José Ernesto Serrate, president of the Civic Provincial Committees, is rejecting proposed assurances from the leftist government of President Luis Arce that post-census reapportioning could take place in time for the elections. Camacho has formally accepted this deal, but has stopped short of calling for an end to the paro. The opposition’s militant wing, the Cruceñista Youth Movement, has repeatedly engaged in brawls both with the security forces and supporters of the ruling Movement Toward Socialism (MAS). Cruceñista and MAS adherents have hurled dynamite at each other; four have been killed in the unrest and scores wounded. (AFP, ANF, Agenzia Fides, Eju!, El Deber, Prensa Latina, La Patria)

Right-wing resentment against the central government is in large part driven by the designs of the region’s land barons to expand the agricultural frontier into the expansive terrains declared off-limits as protected areas, reserves for indigenous peoples, or the titled holdings of campesino communities. A boom in soy and beef for export is especially fueled by Chinese investment and market demand. (FT, Reuters) Ironically, this trade is now on hold thanks to the paro; days after the strike was declared last month, the central government imposed a suspension of all soy, beef and sugar exports, citing the risk of internal shortages. (InfoBae, BBC News)

Meanwhile, the regional forest fires that prompted the central government to declare a state of emergency in 2020 are once again devastating the eastern lowlands. Nearly 9,000 square kilometers (3,475 square miles) burned across Bolivia by mid-September, according to government figures—mostly in the heavily forested east. Damage has been reported to Otuquis National Park and Tucavaca Valley Municipal Wildlife Reserve, both in the Chiquitania zone of Santa Cruz department. Expansion of the agricultural frontier is a key driver of the annual cycle of wildfires. (Mongabay, WeAdapt)

COFCO International, China’s major soy importer, has just announced its commitment to making its supply chain free of deforestation and land conversion by 2030 in environmentally sensitive regions of South America, including the Amazon and Cerrado, both of which extend from Brazil into Bolivia’s east. (Reuters)

Photo: Pixabay

However, the meeting—at an outdoor stadium in the pueblo of Lauca Ñ—also manifested divisions within Morales’ own party. As the summit continued the following day, a member of the audience hurled a plastic chair at Morales while he was speaking, along with cries from the assailant and his comrades for “renovation” within the MAS. Morales dismissed the assailants as “infiltrators.” (BBC Mundo, El Mundo, Spain, La Trecera, Chile)

Reacting to what the Bolivian media have dubbed the “sillazo” (chair outrage), Morales’ old rival within the country’s indigenous movement, Rafael Quispe, called for the ex-president to “go home” and withdraw from political life. He said that a growing current within the MAS rejects the “dedazo”—literally “fingering,” the secretive and undemocratic process by which the party elite chose the next president during the long years that Mexico was a one-party state. (Los Tiempos, Cochabamba) The comment was clearly meant to imply that the MAS has similarly become an authoritarian machine.

Quispe, who was removed from his post as vice-minister for decolonization with the change of government, has been confirmed as candidate for governor of La Paz department with the new Somos Pueblo (We are the People) alliance in upcoming regional elections. (Página Siete, La Paz)

Backlash to the government’s handling of COVID-19 may also provide a challenge for Arce, Morales and the MAS. New Year’s Day saw a street protest in the city of Tarija, where demonstrators defied mask orders and carried signs decrying Bill Gates and the “Plandemia” (a reference to the “Plandemic” conspiracy theory). Slogans included “Don’t be sheep,” “We are not laboratory rats,” and “We don’t want masks, we don’t want vaccines.”

The former conservative president Jeanine Añez, bitter opponent of the MAS, meanwhile blasted the new government for buying 5.2 million doses of the new Sputnik V vaccine from Russia, pointing out that Bolivia is entitled to free vaccines through the UN’s COVAX program. (BoliviaPrensa, Opinión, La Paz)

Photo: Los Tiempos de Cochabamba via Twitter

Santa Cruz was the only Bolivian department to hand a majority to Luis Fernando Camacho, the region’s longtime right-wing civic leader, who placed a distant third in the presidential race. His followers have now called for a “paro cívico” (civic strike) to demand annulment of the election results. Protests against Arce’s victory have also been held in Cochabamba, Sucre and other cities.

