The Minister of the Government of Bolivia, Eduardo del Castillo (Santa Cruz de la Sierra, 35 years old), is in charge of security policy. He is also part of the small table of the president, Luis Arce, and is a fundamental element of the management due to his influence on decisions. During the failed coup d’état on Wednesday, Del Castillo rebuked the head of the Army, Juan José Zúñiga, who was preparing to demolish the entrance door to the Quemado Palace, in front of Plaza Murillo in La Paz, with a tank. He says that at that moment he saw him “sweating, texting like crazy and calling everyone on his phone.” Zúñiga had been dismissed for 24 hours for threatening former President Evo Morales with arrest and hastened a coup that he had been planning since May. But he did not get the support he expected. The coup attempt lasted less than two hours, the president beheaded the three armed forces and around twenty soldiers and civilians ended up in prison. Del Castillo receives EL PAÍS in an office crammed with flags, small popular art sculptures, paintings and papers. He gives details of the attempted coup d’état and analyzes how General Zúñiga’s revolt impacted the fight that today has made Arce and his mentor, Evo Morales, enemies.
Ask. Were you surprised by the level of improvisation of the coup? The majority of the forces did not join the riot
Answer. He had many logistical problems. Several commanders received instructions from Zúñiga or his people to stay in barracks. The people stayed in barracks and then decided not to join. In his first police statement, Zúñiga says that he didn’t have enough armored vehicles and that the Air Force had to join in. He also believed that with the show of force that we made, we would leave in five minutes and the presidential sash would be put on. He didn’t calculate that the president would say ‘I’m not leaving.’
P. At first it was said that Zúñiga’s revolt was a response to his dismissal, but then they found that the plan began in May. Isn’t that evidence of a malaise within the Army that goes beyond a general?
R. Zúñiga himself, and I clarify that we should not believe everything, says that he had everything planned since May. For example, one of his friends asked him what excuse they were going to use to move the tanks from point A to point B without raising suspicions. Zúñiga tells him to say that the movement was for the celebrations for the anniversary of the Police, which was celebrated on Monday. They then take the opportunity to make the move on Sunday morning. That day, he had not yet given the interview that cost him his job on Monday. His appearance in the media had to do with this plan.
Q. Which military sector does Zúñiga represent?
R. Zúñiga has actually been working on his personal image as if he were a politician. For example, he identifies a Bolivian stationed abroad, calls him and decorates him with the entire Army. He campaigned all the time. While he was in the tank, he sent a journalist a meme that said “saber rattling” and asked her to show her works.
Q. Do you consider him a lone wolf or are there groups within the Armed Forces willing to carry out a coup?
R. He did not act alone. There are retired servicemen who are currently being sought for participating in the organizational meetings. There are civilians who have participated in these meetings. And we have statements that tell how Zúñiga tried to seduce these people to join.
Q. How is it possible that the intelligence services were not aware of all these movements?
R. The problem was that Zúñiga managed to bring together all the military’s intelligence services.
P. And what about the police?
R. They are different institutions. We did encounter suspicious attitudes, we knew that there was an intention to carry out a soft coup, but we never imagined that it would turn into a military coup.
Q. What is happening in Bolivia that made a group of military personnel think that a coup could be successful?
R. I think Zúñiga has mental problems and needs to be treated.
P. But we’re not just talking about Zúñiga.
R. The thing is that military institutions are very vertical, there are decisions that are not questioned. Superiors are not opposed and orders are carried out. The vice admiral [Juan] Arnés told the police after his arrest: ‘How did I allow myself to be convinced by this guy, everything that happened is wrong.’
Q. How is the Government now?
R. We are not thinking about the political sphere, we are focused on ensuring that this does not happen again. It happened in 2003 and we do not want it to happen again and we are working to dismantle all those who participated. The country could lose a lot, there are no individual actors who could have won or lost.
Q. When the opposition raised the idea of a self-coup, what did you think about?
R. The opposition is used to lying. When we apprehended [Luis Fernando] Camacho, [exgobernador de Santa Cruz, acusado de participar del golpe de 2019 contra Evo Morales] The opposition said that we had an agreement with him to raise the popularity of the Government and that three months later we were going to release him so that he could return as a redeemer to Santa Cruz. Neither one thing nor the other happened. They are using the same argument now.
Q. Evo Morales also spoke of a self-coup and is from MAS, the president’s party.
R. We have some political differences with Evo Morales that are quite obvious. He sees and conceives the MAS from the person and we conceive it from the social organizations. Morales says ‘this was a self-coup, but in reality they wanted to come for me.’ There is a contradiction there. Was it a self-coup or did they really want to go for Evo Morales? We are not going to fall into political speculation.
P. Arce called Morales to warn him that he was in danger. Could that be a door for there to be a rapprochement?
R. That was the idea. The president says ‘if something happens to me or David [Choquehuanca]’, who is the vice president, ‘someone will have to take the reins of this.’ And he will have to be Evo Morales. Despite our political differences, he calls him and tells him ‘take shelter, because there is a coup d’état in progress and whatever happens affects you.’ Evo Morales did not take it the same way and came out to question. He said ‘I don’t know if this was a coup, I told Lucho Arce not to put him in Zúñiga, to put someone else in.’ He begins to generate a much more political scenario and we do not want to fall into that scenario.
P. There are presidential elections next year. Isn’t it better to arrive with a united MAS?
R. For everyone it is more important that the Movement towards Socialism is solid. Unfortunately there is a group of former officials, former ministers, former mayors who are with Evo Morales who are waiting for him to return to resettle. But the vast majority of peasant, women’s, and youth organizations are not involved in this division. They say ‘this will be resolved’. We are going to maintain unity because we have a horizon for the country, of how we want to be.
Q. But doesn’t a crisis like this help unity?
R. I would have hoped that would have been the case, but all the people in that sector of the Movement Towards Socialism came out to attack the Government as if it were bringing us down politically, when in reality that does not interest us. This is a year to resolve the country’s problems.
Q. If Morales were to request a meeting with Arce, would he accept?
R. You have to ask him that.
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