The attack suffered this Sunday by Evo Morales let Bolivia submerged on the edge of political abyss. The car where the former president was traveling was shot at from two trucks on a road in the coca-growing region of Chapare. The indigenous leader, who came out unharmed, has blamed President Luis Arce for the attackwith whom he maintains a bitter confrontation for the leadership of the left in the South American country.
Morales’ complaints against the Arce Government further strain, if possible, the political climate in Bolivia less than a year before the presidential elections. Both leaders aspire to top the lists of the Movement to Socialism (MAS), the party that has governed the country almost uninterruptedly since 2006.
The president has rushed to announce the opening of a investigation “to clarify the facts”but members of his political faction have accused Evo of faking a “self-attack.” They thus respond with the same dialectical weapons used by the former president’s supporters in June, when they described the failed military coup carried out as a “self-coup.” by General Juan José Zúñiga (today in prison) against Arce.
While the Bolivian left devours itself, its natural enemies (the economic elites and the most reactionary sectors of the Army and Police) move in the shadows to fuel the conflict. El Chapare, Morales’ historical fiefdom, has been living in tension since a few weeks ago the latter was accused of an alleged crime of child abuse and will not appear to testify before the judge. To prevent him from being arrested, his followers started a road blockade in the region and since then the confrontations with the Police have occurred. The landowners of the prosperous department of Holy Cross have asked tough hand against coca growers and, by elevation, against its historical leader.
The shooting of Morales unleashes the crisis in Bolivia
Through the social network Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and has assured that his attackers are “elite agents of the Bolivian State.” He was slightly injured in the shooting. the former president’s driver in the head. According to the Bolivian newspaper The reasonmilitary sources of the Ninth Army Divisionstationed in the area, admitted to having received several police officers who had participated in the operation in their offices. According to these sources, the agents were later evacuated by helicopter. Morales was heading from the city of Villa Tunariwhere he resides, towards Lauca Eñewhere every Sunday he does a program on the Radio Kawsachun Coca station.
The animosity of the police and military towards the former president is not new. He was overthrown in a coup in 2019
The animosity of the police and military towards the former president is not new. He was overthrown in a coup in 2019 and he had to quickly flee the country and go into exile first in Mexico and later in Argentina. And last June, General Zúñiga, before taking his troops out into the streets, had threatened to arrest him if he continued with his intention to run in the 2025 elections.
The seriousness of what happened calls into question Arce’s ability to keep under control the police and military personnel who seem willing to add fuel to the fire ignited by the ideological disputes between the current president and Morales. Bolivia suffers a serious economic crisismainly because of the fuel shortage and lack of foreign currency.
Citizen unrest exacerbates the spirits of some popular classes who at the same time contemplate with astonishment how the MAS, the movement that transformed the country in the last two decades, is split in two. The dispute between Morales and Arce originated from the overthrow of the indigenous leader in 2019. After a year of de facto government presided over by Jeanine Anez (convicted of the coup), Morales gave his endorsement for Arce to be the MAS candidate in the 2020 elections. After winning those elections, the former Minister of Economy progressively distanced himself from his political mentor.
Violence in Latin America
The political violence that has taken hold in Bolivia Other Latin American countries have already experienced it.. In Mexico, the number of deaths increases every time an election approaches. This year’s campaign (presidential elections were held on June 2) was the most violent since records beganaccording to a report by think tank Electoral Laboratory. Between the months of the pre-campaign and election day there were at least a hundred dead between local candidates, their relatives and officials from different administrations. Among the causes detected by the report are political and economic disputes and control of the territory by criminal groups of different types.
Colombia It also lives immersed in continuous political violence. The president Gustavo Petro He was the target of an attempted attack during the 2022 election campaign and has denounced on several occasions since becoming president that his life is in danger. Colombia has a tragic tradition of electoral violence. Several presidential candidates were assassinated in the past and a single party, the Patriotic Unionleft-wing, saw how more than 5,000 of his militants were killed between 1984 and 2016, according to the Chamber of Recognition of Truth and Responsibility of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace.
Brazil and Argentina have also experienced episodes of political violence in recent years. The former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner suffered an attempt assassination at the doors of your house in September 2022. And Lula da Silva was on the verge of being overthrown by a mob of Bolsonaro followers in Brasilia as soon as he enters his third presidential term in January 2023.
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