[rad-green] Bernie Sanders' Stance on Bolivia Matters

*https://www.truthdig.com/articles/bernie-sanders-stance-on-bolivia-matters/
<https://www.truthdig.com/articles/bernie-sanders-stance-on-bolivia-matters/>TRUTHDIG
        NOV 18, 2019*

*Bernie Sanders' Stance on Bolivia Matters*

[image: Bernie Sanders' Stance on Bolivia Matters]*Sen. Bernie Sanders,
I-Vt., speaks during a presidential forum hosted by Univision in Long
Beach, Calif., on Saturday. (Chris Carlson / AP)*

*By Jacob Sugarman*

Toward the end of Saturday night’s Democratic forum
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWZK644nVrE> hosted by the Spanish
language network Univision, moderator Jorge Ramos posed what can charitably
be called a leading question to 2020 hopeful Bernie Sanders. Ramos, who
cemented his place in the public consciousness when then-candidate Donald
Trump had him tossed from a news conference
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AghbhqhHMgs> in 2015, noted that Sanders
had called the overthrow of Bolivian President Evo Morales a “coup,”
<https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/1194000920696229889?s=20> but
that others maintain that Morales was attempting to become a dictator. So
what does Sanders think?

In a Democratic field that seems to grow more
<https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/11/8/18221878/michael-bloomberg-2020-president-campaign-democrat-policies>
 crowded
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/14/former-massachusetts-governor-deval-patrick-enters-2020-president-race-democrats>
by
the month if not the week, the Vermont senator’s answer was nothing short
of revelatory. “I don’t agree with that assertion,” he said. “I think
Morales did a very good job in alleviating poverty and giving the
indigenous people of Bolivia a voice that they never had before. Now we can
argue about his going for a fourth term, whether that was a wise thing to
do. … But at the end of the day, it was the military who intervened in that
process and asked him to leave. When the military intervenes, Jorge, in my
view, that’s called a ‘coup.’ *”*

Since Morales’ forced resignation, the response of leading Democrats and
presidential hopefuls has been one of almost total silence
<https://www.salon.com/2019/11/13/sanders-has-denounced-coup-but-biden-warren-and-buttigieg-so-far-silent-on-overthrow-of-bolivias-morales/>,
even among the party’s putative progressives.

As video
<https://twitter.com/BenjaminNorton/status/1193689050894475264?s=20> emerged
of right-wing protesters burning the flag
<https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/11/14/we-dont-want-any-dictators-bolivians-flood-streets-protest-right-wing-anti>
of
the indigenous Wiphala and pro-coup police officers gleefully cutting it
off their uniforms
<https://twitter.com/BenjaminNorton/status/1194080182077939713?s=20>, Sen.
Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., declined to comment publicly despite the gruesome
precedent <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_Bolivian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat> in
the region. (She has since issued a tepid tweet
<https://twitter.com/ewarren/status/1196519189583974402> calling on
Bolivian security forces to “protect demonstrators, not commit violence
against them.”) The same can be said of Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, who
has made opposition to U.S. regime change the centerpiece of her campaign,
although her anti-imperialism has always been questionable at best
<https://www.thenation.com/article/clinton-tulsi-gabbard/>. Chris Murphy,
D-Conn., an outspoken critic
<https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/yemen-war-us-involvement-758414/>
of
the U.S.-backed Saudi war in Yemen, could only muster the following on
social media:
[image: image.png]

Given that the U.S. has repeatedly backed coup attempts in Venezuela, most
recently throwing its support behind President of the National Assembly
Juan Guaidó, the last line of that tweet seems confusing at best and
ominous at worst. What, after all, is the United States’ to botch? By
contrast, British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn instantly condemned
<https://twitter.com/jeremycorbyn/status/1193657983219257344> Morales’
removal from office as an assault on “democracy, social justice and
independence.” Both Trump and Prime Minister Boris Jonson have officially
recognized Bolivia’s interim government.

