Mérida – Venezuela has warned the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) that its proposed visit to the country has not been authorised and will not be accepted.
The Washington DC-based organisation announced a five-day delegation to Venezuela starting on Tuesday. It was invited by self-declared “Interim President” Juan Guaido to “observe” the human rights situation in the country. The IACHR has not visited the Caribbean country in 18 years.
Caracas reacted on Friday, however, describing the proposed visit as “improper” given that the country is no longer part of the IACHR’s mother institution, the Organisation of American States (OAS).
Venezuela left the OAS in April 2019 after accusing the multilateral organisation of repeated acts against Venezuela’s sovereignty. Guaido appointed representatives, however, continue participating in OAS meetings.
Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza took to Twitter on Friday, clarifying that “The government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has not invited nor accepts the visit of any IACHR delegation. The visit announced in the press is NOT authorised.”
Caracas’ general secretary of the National Human Rights Council, Larry Devoe, also explained that Venezuela “does not recognise nor assign legal value to the actions of the OAS and the IACHR,” in a public communiqué to the multilateral body.
In addition, Devoe confirmed that the country will rather continue working with the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on the matter. The body, headed by former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet, sent a delegation to Venezuela last July.
Guaido responded to the measure by assuring followers that the IACHR visit will proceed, as well as reaffirming his credentials to extend such invitations.
“As the legitimate government and with Venezuela a member of the OAS and the Inter-American system, we ratify the invitation for the IACHR to visit our country,” he wrote on Twitter.
The former National Assembly president is currently wrapping up an international tour which has taken him to Colombia, the UK, Belgium, France, Spain, the USA and Switzerland, where he attended the Davos Forum.
Guaido has been in Florida in recent days, where he has met with Republican Senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, as well as Congresswomen Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Donna Shalala and Miami Mayor Francis Suarez. Florida representatives have been some of the drivers of sanctions and legislation against Venezuela.
Despite coinciding with US President Donald Trump’s visit to his Mar a Lago resort also in Florida, no meeting took place between the two men. According to media reports, Guaido’s team lobbied for a meeting with Trump but to no avail.
The opposition leader also held a rally for US-based supporters at the Miami Convention Centre on Saturday, before meeting with US charge d’affaires for Venezuela, James Story.
Guaido has stated that he will return to Venezuela in the “next few days” and has called for more street rallies.
Edited by Ricardo Vaz from Mérida.
February 4, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Aletho News | Latin America, OAS, Venezuela |
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Patricia Hermosa, the former cabinet chief of ex-Bolivian President Evo Morales’ administration, has been handed a six-month preventive detention order by a Bolivian court, El Diario daily reported.
Bolivian prosecutors pushed for Hermosa to be placed in preventive detention, claiming that she was both a flight risk and could potentially obstruct the investigation. The court on Sunday agreed with prosecutors, and ordered the former cabinet chief to spend six months in preventive detention, the newspaper reported.
Hermosa was first detained in December as part of the new Bolivian government’s ongoing investigation into Morales but was initially released due to insufficient evidence. However, she was arrested once again this past week after authorities claimed to possess recordings of Hermosa’s telephone conversations with leading Bolivian officials. She is charged with sedition, terrorism and financing terrorism.
The news comes just one day after two ministers of ousted President Morales’ administration left Bolivia for Mexico. Many members of Morales’ former government have been living at the Mexican ambassador’s residence in Bolivia while waiting for their asylum requests to be processed. Morales himself is currently living in Argentina after fleeing Bolivia.
On Friday, Morales reported that Hermosa was detained by Bolivian law enforcement officials, who also seized personal documents belonging to the ex-president during the former cabinet chief’s apprehension.