Marianela Paco, a longtime leader of Arce’s Movement to Socialism (MAS), called for the protesters to desist. “Learn how to lose, learn to respect the Bolivian people and the decision of the majority to live in peace,” she told Radio Fides. “To continue with these violent, racist and intolerant attitudes that respond to oligrachical logic—I believe this is not an option in Bolivia.” (InfoBae, InfoBae, ATB Digital, La Razón, Eju!)

Indigenous voices on election integrity
Ironically, the most serious questions about the integrity of the vote concerned the lack of ballots in poor indigenous communities within Santa Cruz department—those least likely to have supported the right-wing candidates. Such claims were especially raised by Aida Micaela Gil, candidate for the lower-house Chamber of Deputies with the Chiquitana Indigenous Organization (OICH), who was running on a platform of titling indigenous lands. (Prensa Latina, EFE)

Another concern about the election was raised by Rafael Quispe, vice-minister for decolonization with the interim government, who cited the requirement under Article 234 of Bolivia’s 2009 Constitution that all candidates for public office be able to speak at least two of the country’s 36 official languages. In practice, this means Spanish and at least one of the country’s many indigenous tongues. Arce is of mestizo background, and it is not clear that he speaks any indigenous language. Quispe sent a letter to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal demanding clarity in the matter. (Erbol)

Oriente in flames —again
All this takes place amid devastating forest fires across Oriente, which prompted the interim government to declare a state of emergency a week before the elections. In 2019, wildfires destroyed more than 6 million hectares in the Bolivian Amazon. So far this year, 1.1 million hectares have burned, according to official figures. The non-governmental Friends of Nature Foundation (FAN) says the area destroyed is twice as large. Authorities report more than 50 active fires across the region, but a far greater area is subject to smoke hazard. Hundreds of indigenous communities have been impacted, especially of the Chiquitano people. More than 120 fires have been reported since August—and, alarmingly, many have been within protected areas, including Noel Kempff Mercado National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Conditions have been exacerbated by the worst drought Bolivia has experienced in years. (TRT World, Mongabay, Mongabay, Mongabay)

Photo: Nuevo Sur Bolivia

As finance minister under Morales, Arce presided over one of the fastest-growing economies in the region. But when he assumes the presidency, he will be taking over a country debilitated by deep recession. “We will have to have austerity measures. There’s no other option if we don’t have enough income to cover our current expenditures,” Arce admitted to reporters.

This could cost Arce support from his party’s base, and the MAS-IPSP seems divided on the legacy of Morales. Angélica Ponce, leader of the Confederation of Women of Intercultural Communities of Bolivia and a longtime party militant from Morales’ home region of Cochabamba, called for a clean break with figures from his administration. She said that his cabinet ministers had “misled” the MAS-IPSP and should not be invited to return to the government (despite the fact that Arce himself is a former Morales minister).

“We no longer want people who have misused the Political Instrument for the Sovereignty of the Peoples, and our brother Luis Arce clarified during the campaign that the former ministers will not return. None,” Ponce said. “We are going to sift the wheat from the chaff. We want worthy men in the administrative, organizational and political structure.”

The inauguration of the new president must take place between Oct. 31 and Dec. 30, and there are obvious concerns about potential moves to destabilize the situation by the right-wing interim president, Jeanine Añez. Her initial reaction to Arce’s victory was to publicly recognize it and to fire her interior minister, Arturo Murillo—a hardliner who had repeatedly overseen deadly repression of MAS-IPSP supporters, and labelled them “terrorists” and “animals.” But one day after the vote, Áñez reversed herself and brought Murillo back into her cabinet. (Al Jazeera, ABI, Bolivia Prensa, Prensa Latina, WaPo, NYT)

Environmental as well as economic conerns will pose challenges for the Arce government. The impressive growth he oversaw as finance minister was driven by foreign investment in resource extraction—with ecological impacts that had alienated elements of the MAS-IPSP base. The devastating Amazon forest fires that helped spur protest against Morales last year have returned, prompting Añez to declare a state of emergency just a week before the election. In August, the International Tribunal on the Rights of Nature held an online trial on the issue, finding both Morales and Añez guilty of “ecocide.” (Reuters, Blog Verde Bolivia)

Image via Carwil without Borders

On Sept. 17, the interim president, Jeanine Añez, announced that she is dropping out of the race, in order to unify the right-wing vote and block the victory of the MAS candidate, former economy minister Luis Arce. “Today I put aside my candidacy for the presidency of Bolivia, for the sake of democracy. If we do not unite, Morales will return,” she said in a televised address, referring to ousted MAS president Evo Morales. “If we do not unite, democracy loses.”

