable “was not, nor is it, under the control of the seller Bolivia, or the buyer Brazil.” The bonanza was not the work of either Morales or Arce. (Hydrocarbon policy in crisis. The perfect storm. Millennium Foundation. May 2021.)
Morales and his Minister of Economy, current President, squandered that bonanza to the detriment of the national heritage and human development: health and education, above all. They ignored the development of the productive forces, the creation of productive work and employment, to reduce the phenomenon of “informality,” a true survival strategy practiced by between 70 and 80% of the population, given the meager supply of the public and private sector. At the same time, the corruption of the regime was a daily occurrence: influence-peddling in the entire State apparatus, total subordination of the Judicial Power, award of direct contracts without bidding, overprices in works and purchases without accountability, in addition to slapping the rule of law, the democratic coexistence among different people, with deaths, persecution, exiles, and all in collusion with coca-growing corporatism, so close to drug trafficking, smuggling gangs, and other atrocities.
The fact that the regime is tearing its hair out today for the $2.3 million bribe, via intermediaries, for the former government minister, Arturo Murillo, sounds like hypocrisy. It is to see the speck in another’s eye and not the beam in one’s own, which does not prevent demanding absolute transparency in past and present events. To cite an example, beyond the Indigenous Fund or the “favors” to Gabriela Zapata, Morales’ former sentimental partner, to the Chinese CAMC Company, and other cases: who authorized in 2012 the payment of more than $28 million to buy 16 barges and two pushers from the Korean company General Marine Business? Of those almost $30 million, “$3 million went into personal accounts,” according to Defense Minister Ruben Saavedra, years later. (Pagina Siete Newspaper. La Paz. 23-IV-2017) The barges never arrived. No highest authority of the Executive [Power] was prosecuted. “Rotten to the core,” Hannah Arendt would say. There are no excuses to leave the scam inflicted on Bolivian society buried in the past. It cannot be covered up by the denials of Morales, Arce, and the entire MAS. This multiple scam must be settled.
[1] [Author’s footnote] The Central Government subjects Arias to budget cuts, freezing of accounts; they invent lawsuits, they summon him to procedural hearings only for having been a minister in the Transitional Government of former President Jeanine Añez, whom they denigrate without measure or clemency.
Source: https://www.icees.org.bo/2021/06/la-estafa/
Vaccines and Geopolitics
8 May 2021
Vaccines and Geopolitics
President Luis Arce has told Bolivians that the contract for the purchase of Russian vaccines against the Chinese virus cannot be disseminated because it contains a “confidentiality clause.”
The Argentine Peronists[1] agreed to something similar with the Chinese: there, too, the [vaccine] details cannot be disseminated, but it is known that in exchange for vaccines, Argentina will surrender vast territories in Patagonia for the deployment of observation bases of the Chinese Communist Party. They say that said bases would be of astronomical interest, which leads you to ponder about the size of the bill.
Bolivia’s agreement with Russia regarding the vaccines has the same degree of secrecy as the one signed by the coca grower Morales for the nuclear plant in El Alto, very close to Senkata[2], an agreement that was happily halted during the Government of Jeanine Añez.
It will have to be assumed –since the [vaccine] details are not known– that the “confidentiality [clause]” refers to what Bolivia will pay for the vaccines, either in dollars, in [Chinese] yuan or with sovereignty, that is to say, surrendering territories.
It would be naive to think that the clause refers to the delays that could occur in the delivery of vaccines by Russia, delays that are already taking place at this time and have forced the Bolivian Government to order a change in the [time] interval between the first and the second doses. The deliveries are so delayed, that the interval [between doses] will no longer be 19 days, but three months. We will have to pray that there will be no further changes as the new deadline approaches.
In that case, Bolivian citizens would remain unprotected against the Chinese virus as they have been up to now, which is perhaps not a cause for concern for the MAS[3] Government, which is much more concerned in carrying out the anxious orders of revenge that the coca grower [Evo Morales] has than in caring for people’s health.
The worst thing would be for the clause to refer to what Bolivia will surrender to Russia in exchange for vaccines. The secrecy allows us to speculate that perhaps the Russians are now choosing as if they were reading a restaurant’s menu, what to order. It would be an “à la carte” surrender.
In order to stop these speculations, which are already widespread among Bolivians, the MAS Government would have to lift the veil that hides the agreement with the Russians… and the Chinese.
The people need to know what the price of this agreement is. And if it involves surrendering territories, it would be appropriate to submit this issue to a referendum, clarifying that, this time, the MAS [Government] must respect the result and not invent hoaxes like those invented for 21-F[4].
[1]“Definition of Peronism: the political, economic, and social principles and policies associated with[former President of Argentina, Juan] Peron and his regime and usually regarded as fascist.” Source: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Peronism.Visited on 9 June 2021.
[2] Senkata: Senkata is an area of El Alto, the second most populated city in Bolivia according to the 2012 census. It is located south of the city in District 8. Source: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senkata.Visited on 9 June 2021.