February 3, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties | Bolivia, Latin America |
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By Lucas Leiroz de Almeida | February 3, 2020
The attitude of the US towards Latin peoples has been one of domination, imposition and imperialism. The core of this policy is in the American ideology itself, based on the Monroe Doctrine of the 19th Century, which, enunciating an “America for Americans”, promoted the American expansion towards other lands of the New World. Specifically in South America, external interference in national policies became even more evident with the advent of the military dictatorships of the last century, which, with the shallow excuse of avoiding a “communist threat”, promoted long decades of misery and persecution whose only end had been to preserve the subjugation of those countries to Washington’s commandments during the Cold War.
The process of redemocratization in Latin America was a flawed and vulnerable one. The transition of power witnessed by the exchange of the Armed Forces for civilian politicians represented nothing but the very interests of the same groups that had financed and supported the military’s takeover. In fact, when the American objectives bequeathed to the military were already achieved, they authorized the transition of power, pacifying national policies with the capitulation of the left, which abandoned the armed struggle in favor of the democratic pact.
Since then, outside interference in Latin America has been triggered by the cooptation of parliamentary factions, feeding gigantic networks of corruption that “fight each other” publicly, when, truly, they work for the interests of the same foreign power. This is the case of the reactionary parties and of the groups from the new left – concerned with the “identitarian” agenda of liberalism and omitted in relation to social problems and national sovereignty.
While the theater of public confrontation of these groups is functioning, the American foreign occupation works perfectly, without major challenges and threats. However, any deviation from this reality is understood as an affront and gives room for the resurgence of Washington’s interference. The most recent cases corroborating this fact are the failed attempted coup against the legitimate Bolivarian government in Caracas and the successful coup d’état carried out against Bolivian President Morales, both in the past year.
In general, American attacks on independent peoples of the South have intensified in recent years. This, most likely, is due to the fact that the period before the current one was marked by the growth of the political left, which, although subordinated to the liberal hegemony, acted with an agenda reasonably linked to social struggles, delaying, even if very little, the neoliberal plans. Now, these same countries are facing the extraordinary advance of reactionary rights, with a greater emphasis on Brazil.
A member of the BRICS, Brazil, with all its potential to achieve prestigious status in the international order, has been suffering the worst period in its recent history. The rise of Bolsonaro brings with it the worst in the country: the growth of the harmful influence of neo-Pentecostal groups – whose greatest commitment is to the interests of Washington and Tel Aviv; the paramilitary armed militias that control organized crime in the poorest regions of the country, truly acting as a mafia and; the business sector as a whole, with enormous progress in dismantling labor laws and permitting agribusiness, with the legalization of pesticides and the criminal burning of native forests for the formation of pastures for livestock. Brazil is going through one of the worst deindustrialization processes ever witnessed in history.
Argentina recently completed this cycle of reactionary ascension and is now witnessing a return of the “soft left”, with the return of the Kirchner Party. The negative legacy of Fernández. Macri’s legacy will not be wiped out so quickly and the left now in power does not seem committed to the complete break with external interests, but to the perpetuation of the liberal-parliamentary cycle.
The most striking cases, however, are the aforementioned examples of Venezuela and Bolivia, countries victimized by American imperialism. Fundamentally, one must realize how both cases reveal real occurrences of foreign invasion, even if camouflaged with a democratic appearance. Venezuela perceived the opposition’s articulations as a true case of war and managed to gain control over the situation: activated the Bolivarian National Guard, intensified security policies and ignored internal and external opposition pressure. As a result, Maduro remains in power and the coup has become an international joke. On the other hand, Morales did not have the same perspicacity and gave way too much to the opposition, falling and being forced to leave the country and hand it over to the coup d’état.
In Chile, recent political unrest is having a positive effect. The claims against neoliberal Piñera, carried out through violent protests that have already given rise to the State of Emergency, are successful and little by little the government is forced to yield to popular pressure.
Currently, the panorama of South America is terrible. With the exception of Venezuela, which is in an undeniable crisis, all countries are, in one way or another, hostages to American interests, with some under governments that make this reality more explicit – like Brazil – and others under more camouflaged regimes. There is no doubt about the fundamental point that American imperialism has never been as aggressive in South America as it has been in recent years. The reason is simple: in the face of progress in the formation of a multipolar world, the geopolitical north is becoming increasingly reactive.
