The return of Evo Morales to Bolivia on Monday, November 9, one day after President Luis Arce’s inauguration, marked the formal end of last year’s U.S.-backed coup. What does his return mean for Bolivia, and for the world? Is he just a former president who the media will turn to periodically for comment? Is he yesterday’s news to his party? The answers to those questions remain unclear, but what is clear is that his three-day return tour was a statement that he intends to provide strong leadership for social movements in Bolivia and abroad.

Corporate media, both national and international, have been promoting a narrative that Morales is somehow in conflict with the incoming government of Luis Arce. A recent piece in the New York Times stated, “Mr. Morales return now risks undermining Mr. Arce’s efforts to bring the nation together to overcome the crisis,”’ and Reuters classified Arce as being “in Evo’s Shadow.”

Of course, Bolivia’s coup government knew that Evo Morales would strengthen, not weaken, any future MAS government. They understood that he was, and is, the leader of Bolivia’s powerful social movements. They knew they had to keep him out of the country, so they piled on more than 20 criminal charges and a warrant for his immediate arrest if he ever set foot on Bolivian soil. The charges included terrorism, sedition, genocide, and more.

Morales was forced to escape to Mexico after the coup, he then moved to Argentina where he was also given asylum. The absurdity of the charges was proven when the coup regime, through its own hubris, took them to Interpol in an effort to force Morales’ adopted country to hand him over. Of course, Interpol rejected the two attempts to place a ‘red alert’ on Morales, as they considered the charges against him to be political and without any legal basis.

Thrown out by international bodies, the legal persecution against Morales also collapsed at home. Just after the October 18 election results handed a victory to MAS, the power of the regime to pressure Bolivia’s courts immediately evaporated, and his arrest warrant was lifted just days after the election.

Destabilisation Plans Fail

Evo returned the day after Luis Arce and David Choquehuanca took office in La Paz on November 8. The inauguration was marked by uncertainty until the last hour: a sector of the right wing led from the city of Santa Cruz, and to a lesser extent from Cochabamba, refused to recognize the victory of the MAS, asked for an audit and the suspension of the transfer of command.

The destabilization plan included the deployment of already known methods: denunciations of fraud, requests to the police and the army to join the actions – including the demand for a “military junta”, the beginning of blockades with the deployment of armed groups, “civic strikes”, attempts to advance from the east to the center of the country to reach where political power resides, La Paz. A similar scheme to that of last year.

Their failure was due, in the first place, to the late activation of the plan: the victory of the MAS, with 55.1% of the votes on Sunday, October 18, was of such magnitude that it nullified possible reactions expected on the same night. The beginning of the escalation by a sector of the right began when the recognition of the victory of Arce and Choquehuanca was indisputable. The marches of the last coup attempt in La Paz were medium-sized, small, even abandoned.

Secondly, unlike 2019, there was no national or international bloc behind the last-minute attempt. In national terms, the right wing split into three: those who set out to withdraw so as not to be accountable to justice, like Arturo Murillo; those who accepted defeat and began to organize as the opposition, primarily Carlos Mesa; and the coup sectors led by Camacho. Each side plunged into political irrelevance, opposition and destabilization without force.

That fragmentation of the reaction prevented the escalation of the chain of events. The requests to suspend the inauguration were ignored by Jeanine Añez, the demand for an audit was not accepted by the Supreme Court of Justice, the call to the barracks was not answered. A different reaction from any of these three parties would have changed the situation, particularly on the part of the Armed Forces. Something that, as publicly denounced by Evo, could have happened a few days before Arce’s assumption of office.

The international recognition of the outcome of the election was, for its part, complete. Each observation mission validated the transparency of the elections and the count, including the Organization of American States, central to the 2019 coup plot; the US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, also publicly recognized Arce’s victory on two occasions.

The takeover of Arce and Choquehuanca, followed by Evo’s return through the gates, sealed the possibility of the sectors that were counting on a desperate turn of events.

And Evo Returns

The stage was now set for Evo’s return to Bolivia. The 9th of November was a carnival fit for a king. He crossed the border on foot, from the Argentinian town of La Quiaca to the Bolivian town of Villazon with tens of thousands of supporters ready to receive him. As one of the many reporters there, I was naive enough to believe that the crowds would be kept at bay by the union activists from the Chapare region who were the designated security, but I quickly lost my good position as the masses of assembled supporters immediately overwhelmed the burly men who were supposed to form a protective ring around Evo.

Looking to the future

Our cameras jolted about as we were dangerously squashed by the sheer weight of those trying to touch him or at least take a photo. His victory parade went from the border to the town’s central plaza, about five blocks from the bridge through which he entered.

