On Jan. 20, Eliecer Erlinto Chamorro AKA “Antonio García,” leader of the National Liberation Army (ELN), released a video stating that although the group collects taxes from cocaine producers in its territory, it does not operate cocaine production facilities or drug trafficking networks.

In a message posted on X, Petro confirmed his acceptance of the proposal, stating that the body responsible for verifying the rebel group’s claims must be “scientific and independent of governments,” and should submit its findings to the United Nations. He also urged the rebels to support efforts aimed at replacing coca crops in the northeastern Catatumbo region, a key area for cocaine production.

The announcement comes amid ongoing scrutiny of Colombia’s long-running conflict and its entanglement with the drug trade. By endorsing an independent investigation, Petro signaled a willingness to subject both government narratives and rebel claims to international scrutiny, potentially reshaping accountability within Colombia.

President Petro has repeatedly criticized corruption within previous governments, recently writing on X that what he called the “most corrupt government of this century” was responsible for the killing of up to 6,402 young people who were falsely presented as guerrillas, as well as the loss of billions in public health funds. Recognizing a pattern of impunity, his decision to back an independent investigation signals an effort to strengthen accountability and reassert the rule of law.

According to United Nations figures, Colombia recorded its largest cocaine seizures between 2023 and 2024, and extradited 700 drug traffickers to the United States and the European Union.

From JURIST, Feb. 16. Used with permission. Internal links added.

Photo: Colombia Reports

According to the US Treasury Department, the sanctions mean that all properties and property interests owned in the United States by President Petro, his family, or Benedetti are blocked and must be reported to the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). Blocking freezes the assets, meaning that they remain the property of the current owner but cannot be transferred or used without OFAC permission.

The Department of State said the move was “due to President Gustavo Petro’s disastrous and ineffective counternarcotics policies,” adding that President Donald Trump made it clear in a Sept. 15 determination that:

Colombia is “failing demonstrably” to uphold its drug control responsibilities… The United States will not turn a blind eye to Petro’s appeasement and emboldening of narco-terrorists. We are committed to bringing terrorists and drug traffickers to justice and preventing deadly illegal drugs from entering our country. There must be no impunity for drug traffickers or acts of terrorism or violence by criminal armed groups… Today’s decision is…a reflection the failures and incompetence of Gustavo Petro and his inner circle.

President Trump added to reporters: “He’s a guy that is making a lot of drugs. He better watch it, or we’ll take very serious action against him and his country.”

President Petro retorted:

Combating drug trafficking effectively for decades brings me this measure from the government of the society we helped so much to stop its use of cocaine. Against the calumnies that high-ranking officials have hurled at me on US soil, I will defend myself judicially with American lawyers in the US courts.

The Colombian government has recalled its ambassador to the United States in response to the White House move.

The government of Venezuela, also a target of the Trump administration’s military operations in the region, decried the sanctions against Petro, calling them “illegal, illegitimate, and neocolonial actions that violate international law and the Charter of the United Nations.” The statement said the measures seek to “promote the internal destabilization” of Colombia.

The sanctions are the latest step in escalating tensions between the US and Colombia.

In a related move, the US Department of Defense (now called “Department of War” by the Trump administration) announced that it was moving the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford and its group to the Caribbean Sea. The Ford, which the US Navy calls “the most capable, adaptable, and lethal combat platform in the world,” is currently being pulled from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean. As of last week, the US military had approximately 10,000 personnel in the Caribbean region.

The Colombian military has long received US training and weapons for anti-narcotics operations. Elizabeth Dickinson, a senior analyst for the Andes region at the International Crisis Group, told the Los Angeles Times: “If the United States was truly interested in combating organized crime and drug trafficking, why would they alienate the one partner in the region who is capable and willing to help?”

This sentiment has been echoed by more prominent figures. “In a fight between the world’s largest drug producer and the world’s largest drug consumer, only organized crime wins,” former Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos said at a forum in Barcelona, Spain. “As long as we have two presidents who insult each other on Twitter every day, [combating crime] will be more difficult.”

From JURIST, Oct. 27. Used with permission.

Note: On Sept 26, the US announced the revocation of Gustavo Petro’s visa after he briefly joined a pro-Palestine demonstration in New York that day. Petro, in the city for the meeting of the UN General Assembly, spoke to the crowd outside the United Nations building, speaking in Spanish through a megaphone. Seeming to address the militarization in the Caribbean, he said: “I ask all the soldiers of the army of the United States not to point their guns at people. Disobey the orders of Trump. Obey the orders of humanity.”