Lucas Leiroz de Almeida is a research fellow in International Law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
February 3, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Economics | Latin America, United States |
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Former Mining Minister Cesar Navarro (L) and former Agriculture Minister Pedro Dorado (R), Bolivia. | Photo: Twitter/ @ATBDigital
Bolivia’s Former Mining Minister Cesar Navarro and former Agriculture Minister Pedro Dorado were arrested at the El Alto airport on Saturday when they were about to board a plane as political refugees.
For the past 82 days, these Socialists politicians remained at the Mexican embassy. Yesterday, they received a safe-conduct allowing their free departure from the country.
“The Mexican embassy transferred the asylees to the El Alto airport with the guarantee granted by the safe-conduct extended by the Bolivian government. In that sense, the asylees should be transferred to Mexico without any problem,” the Mexican diplomatic delegation tweeted.
Even though international mediators accompanied the Socialist politicians, the Interior Ministry arrested them disrespecting the safe-conduct granted by its government.
Latin American social organizations immediately began to criticize harshly Karen Longari, the Foreign Minister appointed by the U.S.-backed, self-proclaimed president Jeanina Añez, who is ultimately responsible for the ongoing persecution against the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) militants.
“We repudiate the arbitrary and illegal act of detention of former ministers Navarro and Damian, which violates all international standards. Solidarity!,” the Sao Paulo Forum secretary Monica Valente said.
Navarro was provisionally released a few hours after his arrest. According to his daughter, the former minister would have been beaten by paramilitary groups during his detention.
Later, Interior Minister Arturo Murillo said that Navarro and Dorado “had been arrested by mistake” and they will leave the country in the next hours. So far, however, their exact legal status is unknown.
Their detention is part of the long list of MAS supporters persecuted by the Interim government installed after the coup d’etat against Evo Morales, which took place on Nov. 10, 2019.
February 2, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | Bolivia, Human rights, Latin America |
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Former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) member and peace agreement signatory John Freddy Vargas was murdered Saturday after attending a meeting in a church in Huila.
Vargas, 42, was shot multiple times while he was on a motorcycle with his girlfriend, after the meeting with officials from the Agency for Reincorporation and Normalization (ARN).
“The event took place when the victim was riding a motorcycle and two subjects hit him twice with a firearm, dying immediately on the spot,” the Deputy commander of the Huila Police Nestor Florez informed, adding that Vargas “was in the process of being reinstated with the RNA.”
The former combatant, who was accredited by the National Reincorporation Agency, was developing agricultural projects in the rural area of that town.
For his part, Ramiro Duran, a representative in Huila of the Common Alternative Revolutionary Force party (FARC), rejected this crime and indicated that as ex-members of FARC they fear for their safety.
Colombia continues to be one of the most unstable countries in the region due to the insecurity experienced by social leaders and former members of armed groups who signed the peace agreement.
In 2020, more than 20 social activists have been murdered in Colombia, and according to the United Nations, since the peace agreement signing, more than 300 murders of human rights leaders have occurred.
So far, including Vargas, another four ex-FARC members and peace agreement signatories have been murdered in 2020.
January 27, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, War Crimes | Colombia, FARC, Human rights, Latin America |
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Bolivia’s interim leader Jeanine Anez has asked all cabinet ministers to resign months ahead of general elections amid growing criticisms of her bid to run for president despite an earlier pledge not to do so.
A presidential statement on Sunday said that Anez’s decision was in line with efforts in the management of the country’s “democratic transition,” months after she rose to power on the back of an an effective coup d’état that forced ex-President Evo Morales to resign.
Anez said she will name the new cabinet “as soon as possible.”
The move came a day after Communication Minister Roxana Lizarraga resigned in protest at Anez’s decision to compete in the presidential election on May 3.
When Anez assumed interim presidency last November, she said she had no intention of becoming president.