In the week since, the crisis in Bolivia has grown increasingly deadly. The
Bolivian military has slaughtered dozens of demonstrators
<https://www.democracynow.org/2019/11/18/headlines/bolivian_military_massacres_9_people_at_indigenous_pro_morales_march>,
and over the past two days, hand-picked president, Jeanine Áñez, has issued
a pair of disturbing edicts. The first is that the Bolivian military will
not be prosecuted for crimes committed in the suppression of protests,
providing it with what members of the socialist MAS party are calling
a “license
to kill” <https://twitter.com/camilateleSUR/status/1196100597554044929>;
the second is the creation of a “special government apparatus”
<https://www.lostiempos.com/actualidad/pais/20191117/gobierno-creara-aparato-especial-fiscalia-detener-legisladores-que-hagan>
to
detain MAS lawmakers, who constitute a two-thirds majority
<https://twitter.com/ryangrim/status/1196224557633409025?s=20> in the
Bolivian legislature. Meanwhile, Argentinian journalists have been chased
from the country under the threat of violence
<https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/mundo/2019/11/jornalistas-argentinos-decidem-deixar-bolivia-apos-receberem-ameacas.shtml>
.

Ánez, whose deceptively named Democratic Social Movement Party won just 4.2%
<https://twitter.com/AlanRMacLeod/status/1195782413659582464?s=20> of the
vote in the October elections, has called a New Year’s celebration of the
Aymara people “satanic”
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/15/world/americas/morales-bolivia-Indigenous-racism.html>
and
has referred to Morales as a “pobre indio” (a poor Indian). Upon assuming
office, she declared that “La Biblia vuelve al palacio”
<https://twitter.com/CNNArgentina/status/1194399284210348033> (“the Bible
has returned to the presidential palace”), bearing an oversize scripture to
re-enforce the point. The New York Times notes
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/16/world/americas/bolivia-anez-morales.html>
that
she has made her speeches “shadowed by an aide carrying a cross.”

None of this absolves Morales of his apparent illiberalism or real missteps
<https://jacobinmag.com/2019/10/bolivian-election-evo-morales-mas-opposition>
in
office. As his critics in Western media eagerly
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/11/world/americas/evo-morales-bolivia-resignation-coup.html>
 observe
<https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/11/16/was-there-a-coup-in-bolivia>,
he narrowly lost a 2016 referendum
<https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-35628093> to determine his
eligibility for a fourth term, receiving approval instead from his
country’s Supreme Tribunal of Justice. Along similar lines, the U.S.-backed
Organization of American States
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organization_of_American_States> has
reported irregularities in 2019’s presidential elections, although those remain
in dispute
<https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/11/evo-morales-bolivia-coup-election-fraud-organization-of-american-states>.
As “Empire’s Workshop”
<https://www.amazon.com/Empires-Workshop-America-Imperialism-American/dp/0805083235/ref=sr_1_1?crid=G65LTOQSZGUG&keywords=empire%27s+workshop&qid=1574109732&s=books&sprefix=empire%27s+workshop%2Caps%2C263&sr=1-1>
author
and Latin American historian Greg Grandin recently wrote
<https://jacobinmag.com/2019/11/greg-grandin-bolivia-evo-morales-coup-latin-america>,
“there has never been a coup in Latin America where the president being
overthrown wasn’t considered ‘problematic.’ (Yes, not even [Salvador]
Allende.)” Indeed, The Economist blamed
<https://twitter.com/adamjohnsonNYC/status/1195050978577461251?s=20> the
Chilean president directly for Augusto Pinochet’s seizure of power in 1973.

It seems telling, then, that the military asked Morales to resign *after* he
agreed—likely under duress—to a second election
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/10/evo-morales-concedes-to-new-elections-after-serious-irregularities-found>.
And while the current Secretary General of OAS Luis Almagro will not,
former Secretary General José Miguel Insulza has said that Bolivia’s
democratic interregnum meets the political definition of “un golpe”
<http://www.nanduti.com.py/2019/11/18/exsecretario-la-oea-hubo-golpe-estado-bolivia/>
(a
coup).

So why can’t Democrats do the same? Whether the Trump administration is
directly responsible for Morales’ overthrow or the U.S. is merely the
passive beneficiary of a new market-friendly
<https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-bolivian-coup-comes-down-to-one-precious-mineral/>
and
increasingly Christofascist regime
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/16/world/americas/bolivia-anez-morales.html>
is,
ultimately, beside the point. (A passing familiarity with Bolivian history
or Operation Condor <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor> more
broadly point to the former, to say nothing of the attempts in Venezuela
earlier this year, although I am loath to speculate.) Any presidential
candidate who claims to represent workers and marginalized communities, who
even nominally opposes U.S. imperialism, should be able to identify a coup
as such. If they can’t, why should we trust them to implement a just and
holistic foreign policy?

It’s a basic test that the party has, to date, failed miserably—one that
not only illuminates the threat Sanders poses to America’s two-party
duopoly but renders absurd the notion that he shares the politics of Warren
or any other 2020 contender.

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