When asking those at the rally what Morales meant to them, the answers were not describing a loved, but has-been figure, most spoke in the future tense. Juan, a miner from Potosi, said, “We have to receive him and make sure he gets here ok, because he’s our leader, at both the national and international level. I want to salute [President] Arce and [VP] Choquehuanca, but our true indisputable leader is Evo Morales Ayma and he always will be.”

A union activist from Argentina crossed the border for the Villazon rally and told me that “Evo is a Latin American leader and he’ll be the key for building a unified continent that’s strong, sovereign and for the people, for workers. That’s why we’re here, this concerns us too.

Morales’ first speech in Bolivia, delivered at the plaza in Villazon, struck a similar tone, discussing the future rather than reminiscing about past glory. “We have to keep working, our task now is to protect President Arce and our process of change, because the right doesn’t sleep and the empire is always looking at our natural resources, but we use our experience to go forward even stronger.”

So how does he plan to go about doing that? Morales is not just another private citizen. He has now assumed his role as the President of the 6 Federations of the Tropico, the powerful Chapare region rural workers union that he led throughout the 1990s and from which he founded the MAS. He’s also still the president of the MAS, the Movement Towards Socialism. He’s not the leader of the state, but he is the political leader of the ruling party.

A hero’s welcome

Following the Villazon rally, Morales and his comrades, and those of us covering the tour, jumped into our vehicles and sped away for what was the beginning of a long and physically taxing three-day road trip. Gone were the days of Evo being shipped around in a helicopter. After more than eight hours of driving through the freezing Potosi highlands, we got to the rally in the mining town of Atocha, making only a brief stop before getting back in the car for another hour to the town of Uyuni, arriving at 11:30 pm. Considering the rally was supposed to take place at 6 pm, and that temperatures had now dropped to 7 degrees celsius, I assumed that the event had been called off or that everyone would have gone home. I was wrong. Thousands were densely packed, filling the entire square.

We got to know the grueling schedule that has long been the norm for Evo. Throughout his time as president and before, he’s been famous for working from 4 am to midnight, without taking weekends off. That night, we all got to bed at 3 am and had to be up and ready before 7 am for his morning press conference, during which he addressed the issue of the country’s lithium reserves, referencing Elon Musk’s Twitter outburst regarding his participation in the coup. Morales stated clearly:

“The coup was for lithium, imperialism doesn’t want us to develop value-added products within Bolivia, they want the transnational corporations to take it all.”

He then explained that just last week he had meetings with Argentina’s Science Minister to draw up a binational plan to process the natural resource. Of course, he isn’t a government official so he cannot sign off on any agreement, but his participation in such meetings is evidence of his relationship to the new MAS government, assisting where possible, but with the newly elected executive firmly in control. That approach is in accordance with what Luis Arce laid out in an interview with the BBC when he stated that “Evo Morales is very welcome to help us, but it doesn’t mean he’ll be in government.”

Those in the media desperately searching for an example of Morales overshadowing the new government, or of Morales being left out in the cold, are still seeking evidence of it. Meanwhile, Evo continues his work on what was always his stated goal, to help Luis Arce, and to strengthen the MAS from his position as a social movement leader and president of the party.

The rest of the caravan was equally taxing, driving the whole day through Potosi to Evo’s home village of Orinoca in Oruro, where he visited his childhood home constructed of dried mud and a straw roof. Orinoca, though, is not his only home.

As a child, his family left the village, driven out by the extreme poverty that most rural Bolivians faced during the twentieth century. They finally settled in the Chapare region, where Morales became the leader of the coca-growers union during the struggle against the presence of USAID and the DEA in the region.

After a very short rally in the nearby city of Oruro, we drove overnight without stopping to his Evo’s political home, the Chapare, also known as the Tropico of Cochabamba. Arriving at 5 am the next day, Morales rested for just two hours before heading out at 7 am for meetings with local senators and mayors.

What came after was the giant closing rally in Chimore Airport, the airbase in the Chapare region where Morales left for Mexico last year. More than half a million people filled the landing strip where he delivered a blistering speech laying out his politics:

“We are anti-imperialist, that’s not up for debate. But sisters and brothers, listen to me closely, it’s not about being ‘populist’ or ‘progressive’ or ‘in solidarity.’ If you’re not anti-imperialist then you’re not revolutionary. Get that in your head brothers and sisters.’’

What does Evo’s future hold?

The dust has now settled, with no more huge rallies nor travel by car. Evo has set up base in the town of Lauca Ñ in the offices of the 6 Federations of the Tropico and home to their union’s media outlet, Radio Kawsachun Coca.

The large crowds are no longer gathering, but the real political work has begun. Every hour has been filled with private meetings with every local leader of the MAS from each region of the country. Though, just as important, has been the international work.