In a U-turn on Friday, Anez announced her candidacy in the 2020 election.
Lizarraga, who was appointed by Anez on November 13, 2019, criticized the interim president for having “lost sight of her objectives,” adding, “This is not the path the citizenry has signaled to us.”
Anez’s presidential bid has drawn widespread criticisms from other Bolivian politicians, including Morales —now in exile in Argentina.
Morales reminded Anez that “she promised not to be a candidate,” although he said “it is her right.”
Former president Carlos Mesa, 66, said, “I think she’s making a big mistake” because “she has not been appointed to propose herself as a candidate for the presidency.”
Ex-presidential candidate Samuel Doria Medina voiced his opposition.
Meanwhile, lawmaker Luis Felipe Dorado said he would consult the Constitutional Court about the matter.
Anez came only fourth on 12 percent in an opinion poll published on Sunday that was led by Morales’s Movement for Socialism (MAS) candidate with 26 percent.
MAS headed the survey by Mercados y Muestras and published in the Pagina Siete newspaper.
“In all the polls we are first,” Morales tweeted in reaction, adding, “We are ready to beat the coup and regain the homeland.”
January 27, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception | Bolivia, Latin America |
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Netflix‘s Nisman: The Prosecutor, the President and the Spy
Like The Mechanism before it, Netflix’s new series Nisman: The Prosecutor, the President and the Spy is an entertainment product that advances US interests through character assassination of a popular left-wing Latin American leader.
“Try saying this,” the director said: “‘In the ’80s, Rio de Janeiro was a land of the haves and the have nots. I was a have not.’” In 2016, I was working as a fixer on an episode of a Netflix documentary crime series, and the main character was not cooperating with the script.
He was Afro-Brazilian, but he was not the stereotype they had imagined while preparing the story in England. He had never lived in a favela, was educated in elite private schools, and was an Army special forces captain before entering a life of crime. “In the ’80s,” he said, “Rio de Janeiro was a land of the haves and the have nots. I was a have.”
To the production team’s credit, after half an hour of trying to get him to say he was a “have not,” they changed the story to better fit what really happened. But this episode illustrates an important point that most casual viewers are unaware of: Nearly all documentaries are highly manipulated.
As I learned on the set of various TV documentaries, if an important character refuses to give an interview, their importance to the “narrative thread” of the documentary is minimized, and the script is adjusted accordingly. Characters are prone to get more airtime and scripts are likewise adjusted if they have expressive facial features, good eyebrow control and appear pretty, handsome or humorous on camera. All of this makes sense if the end product is entertainment, but what happens when the program involves real people in positions of power?
Furthermore, if documentarians regularly manipulate narratives and script dialogue for entertainment purposes, wouldn’t it be reasonable to think that they may also do this to advance the geopolitical interests of the companies that hire them? The Capital Group, for example, is the largest investor in both Netflix and Shell, a corporation that has made billions of dollars through petroleum privatizations by right-wing governments in South America. Could it be that it and the other big mutual funds that invest in both Netflix and the oil industry, such as Blackrock, use their power to influence content in a manner similar to how governments influence the TV and film industry in accord with their geopolitical interests?
Netflix‘s The Mechanism
During Brazil’s 2018 election year, Netflix launched a dramatic series called The Mechanism, which portrayed a thinly disguised character based on former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva—who in real life was leading all polls for a return to the presidency, with double the popularity of his nearest rival, the neofascist Jair Bolsonaro—as a criminal mastermind behind a multi-billion dollar corruption scheme. This led to a boycott drive in Brazil, international media attention, an apology by director José Padilha, and probably influenced Netflix’s purchase of transmission rights to Edge of Democracy, an Oscar-nominated documentary about the 2016 Brazilian parliamentary coup that was less biased against Lula’s center-left PT party.
