The military uprising in Bolivia last Wednesday – with the head of the Army entering the Palacio Quemado after forcing open the door with a tank – occurred on a tense terrain due to disputes within the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), a party now fractured between supporters of former President Evo Morales and the current president, Luis Arce Catacora. This internal war is weakening not only the Government and the MAS itself, but also the state institutions, with the Legislative Assembly semi-paralyzed, judges with self-extended mandates and the involvement of the military in the conflict.
It was in this framework that General Juan José Zúñiga – a personal friend of President Arce – first came to the leadership of the Army without military merits for it and with previous accusations of embezzlement of funds -, and then ended up entangled in the internal bid of the MAS to the come out to threaten former President Evo Morales, even with prison, if he tried to run again. Deputy Rolando Cuéllar, one of the archists more unbridled, he then proposed to decorate the military man. But, in the end, after the scandal caused by the anti-government overactingmagazine of Zúñiga, the government let go of his hand.
The presidential decision to dismiss him was experienced as a betrayal by Zúñiga, who according to several journalistic reports perceived himself as the “people’s general” and even commissioned paintings that portrayed him with epic overtones. Then came the bizarre riot, which quickly became isolated. Even the police, which in Bolivia usually act as another social movement and take advantage of crises to seek salary increases and rebel against poor working conditions, did not join the movement, which took the entire country by surprise and was rejected by everyone. the political sectors.
But the complaint of a “self-coup” by the sector magazinewhich considers the rebellion of an Army commander and the images vintage of the tanks in the Plaza Murillo as a “show” put on by Arce himself, also contribute to political and institutional deterioration. The entire political dynamic ends up subsumed in what former vice president Álvaro García Linera called the “gray pettiness” of the current moment. Ideological divergences do not carry as much weight, although they are often rhetorically appealed to, as the power struggle between two people and the groups formed around each one. Luis Arce seeks to continue one more term and Evo Morales to return after his overthrow in 2019.
The magazines accuse the arcists of being the “endogenous right” of the process of change and the latter respond with a “renewing” and anti-personalist speech, and let it be known that they have hit the right in a way that Evo would not have dared to do, for example by arresting the governor of Santa Cruz Luis Fernando Camacho, currently imprisoned in La Paz, or keeping former president Jeanine Áñez in jail. What’s more, the Government has taken advantage of the latest uprising to project the image of Luis Arce personally facing the coup plotters and quickly defusing the conspiracy, as a counterpoint to 2019, when in the midst of the crisis, Evo retreated to his bastion of El Chapare. The current Minister of Government, Eduardo del Castillo, went so far as to say that, “during the coup of 2019,” his predecessor in the same portfolio, Carlos Romero, He should have stood in front and not prayed with a pastor.”. The message is clear, although undoubtedly lacking in restraint: we resist, while, in 2019, Evo and his ministers fled.
For his part, Evo responds by mocking the riot with a mirror-like excess: 2019 was a real coup, this was a farce, even a self-coup. “Now I don’t know what kind of coup it will be, then the coup begins and the minister [Del Castillo] Happy walking through Plaza Murillo, touching tanks; a coup d’état with zero injuries, zero shots; zero deaths. A coup d’état here is carried out with pellets, it should be investigated.”
García Linera, who has remained on the sidelines of the internal struggle, summarizes: “The heartbreaking thing about the scenario is that a left-wing government needs to rely, in part, on the military to have stability and contain Evo’s attempts at mobilization to seek to be qualified as a candidate; and, at the same time, that Evo takes advantage of this moment of weakness of President Arce to question the gradual autonomy of the military and now joins the chorus of ‘self-coup’ raised by the same right that in 2019 promoted the coup d’état against Evo himself.”
The weakness of the opposition certainly fuels the intensity of the civil war that is sweeping through the MAS and the social organizations that comprise it; both factions have even accused each other of links to drug trafficking. Since neither group seems to fear that the worn-out opposition can quickly return to power, the internal battle is confused with the struggle for state power, even when the country is experiencing growing economic uncertainty.
In this self-destructive dynamic, “they do not care about awakening armed monsters that, as seen in 2019, are capable of devouring them both,” concludes García Linera. Therefore, the hasty departure of the seditious from the seat of political power does not anticipate tranquility, but rather greater political tension.
Follow all the information from El PAÍS América on Facebook and xor in our weekly newsletter.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
_
#Arcistas #Evistas #risks #awakening #monsters #Bolivia