The US State Department responded: “We will revoke Petro’s visa due to his reckless and incendiary actions.” (Reuters)

Photo via MROnline

The White House was quick to blame Colombian President Gustavo Petro directly, arguing in its submission to Congress that the “failure of Colombia to meet its drug control obligations over the past year rests solely with its political leadership.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio called Petro “erratic” and “not a very good partner in taking on the drug cartels.” Trump’s determination contrasted Petro with the “skill and courage” of Colombia’s security forces and municipal authorities in confronting criminal groups—although the mayors of five major Colombian cities (Bogotá, Medellin, Cali, Barranquilla and Cartagena) visited the United Statesin early September to lobby against decertification.

A longtime critic of the US-led War on Drugs, Petro denounced Trump’s move in a televised cabinet meeting. As he has many times before, Petro blamed US demand for his country’s drug problem. Petro reiterated his opposition to coca eradication efforts, which have largely targeted low-level producers through aerial fumigations of cancer-causing chemicals while arming military (and, by extension, paramilitary) forces to wage war on “narcoguerrillas”—who were too often simply coca-growing peasants. Instead, Petro has sought to target the criminal structures that ship cocaine internationally. Though his government has seized more cocaine than any previous Colombian administration, coca cultivation has tripled in the last decade. Violence as a result of the battle to control the trade has also sharply escalated over the past years.

Petro has also condemned the politicized nature of US drug policy, pointing to the Trump administration’s threats against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and its lethal strikes against alleged drug traffickers at sea. Washington’s use of the term “narco-terrorists” in the announcement of Colombia’s decertification—a term it has also leveled against Maduro—raises fears of broader intervention, moving from the seas to land. Petro’s left-wing politics and defense of migrants have drawn the ire of the Trump administration, and Rubio himself has called the Colombian president an “agent of chaos.”

Given that the Trump administration waived the sanctions that usually follow decertification—including massive cuts in US assistance and an automatic “no” vote on loans from international financial institutions—analysts argued the move was largely symbolic. Nevertheless, Colombia may now struggle to attract foreign investment, one of the many reasons that Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) warned in the days before the announcement that the US should not decertify. WOLA noted that Colombia’s last decertification in the mid-1990s, which included some sanctions, only spurred a massive boom in drug production, paramilitary and guerrilla territorial expansion, and violence. “The decades-old US practice of judging and punishing other states for allegedly substandard counter-drug performance through decertification is an antiquated, blunt, counterproductive foreign policy tool that should no longer exist,” WOLA wrote ahead of the decision.

Though Washington left the door open to reversing course if the Colombian government takes “more aggressive action,” Petro responded defiantly by freezing arms purchases, rejecting US aid, and accusing the United States of meddling in Colombia’s upcoming 2026 elections. The accusation is not unfounded: the plan by former Foreign Minister Álvaro Leyvato overthrow Petro that was thwarted last June—and detailed in a bombshell report by Spain’s El País—was pitched to US officials and involved decertification as a crucial first step.

From NACLA Update, Sept. 19. Slightly edited. Internal links added.

Note: While Venezuela and Myanmar (Burma) have been frequently decertified over the years, this marks the first time Colombia has been decertified since 1997. Colombia was decertified in 1996 and 1997 with no “national interest waiver” from sanctions.

Map: PCL

But three days earlier, cocaleros of the Departmental Association of Coca Producers (ADEPCOCA) marched in La Paz, accusing the government of attempting to undermine the organization’s legal monopoly on sale of coca leaf by establishing a “parallel market” in the city, run by loyalists of the ruling party. ADEPCOCA announced formation of a “Self-defense Committee” to forcibly shut down the “parallel market” in the city’s Villa El Carmen district if the government does not act. (La Razón, EFE)

An Aug. 2 ADEPCOCA march to demand action in the matter erupted into clashes with the police. Cocaleros launched dynamite caps, while police responded with tear-gas. Cocaleroleader Carlos Choque exhorted over a loudspeaker: “We are asking that this alleged market for the sale of coca, which has nothing to do with the legal market of ADEPCOCA, be closed immediately. We will not be afraid even if they try to shoot us; we are not going anywhere.”