On January 1, four days before the US assassinated Iranian General Soleimani, Netflix launched a six-part documentary series called Nisman: The Prosecutor, the President and the Spy, about the death of conservative prosecutor Alberto Nisman. He was found dead in his bathroom five days after accusing President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and four of her aides of treason, in connection to an alleged cover up of Iranian involvement in the 1994 AMIA Jewish cultural center bombings that killed 85 people.
The documentary makes it clear that the treason charges are frivolous. Treason can only take place, according to Argentinian law, during a time of war. Nisman accused Kirchner and her aides of covering up for Iran in exchange for a bilateral agreement between the two nations which was never ratified. Finally, as the documentary painstakingly shows, despite 20 years of joint investigations between the police, intelligence services, the FBI and the US Department of Justice, nobody has ever been able to provide any material evidence linking Iran to the bombing (FAIR.org, 11/3/15).
But this is what series director Justin Webster refers to as “cinematic non-fiction,” and the facts do not seem as important as the tone and the mood. It spends a lot more time with the Prosecutor and the Spy characters than it does with former President Kirchner, who averages about one minute of airtime per episode.
Alberto Nisman in Nisman
Nisman, coming to life through old footage and stories from friends and family, gets the lion’s share of attention. The week before his death, he appears nervous about having to defend his treason accusations in front of Congress, initially saying he will only appear to members of the sympathetic and conservative Republican Proposal party, and if there are no reporters. When he is told it will be a public hearing, he asks his friend, Congressmember Laura Alonso, to postpone it for a week.
The night before the hearing, his body is found in his bathroom, in what is initially ruled a suicide. As sad music plays in the background, Alonso talks about the dark mood that was sweeping over the country and her worries about her friend.
We are not told that Alonso is former Argentine director of Transparency International, the ostensibly “anti-corruption” NGO which is funded by the US and British governments, Exxon Mobil and Shell (Guardian, 5/22/08). We are not told that Alonso was the most vocal public critic of Kirchner’s nationalization of the petroleum industry, or that she directly benefited from the charges filed against Kirchner, assuming the position of Anti-Corruption Minister in the Mauricio Macri government. In the doc, she is just a concerned friend.
Nisman‘s Jaime Stiuso
According to Webster, the other two main characters in the series, the Spy and the President, are “Shakespearean.” The Spy is Antonio “Jaime” Stiuso, a 42-year veteran of Argentina’s State Intelligence Secretariat (SIDE) with close ties to the CIA and the Mossad. He was in the agency during the Argentine military junta’s Dirty War, when it participated in the notorious “disappearances” of leftists, 30,000 of whom were machine-gunned down, or drugged and pushed out of airplanes into the South Atlantic. He was corrupt and dangerous but, like the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover, apparently too powerful to fire, until Cristina Kirchner did it in December 2014, one month before his partner Alberto Nisman filed treason charges against her.
In terms of entertainment value, Stiuso is a fantastic character, and he gets more airtime than any other living person in the documentary. With a boyish gleam in his eye and a quick, mysterious grin, he is the type of subject documentary-makers dream about, and is already showing himself to be a favorite of the critics—“charming and evasive,” according to Variety (9/23/19).
President Cristina Kirchner is not seen much in Nisman.
The third main character, President Kirchner, in office from 2007–15, is a center-left politician who rejected Washington consensus economic policies in favor of Keynesian developmentalism, and reached out to Washington bete noires like Fidel Castro, Evo Morales and Hugo Chávez. She set an example for leaders around the world by strengthening labor unions, initiating large minimum wage hikes and by renationalizing strategic companies that had been privatized during the disastrous IMF-imposed structural adjustment period of the 1990s, including the train system, the water system, the Aerolinas airline company and the YPF oil company. Her government was marked by high growth rates and innovative redistributive policies that reduced inequality. Consequently, she became extremely popular with the poor and working class.