Morales has been receiving delegations from the indigenous movement in Ecuador, as well as the principal worker’s unions of Argentina, where they put the call out for a Latin America wide congress of social movements, with the purpose of creating a new international indigenous organization and launching projects for regional integration on the basis of ‘plurinationalism’ and anti-capitalism. After launching the call for the international congress, Leonidas Iza, a leader of Ecuador’s indigenous CONAIE organization, said of Evo ‘’We feel represented by him, he’s not just recognized in Bolivia, but in all the continent.”

It’s clear that Morales has a future as a political leader in Latin America. Freed from the bureaucratic trappings of power, he can guide social movements at a national and international level, using the experiences he’s accumulated successfully leading social struggles to power, and helping defeat a coup after just one year. Those achievements alone make him an obvious figurehead for a project of unification of the Latin American left in particular. Those around the world looking to replicate such success could do worse than to turn to him as a figure that can orientate and provide leadership to those who need it.

[Oliver Vargas is a British-Bolivian journalist covering the ongoing coup in Bolivia for MintPress News. His writing has appeared in teleSUR, Redfish and The Grayzone among others. Article courtesy: Mint Press News. This article has been slightly edited by us based on an article by Marco Teruggi, “Bolivia: Between the Elixir of a Fulminating Return to Power and the Challenges of an Adverse Situation”.]

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President Luis Arce Appoints New Military Leadership in Bolivia

Courtesy: Telesur

On Monday, the President of Bolivia, Luis Arce, swore in the new High Command of the Armed Forces and appointed Jaime Alberto Zabala Saldía as its new commander at the Government House in La Paz known as La Casa del Pueblo. Zabala Saldía will occupy the position held until now by Carlos Orellana, imposed by the de facto government of Jeanine Áñez in November 2019, after the coup d’état against Evo Morales.

President Arce asked the new military leadership to guarantee the stability of the country in the current circumstances.

During the oath ceremony, Arce expressed: “I want to ask you that the Armed Forces, along with our people work to achieve the unity of all Bolivians, to defend democracy, social peace, as well as to guarantee the stability of our government elected by the sovereign will.”

“We have the great challenge of returning to the Armed Forces their institutionality,” of giving them “the place in society that was unfortunately used in a wrong way,” and that the Bolivian people “will once again trust that the Armed Forces will respect democratic processes,” the president stressed.

For his part, Zabala emphasized several times the article of the Bolivian Constitution that refers to military powers and their function of “guaranteeing the stability of the legally constituted government.”

The new commander spoke of “rectifying what was wrong and deepening what was right,” a phrase from Arce’s first speech that he asked to be applied to the Armed Forces to “maintain hierarchy and discipline” in the institution.

Among the new military management priorities, Arce mentioned the need for more efficient work in defense and civil assistance in the face of natural disasters and the fight against smuggling and organized crime on the country’s borders.

The replacements included the new Chief of Staff and the Army’s commanders, the Air Force, and the Navy. Jaime Zabala, who comes from the Air Force, will be the new commander in chief of the Armed Forces. Arce also swore in Miguel Ángel Contreras as Chief of Staff, Faut Ramos as commander of the Army, Javier Torrico from the Navy, and Cesar Vallejos Air Force.

(Telesur is a Latin American multimedia platform oriented to lead and promote the unification of the peoples of the SOUTH.)

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Bolivia: President Arce Approves Bonus Against Hunger

Courtesy: Telesur

After having approved laws no. 1345 and no. 1346, Bolivia’s President Luis Arce announced Thursday the payment of the “Bonus against Hunger” which will help over 4 million people in the country.

The beneficiaries will be all people over 18 years old who do not receive income from public or private institutions, people with disabilities, mothers, and people who collect the Universal Bonus.

The laws no. 1345 and no. 1346 allow credit funds from the World Bank (WB) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) for a total of US$704 million which will be used to pay the Bonus.

“The Bonus Against Hunger seeks to reinforce, to initiate the reconstruction of the internal demand in the country. This internal demand is the first element that is going to generate that economic growth that all Bolivians are waiting for.” President Luis Arce noted.

Supporting the approval of the Bonus Against Hunger, the Executive Secretary of Bolivia’s Central Workers Union (COB) Juan Carlos Huarachi pointed out that it is “a first commitment that the President fulfills” which will help Bolivian families.

The Bonus Against Hunger legislative initiative was previously approved by the National Assembly but the De facto government of Jeanine Añez prevented the publication of the law, thus hindering the efforts to reduce the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the most vulnerable families in the country.

President Arce pointed out that his cabinet will approve the respective regulation so the Ministry of Economy can organize the payment starting December.

“This injection of resources that we are proposing with this Bono is the first measure of the reactivation and reconstruction of the Bolivian economy,” President Arce added.