Last October, thousands of cocaleros stormed the main coca market in La Paz, sparking clashes with security forces. A struggle for control the official ADEPCOCA market led to the establishment of the new market in Villa El Carmen, as a part of the government’s “parallelism” strategy. (AFP, AFP)

Photo: ADEPCOCA via La Razón

However, the statement also made clear that two remnant factions of the FARC that refused to accept the peace deal and remain in arms (known in Colombia as “dissident” guerillas)  are being added to the list. Secretary Antony Blinken said on Twitter: “Today’s revocation of FARC’s terrorist designations is a credit to the 2016 Peace Accord with the Colombian government. Our new designations of two new terrorist groups will continue to isolate those who engage in terrorism at the expense of the Colombian people.”

The two newly listed factions are La Segunda Marquetalia and the FARC-EP. This second formation takes the formal acronym of the original Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-Army of the People, and is said to be led by Miguel Santanilla Botache, AKA “Gentil Duarte.” (El Espectador, Reuters)

The de-listing of the today non-existent FARC was nonetheless met with some opposition. In a heated exchange with Assistant Secretary of State Brian Nichols on the floor of Congress, Sen. Marco Rubio asserted (plausibly) that Colombia’s hardline President Iván Duque did not agree with the move. (El Tiempo)

‘Dissidents’ in disarray
Since then, the FARC “dissident” factions that were added to the FTO list have apparently met with some reversals. Colombian media reported Dec. 5 that Hernan Dario Velasquez AKA “El Paisa,” a  Segunda Marquetalia commander who had been named in the State Department announcement, was killed in an ambush in Venezuela’s western Apure state. (El Tiempo)

A second commander of the outfit, also named by the State Department, Henry Castellanos Garzon AKA “Romaña,” was later said to have been killed in the same attack. (Colombia Report)

The Colombian military denied responsibility for the ambush. It is surmised that it was carried out by bounty-hunters or mercenaries hoping to cash in a reward quietly offered by the Venezuelan government. The “dissident” factions have been granted refuge in Venezuelan territory, but have recently fallen out with the Caracas regime.

Paramilitaries don’t make the FTO list
A commentary on the FARC de-listing in Colombia Reports protests that the right-wing paramilitary groups now active across the country are still not listed by the State Department. It especially notes that the Gaitanista Self-defense Forces of Colombia (AGC) was not added to the list despite the fact that it is behind much of the violence—and is in fact recognized by the US government as the paramilitary wing of the “Clan del Golfo,” believed to be Colombia’s largest drug trafficking organization. Colombia’s illegal armed groups carried out more than 200 “acts of terror” between January and October, according to the Defense Ministry.

The United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), the overall umbrella group for the right-wing paramilitaries, was listed as an FTO in 2001, and removed from the list in 2014, a decade after it agreed to demobilize. But numerous paramilitary factions refused to lay down arms, and continue to wage a campaign of terror throughout Colombia.

Campesino leaders targeted for death
These resurgent paramilitary forces are overwhelmingly behind the ongoing campaign of assassinations of social leaders in Colombia, which only continues to escalate.

Leaders of campesino communities are particularly targeted. Dec. 5 saw the saying of Armando José Castro Morales, president of the Communal Action Committee in Nariño municipality, Caldas department, gunned down by masked men near his home in the vereda (hamlet) of Cristales. He had been active in promoting crop-substitution programs and working against coca cultivation in the community. (Contagio Radio, Dec. 6)

John Alexander Sierra, an activist with the local group Emprendimientos Juveniles (Youth Ventures), was slain by unknown gunmen at corregimiento (rural district) La Marina, Tuluá municipality, Valle del Cauca department, on Nov. 25. (Contagio Radio, Nov. 30)

On Nov. 8, Luis Alberto Ramos Bertel, president of the Communal Action Committee at Montelíbano municipality, Córdoba department, was found shot and beaten to death. He had been a leader of the local Campesino Association of the Sur de Córdoba (ASCSUCOR). (El Espectador, Nov. 8)

On Oct. 7, Jorge Antonio Loaiza, a leader of the Perla Amazónica Campesino Reserve Zone, was slain in an attack near his home in Nuevo Progreso, Puerto Caicedo municipality, Putumayo department. (Contagio Radio, Oct. 7) Campesino Reserve Zones are peasant autonomous zones that the rural movement has been declaring, where lands are reserved for small-holders.