“It’s not a sacrifice, it’s an honor,” she added in a tweet. Añez did not endorse any of the remaining candidates. To avoid a run-off, a candidate would have to win at least 40% of the vote in the first round, with a 10-point advantage over the closest competitor. Recent polls have placed Arce in first place with more than 40% support among likely voters. Center-right ex-president Carlos Mesa of the Comunidad Ciudadana alliance is next at 26%, with longtime right-wing opposition leader Luis Fernando Camacho of Creemos in third place at 14%. Añez was lagging in fourth place with just over 10%. (BNAmericas, Sept. 28; Al Jazeera, Sept. 18; NYT, Sept. 17)

Camacho’s running mate is Marco Antonio Pumari, and the two men were the most prominent opposition civic leaders in the departments of Santa Cruz and Potosí, respectively. They have been waging the most aggressive campaign, crossing the country in a caravan to hold rallies in the principal cities. They have come under criticism for not wearing masks and observing measures to contain COVID-19 at the events. (Pagina Siete, La Paz, Sept. 19)

Añez has been waging a bitter war of words wth Argentina, where Morales is exiled, accusing the Buenos Aires government of conspiring with him to foment unrest in Bolivia. “By what right do they harbor a violent conspiracy by Evo Morales against Bolivia’s democracy from Argentine soil?” Áñez said in her address to the UN General Assembly on Sept. 23.  She accused Morales and his international supporters of seeking to re-impose his “caudillismo”(strongman rule). (Bloomberg, Ámbito, Argentina, Sept. 23)

On Sept. 28, three members of Añez’s cabinet resigned, throwing her government into crisis. Economy Minister Oscar Ortiz said at a press conference that he stepped because he believed he was about to be fired from his post. Shortly thereafter, Labor Minister Oscar Mercado and Development Minister José Abel Martinez also announced their resignations. Ortiz had recently opposed the government’s decision to hand back shares of a nationalized electricity company to a group of private investors, calling the move irregular so close to the elections. ELFEC, the electrical utility in Cochabamba department, had been nationalized under the Morales government. (MercoPress, Oct. 1; DW, EFE, Sept. 29)

In another sign of internal power struggle, the government was criticized in July for promoting a group of military officers without approval of the legislature, where MAS has a majority. MAS accused the government of violating the constitution. José Miguel Vivanco of Human Rights Watch seemed to agree, tweeting that someone should explain the “separation of powers in a democracy” to Añez. (Buenos Aires Times, July 17

Evo Morales has been blocked by the courts from seeking a senate seat in the elections, and has denounced the ruling as “political and illegal.” (Al Jazeera, Sept. 8) He has also been charged with “terrorism” and “sedition” in Bolivia, for his supposed involvement in post-coup protests. The Justice Ministry additionally filed a criminal complaint against Morales in August for statutory rape and human trafficking. The new charge came after photographs were published in national media of the ex-leader with a young woman who was reportedly a minor at the time. (BBC News, Aug. 21)

Interpol on Oct. 1 rejected Bolivia’s request for an arrest order against Morales, stating that the charges against him appear politically motivated. (DW, Oct. 1)

Photo: Bolivia Prensa

The government’s perceived inaction on the COVID-19 pandemic is another grievance of the protesters. But the Organization of American States General Secretariat issued a statement accusing some protesters of “preventing the passage of oxygen tankers and ambulances necessary to attend the pandemic.” One such incident was reported from Tiraque, Cochabamba department, where three tanker-trucks carrying oxygen were halted at a roadblock. Government sources said the drivers were threatened and had to flee. (Eju!, Aug. 9; FT, Aug. 8; NYT, Erbol, Aug. 7)

Counter-protesters are beginning to mobilize, attacking the roadblocks and attempting to clear the thoroughfares. A particularly violent clash was reported from Samaipata, Santa Cruz department, where rocks were hurled and dynamite set off. (Pagina Siete, Aug. 10; Los Tiempos de Cochabamba, Aug. 8)

People infected with the coronavirus are dying before they can access medical care across Bolivia. The country’s overwhelmed hospitals are turning critically ill patients away, leaving anguished families to watch their loved ones die. (DW, Aug. 8)

Photo: Página Siete

The “quarantine” is to last until April 15, with an option for the government to renew it. (Los Tiempos, Cochabamba, April 4; El País, Madird, April 2)