[3] MAS – Movement towards Socialism: The Movement towards Socialism – Political Instrument for the Sovereignty of the Peoples (MAS-IPSP) is a Bolivian socialist political party founded in 1997 and led by Evo Morales. The MAS-IPSP has ruled Bolivia since 2006, following its first victory in the December 2005 elections, with a single interruption during the 2019 political crisis. Source: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movimiento_al_Socialismo_(Bolivia). Visited on 9 June 2021.
[4] The 2016 Bolivian constitutional referendum was held on Sunday, February 21st of that year. The objective of that referendum was the approval or rejection of the constitutional modification project to allow the president or vice-president of the Bolivian State (who at that time were Evo Morales and Alvaro Garcia) to run for reelection in an election. The “No” option won with a total of 51.30% of the votes, while the “Yes” option obtained 48.70% of the remaining votes. Source: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refer%C3%A9ndum_constitucional_de_Bolivia_de_2016. Visited on 9 June 2021.
* Translator’s note: All footnotes are introduced by the translator in order to help clarify unfamiliar terms.
Source:
THE “PITITAS”, THE BEST OF 2019
28 December 2019
THE “PITITAS”, THE BEST OF 2019
Its content is very comprehensive, as it would have acquired a plurality of connotations such as: freedom, resistance, rebellion, emancipation, organization, union, integration, etc. Due to its effects, it also reached a highly philosophical content, without prejudice to what those who have been displaced from power think and interpret, for whom, given the trauma and their pain, it could be synonymous with a coup d’état.
Who would say, some harmless and innocent pititas, managed to put an end to a disgraceful regime. The creator of its impact, Evo Morales himself, surely must endure terrible sufferings when that magnificent word and its meanings echo in his ears, which he paradoxically coined himself. Not to mention his militancy. Perhaps they will ask, in “safeguarding their human rights”, to withdraw the word, pita from the Dictionary of the Royal Academic of the Spanish Language, because of the suffering and torture that hearing it causes them.
The anthology speech made by Morales in Cochabamba on Thursday, October 24, four days after the intense conflict began, triggered, 17 days later, the dictator’s departure. The word pititas quickly became the symbol of resistance, to later crystallize into an emblem, to which Bolivians will surely resort to, whenever a ruler, be it from the left or the right, tries to impose abuses, whims, or arbitrariness. For Bolivians, this emblem is today, the greatest expression of participatory democracy, given the intrinsic limitations of representative democracy and the ballot box.
Now, with the pititas, we can be subjects and first-rate actors in crucial political decisions. From now on, the pititas will not only become the best safeguard against bad governments, but also the demand for good governments. It will also be instituted as a latent threat, in the face of any iniquity or evil slip. This lesson would have to be very well learned by the political class. They should never forget that the rebellion of the Pititas put an end to an abominable regime, with claims of eternal power.
As almost everything in political life has its paradoxes, the author of the meaning and connotations of the term, ended up being the main victim; like, according to legend, Guillotin, inventor of the guillotine. Morales must curse that hour in which, in an ironic and burlesque tone, ridiculing the pititas, he offered to give workshops and seminars on how to block efficiently. Suddenly, if he hadn’t spilled those words, “… I’ve been surprised, now two, three people tying up threads”, he would probably still be in power. The truth is that those words encouraged and inflamed the rebellion uncontrollably. Those who speak of a coup, by the way, do nothing more than highlight their acute levels of mental retardation.
Now, in terms of its multiple connotations, the term expresses freedom, that freedom of the sovereign and his own will, to act against situations and laws that repel reason. It also denotes resistance, in terms of active and defensive reaction, against despotism and injustice. Likewise, it enunciates rebellion, that is, the public uprising against the abusive regime, with the intention of overthrowing it. Among its various meanings, it also expresses emancipation, that action of freeing oneself from servitude, subordination, or dependence. It also manifests organization, as the main force of political action in the streets. Without organization, we would not have had this outcome. Also, among its various connotations, it shows the union, beyond the differences of class, origin, or race. That was seen in the roundabouts and street corners. Likewise, it expresses integration, in this case regional, between East and West.
Notice, then, the qualities of the senses that the term acquired. It undoubtedly keeps an extraordinary potency. In historical terms, it would have been great to gather the thousands of pititas, perhaps millions, that were “tied up” throughout the country and place them in a museum, as a sample, for the next generations, of the force of their meaning and the unwavering struggle of Bolivians in defense of democracy.
Thus, this crystallized emblem is the most important of 2019. It marks a milestone in the history of our rugged democracy. It also leaves many lessons to the general public, and, fundamentally, to the political class, who should never lose sight of the meaning and meanings that the term acquired.
Those pititas can be reactivated at any time.
Source: https://www.lostiempos.com/actualidad/opinion/20191228/columna/pititas-mejor-2019