Indigenous, Afro-Colombian leaders targeted
Indigenous leaders are also especially singled out. The Organization of Indigenous Awá Reserves of the Pacific (ORIPAP) reported Dec. 1 that a local youth, John Jairo García, was found dead hours after having been abducted by armed men from his home on the resguardo(reserve) of Gran Rosario, Nariño department. (El Espectador, Dec. 2) Two local youth were also slain in September at the nearby Awá resguardo of Gran Sábalo. (Contagio Radio, Sept. 21) The Awá are considered a “threatened” indigenous group that have been repeatedly targeted for assassination.

Efrén Antonio Bailarín Carupa, former governor of Embera resguardo Chidima Toló, Chocó department, was shot dead while fishing in a local stream on Sept. 16. (El Espectador, Sept. 17) Two days later, Dilio Bailarín, a member of the Indigenous Guard at the nearby Resguardo Alto Guayabal was gunned down on a local road. Both men had received threats from the AGC. (Contagio Radio, Sept. 20)

Afro-Colombian communities are similarly targeted. On Nov. 4, Edinson Valenzuela Cuama, coordinator for sports and culture at the Afro-descendant comunity of Río Raposo, Buenaventura municipality, Valle del Cauca, was slain when unknown gunmen fired into his home. (Contagio Radio, Nov. 5)

Labor organizers targeted
Labor organizers are also of course targeted. On Nov. 7, Robinson Jiménez, a local leader of the Sindical Worker Union (USO) who was organizing oil workers in Bucaramanga, Santander department, died in hospital a month after he was shot in the nearby town of Puerto Wilches. (El Tiempo, Nov. 8)

Jesús Albeiro Gutiérrez, a local leader of the national strike that shut down much of Colombia earlier this year, was found dead Aug. 25 days after he was abducted in Popayán, capital of Cauca department. (Contagio Radio, Aug. 31) On Aug. 23, a student photojournalist in Popayán, who had covered the national strike for the alternative publication Contra Portada, was shot down on the city streets by gunmen who fired from a motorcycle. In 2018, he had lost an eye to a tear-gas canister fired by the ESMAD National Police riot squad while covering student protests in Popayán. (Colombia Informa, Aug. 23).

According to INDEPAZ, an independent group that monitors the peace process, 162 social leaders and human rights defenders have been killed in Colombia so far this year.

Earlier in the year, INDEPAZ released a figure of 1,200 social leaders and rights defenders killed snce the peace accords were instated five years ago. (El Tiempo, July 9)

Demobilized FARC fighters targeted
Former FARC guerillas who have complied with the peace accords and laid down arms are also being targeted for assassination. Nov. 11 saw the slaying of Mario Alejandro Eslava, a demobilized FARC fighter in the Territorial Space for Training & Reintegration (ETCR) of Mariana Pérez in Mesetas municipality, Meta department. According to human rights monitors, he was the 44th demobilized FARC fighter slain this year. (Cuarto de Hora, Nov. 11)

Over 300 former FARC fighters have been killed since the peace accords were instated. (UN News, Dec. 23) This comes to a rate of one slain every six days. (El Tiempo, Sept. 26)

On Oct. 14, María Steffania Muñoz Villa was slain along with her young niece in an attack by unknown armed men at vereda Mazamorreros, Buenos Aires municipality, Cauca. According to rights monitors, she was the 10th woman ex-guerilla slain since instatement of the peace accords. (El Espectador, Oct. 14)

Nor are these attacks all in remote rural areas. On Oct. 12, demobilized guerilla Jhon Jairo Moreno Naranjo was gunned down at a meeting of Cauca campesinos leaders being held in the historic center of Popayán. (Contagio Radio, Oct. 13)

And left-wing politicians
Highly visible figures in Colombia’s left-opposition political parties are also apparently marked for death. Pamphlets signed by the “Capital Bloc” of the Águilas Negras paramilitary group were left at locations around Bogotá this month, threatening the lives of left-wing presidential hopefuls Francia Márquez and Gustavo Petro. (El Espectador, Dec. 4)

Gustavo Petro, currently a senator with Colombia Humana party, is far ahead in the polls, scoring at 42%, far ahead of the two closest runner-ups: the centrist Sergio Fajardo with 19%, and Oscar Ivan Zuluaga of President Duque’s far-right (and ironically named) Democratic Center party, with 13%, according to pollster Invamer. (Colombia Reports)

Photo via Contagio Radio

Cormacarena tweeted in response to the assassination, “Nothing will deter the work we carry out to combat deforestation in the south of Meta.”