The government has also suspended the presidential elections, originally scheduled for May 3, in response to the COVID-19 crisis. The Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) announced the suspension on March 21, with Áñez calling it a “tough but necessary decision.” No new date for elections has been set, but a postponement of up to six months has been broached. The Pact of Unity, a coalition of social organizations linked to the MAS, has pledged to protest the postponement. The TSE has disqualified exiled former president Evo Morales from running for a Senate seat in the election, saying he does not meet residency requirements—a decision that Morales assailed as a “blow to democracy.” Morales’ MAS reportedly did not an attend a March 19 meeting called by the TSE to discuss plans to postpone the election. (Anadolu Agency, March 22; InfoBae, March 20)

When the suspension was announced, there were 17 confirmed COVID-19 cases in Bolivia, and no deaths. The figure now stands at 139 cases and 10 deaths. (Página Siete, La Paz, April 3)

Concern is alo mounting for some 480 Bolivians who were working in Chile and were ordered home in response to the pandemic. They are now being held in 14-day quarantine at a makeshift camp that has been established at the border town of Pisiga. Their family members protest that conditions at the camp are overcrowded and unsanitary, without even sufficient access to potable water. (Los Tiempos, Los Tiempos, April 4)

Lawmaker Tomás Monasterio, a leader of the right-opposition under the recently deposed government of Evo Morales, is meanwhile calling for the imprisonment of Alpacino Mojica, a Santa Cruz candidate for the Chamber of Deputies with Morales’ Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) in the recently annulled elections, claiming that his campaign was financed by Serna Ponce. (Los Tiempos, Cochabamba, Dec. 4; Página Siete, La Paz, Dec. 3)

Morales Schoenfeld was arrested Nov. 30 on “criminal association” charges related to the recent unrest in Bolivia, and remains detained in Santa Cruz. (Diario Popular, Argentina, Nov. 30) Although the new reports are vague on his current whereabouts, Serna Ponce was convicted in 1999 on charges of kidnapping Bolivian businessman Samuel Doria Medina, and was a fugitive for several years after escaping from a prison in La Paz. He was recaptured by Bolivian authorities in January 2012, and presumably remains incarcerated. (La Información, Madrid, Jan. 9, 2012)

Murillo also told Reuters Dec. 6 that he will seek Israeli help to fight “terrorism,” again citing a supposed Venezuelan conspiracy to destabilize regional governments. “We’ve invited them to help us,” he said of the Israelis. “They’re used to dealing with terrorists. They know how to handle them.” He added, without irony: “The only thing we want is to bring peace.”

Bolivian diplomatic ties with Israel, broken in 2009 by the Evo Morales government, have been restored by the interim regime.

Days earlier, Murillo said Bolivia’s interim government would file a case against Evo Morales with the International Criminal Court (ICC)  for “crimes against humanity,” Murillo has already opened a criminal case in Bolivia accusing Morales of sedition and terrorism. Murillo said Morales “must answer to justice for what he has done, and is doing, in addition to his accomplices who have participated in the tragic events that Bolivians have experienced.”

Murillo meanwhile darkly warned an Argentine delegation of human rights activists who had just arrived in Bolivia: “We recommend these foreigners who are arriving…to be careful. We are looking at you. We are following you… There is no tolerance for terrorism, sedition or armed movements. Zero tolerance.”

The Argentina Delegation in Solidarity with the Bolivian Poeple, led by left-wing academic Juan Grabois, tweeted in response: “While the de facto government accuses us of being terrorists, we have started what we came to do, take testimony of the different human rights violations that the Bolivian people are enduring.”

When the delegation arrived at Viru Viru airport in Santa Cruz, it was met with jeers and threats by a crowd of right-wing militants. Some members were repotedly detained by the police for interrogation, prompting the mediation of the Argentine consulate in the city. The group intends to continue to La Paz by land. (AFP, Dec. 1 La Diaria, Uruguay, Nov. 30; InfoBae, Argentina, Nov. 29)

The exiled Evo Morales this week flew from Mexico to Cuba for medical treatment. Before his departure, he was interviewed by Mexico’s Heraldo Media Group, and seemed to accept the recent political deal in Bolivia that calls for new elections, without him as candidate. He named as possible MAS presidential candidates his former cabinet members Diego Pary and David Choquehuanca, and Andrónico Rodríguez, leader of the Six Federations of the Tropic of Cochabamba, the cocalero alliance formerly led by Morales himself. (Los Tiempos, Cochabamba, Dec. 9)

“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