In September, Colombia’s Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology & Environmental Studies (IDEAM) issued a report finding an astonishing 83% increase in deforestation in the adjoining departments of Meta, Guaviare and Caquetá, with an estimated 64,000 hectares cleared. (El Tiempo, El Tiempo, El Espectador, El Espectador, Semana, Semana, EFE)

Photo: Página Siete

Morales initially took refuge in Chapare after being ousted in La Paz, before accepting temporary exile in Mexico. In the aftermath of the Nov. 11 ouster, the Six Federations of the Tropic of Cochabamba, the cocalero alliance formerly led by Morales, mobilized to resist the new regime. The region was cut off by cocalero roadblocks, and nine National Police stations were burned. The roadblocks have since been relaxed, but large areas of the province are without any National Police presence and effectively independent. Jaime Zurita, police commander of Cochabamaba department, admitted that his forces had lost control of Chapare province. “If there are no conditions, we cannot send the police to work there,” he said. (Pagina Siete, La Paz, Dec. 7)

Morales arrived in Argentina Dec. 13, where the government says he has been granted asylum. President Alberto Fernandez has rejected an extradition request by Murillo, who is seeking to try Morales on “terrorism” charges. Fernandez said Dec. 19 that his government “will not hand over for any reason” the former Bolivian president. (TeleSur, Dec. 19; La Nación, Buenos Aires, Dec. 13)

Mexico’s Exterior Secretary Marcelo Ebrard meanwhile accused the Bolivian regime of ramping up its police presence outside his government’s embassy in La Paz, and threatened to open a case before the International Court of Justice. Bolivia’s Foreign Minister Karen Longaric said such a move would be a “mistake” based on a “legal fallacy.” (Global News, Dec. 26; Reuters, Dec. 23)

Photo: Ollie Vargas via Twitter

“We are going to participate in the elections and we are going to do it with young candidates, especially for president and vice-president,” Henry Cabrera, MAS vice-president of the Chamber of Deputies, told Reuters before the new law approved. “We are not going to recycle candidates.” (Reuters, Nov. 21)

But the day before the law was approved, the new regime’s Government Minister Arturo Murillo called a press conference to announce that he is opening a criminal case against Evo Morales on “terrorism and sedition” charges, and would seek a 30-year prison term for the ousted president. Murillo presented as evidence a video recording in which Morales, now exiled in Mexico, appears to be calling on his supporters to “strangle” Bolivian cities by erecting roadblocks to cut off fuel and food. (The Guardian, Nov. 24; BBC News, Unitel, Bolivia, Nov. 22)

The video, supposedly recovered when National Police broke up an indigenous roadblock in Santa Cruz department, is said to show a speaker-phone conversation between Morales and a local supporter on the ground. The supporter is identified as Faustino Yucra Yarwui, a cocalero leader who has been fugutive from narco-trafficking charges since 2016. In the video, the voice purported to be that of Morales can be heard saying: “Brother, don’t let food enter the cities, we’ll block it. It’s a real siege… We are going to win. If the Assembly rejects my resignation, I will try whatever it takes to get back, even if they arrest me.” (PanAm Post, Nov. 26; Los Tiempos, Los Tiempos, Cochcabamba, Nov. 25; Eju!, Santa Cruz, Nov. 22; Los Tiempos, Nov. 20)

Morales responded on Twitter that the government is investigating him on the basis of “manipulated recordings,” while for the “30 brothers assassinated in #Bolivia by bullet, there is no investigation, no one held responsible or detained.”

After days of unrest and deadly repression since Morales’ ouster, however, there are signs of de-escalation. As a fruit of the dialogue, leaders of the Six Federations of the Tropic of Cochabamba, the coca-growers union once led by Morales, agreed on Nov. 26 to dismantle the roadblocks they had been maintaining in the Chapare region since the change of regime two weeks ago. A key concession was the government’s agreement to overturn Áñez’s Supreme Decree 4078, which exempted the security forces from legal responsibility for acts of repression. (ANF, Nov. 26)

In another sign of de-escalation, lawmaker Rafael Quispe, a traditional Aymara leader from La Paz department and a leading figure in the indigenous opposition to Evo Morales, was sworn in by Áñez on Nov. 26 as the new leader of Bolivia’s Indigenous Fund (FONDIOC), a body formerly shaken by corruption scandals. Quispe appeared at the ceremony in full Aymara regalia—weating a lluch’u, traditional bowler-type hat, and poncho, and holding a chicote, or staff of authority, along with coca-leaf and other sacred herbs—surrounded by a delegation of indigenous leaders from across the Altiplano. (PáginaSiete, El Pais, Tarija, Nov. 26)

Photo of Rafael Quispe being sworn in via El Pais, Tarija

Campesinos from the coca-growers union formerly led by Morales, the Six Federations of the Tropic of Cochabamba, launched a new mobilization from Sacaba the following day, and actually reached the outer periphery of Cochabamba city before they were turned back by a police charge and tear-gas. The elite anti-riot force, UTOP, the first unit of the security forces to rebel against Morales in the prelude to his resignation, lead these operations.

Over the past days, scattered clashes between protesters and police were reported at various places in the country, with two killed Nov. 13 at Yapacaní in Santa Cruz department.  Police also fired tear-gas to disperse demonstrators outside the presidential palace in La Paz that day, where a march from the outlying working-class city of El Alto had culminated to oppose the power transfer to Jeanine Áñez, the conservative Senate leader now assuming the role of interim president. Many of the protesters from El Alto were armed with clubs and shields improvised from metal sheets, and chanted “¡Ahora si, guerra civil!” (Yes now, civil war!)

The Defensoría issued a statement Nov. 16 counting 18 killed across the country “throughout the days of the conflict,” although it did make clear if this just means in the days since Morales’ resignation Nov. 10 or also in the preceding weeks of unrest.  (Los Tiempos,  Los Tiempos, Los Tiempos, Cochabamba, Nov. 16; Los Tiempos, Los Tiempos, La Razón, La Paz, InfoBae, Argentina, Nov. 15; BBC News, DeIinformemonos, Nov. 14)

Hours after the killings at Sacaba, de facto interim president Áñez issued a decree exempting the security forces from legal responsibility for acts of repression, for an unspecified period. “Personnel of the Armed Forces who participate in operations for the restoration of order and public security will be exempt from penal responsibility when in compliance with their constitutional functions, acting in legitimate defense or a state of necessity,” the decree read. (La Gaceta, Tucumán, Argentina, Nov. 16)

Áñez—who has now been recognized by several foreign governments, including the US, Russia and Brazil—met with UN envoy Jean Arnault after the Sacaba violence. UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet issued a statement calling the deaths “an extremely dangerous development.” She added: “I am really concerned that the situation in Bolivia could spin out of control if the authorities do not handle it sensitively and in accordance with international norms.” (AP, Nov. 16; Moscow Times, Nov. 14)

After the Sacaba bloodshed, Evo Morales, now exiled in Mexico, tweeted: “The dictatorship of Jeanine Áñez and the coup-plotters [golpistas] Mesa and Camacho enjoy the complicity of ex-defenders of the people Albarracín and Villena to massacre the humble people who march peacefully to return to democracy. They will have to answer for serious crimes against humanity.” This is a reference to opposition leaders Carlos Mesa and Luis Fernando Camacho, and to  Waldo Albarracín and Rolando Villena, rights advocates who had both served as chief of the Defensoría del Pueblo under Morales but threw in their lot with the opposition after last month’s contested elections. On Oct. 22, Amnesty International issued an alert saying that Albarracín had been attacked by Morales supporters during a protest.

Morales later tweeted, “To justify the coup, Mesa and Camacho accused us of ‘dictatorship’. Now their self-appointed ‘president’ and her cabinet of defenders of rapists and repressors massacre the people with the Armed Forces and the Police, like the real dictatorship. #NoAlGolpeDeEstadoEnBolivia”

In another tweet, he noted that the Sacaba massacre took place on the same day the Aymara revolutionary leader Tupac Katari was executed by the Spanish in 1781. “Now, the coup-plotters [golpistas] massacre indigenous and humble people for asking for democracy.”

Morales told reporters in Mexico that Washington “is the great conspirator” behind the “coup d’etat.” He added: “I want to say that we are going to have to recover democracy, but with great patience, with peaceful struggle.” He admitted that there is no “guarantee” that he will return to power. (Nación, Mexico, Nov. 16)

Image: Alba TV via Twitter