After Nisman died, Alonso’s right-wing Republican Proposal party capitalized on the frivolous treason charges against Kirchner, spread conspiracy theories about his death and catapulted party leader Mauricio Macri to the presidency. Praised by Barack Obama and English-language corporate media, Macri used presidential decrees to immediately gut the public health and education systems, lay off tens of thousands of public sector workers, reestablish a relationship with the IMF and implement privatization.
As had happened during the IMF structural-adjustment period, poverty skyrocketed and widespread hunger led to food riots. As Macri’s popularity plummeted, fellow Nisman character Alberto Fernandez won the presidential election by 7 percentage points, with Cristina Kirchner as his VP; they took office on December 10, 2019. You would have no idea that any of this had happened by watching Nisman.
Cristina Kirchner is one of the most fascinating political characters of the 21st century, but all we see of her in Nisman are short speech fragments and soundbites, peppered with unflattering photos and ominous background music.
During her 50 seconds of airtime in episode 5, for example, she says, “This isn’t an issue that started here in Argentina, it is a political, judicial and communications matrix that extends throughout the entire region.” Kirchner is talking about “lawfare,” the weaponized use of legal tactics to destroy political enemies. This has indeed been applied to left and center-left politicians across Latin America, often with the support of the US Department of Justice, as happened to her friend and former Brazilian President Lula, who was arrested on frivolous charges with no material evidence in order to bar him from the 2018 presidential elections.
The frivolous treason accusation against her, also apparently prepared in partnership with the US DOJ, is another clear example of lawfare. Taking a small fragment of a speech on this subject out of context, however, makes her look like a paranoid conspiracy theorist. This is ironic to see in a six-part documentary that is entirely built upon two conspiracy theories which, as is shown in the series itself, do not have any material evidence to back them up.
This is not to say that the documentary is totally one-sided. Throughout, there are moments in which members of Kirchner’s party and journalists—all men—defend her. Importantly, however, Webster chose not to let her defend herself, despite the widespread availability of archival footage in which she does so eloquently.
Audiences “may well come to a conclusion, one open to interpretation,
though it not for me to say,” director Justin Webster, Variety (9/23/19).
In Variety (9/23/19), Webster says:
The rules with fiction and non-fiction are completely different in a sense of the relationship with the truth. A good non-fiction story is showing you “this much is true,” uncovering the details, the evidence…. It’s not like there is one version of the truth and another version of the truth, there is only one truth.
The problem is, a television director is not a judge or a prosecutor, and normally has little knowledge of the law. The proper venue for deciding whether the president of a foreign nation is guilty is a court of law, not a television channel controlled by corporate investors who have a vested interest in privatizations in the nation presided over by that president. In a court of law, defendants have the right to to defend themselves, normally through a final argument. In a documentary, the director can arbitrarily decide to limit someone they’re accusing of a crime to one minute of airtime per episode.
Given the long history of US-backed right-wing coups in Latin America, most recently in Argentina’s neighbor Bolivia, given the rising tensions between the US and Iran, and given the fact that neocon Foundation for Defense of Democracies vice president Toby Dershowitz, who appears in the documentary, began associating Fernandez and Kirchner with Iranian terrorists as soon as they took office last month, it would be reasonable to suspect that the US and its integral state allies in the corporate media are going to use this nonexistent Iran story from 1994 as justification for a coup attempt in Argentina in the near future.
Nisman is beautifully filmed and entertaining, and director Justin Webster does a good job uncovering the relationship between the FBI, CIA and Argentinian intelligence services. But the bottom line is that he casts suspicion on Cristina Kirchner even though he knows that there is no proof against her.
January 24, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Film Review | Latin America |
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Luis Arce at a news conference after being announced as the Movement to Socialism’s presidential candidate, in Buenos Aires, Argentina Jan. 20, 2020. | Photo: Reuters
Bolivia’s Office of the Prosecutor expanded an investigation against Evo Morales’ former officials, among whom is Luis Arce, the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) presidential candidate.
The announcement was made by prosecutor Heidi Gil one day after the MAS unveiled that Arce would be its presidential candidate in the upcoming elections in May.
The judicial process is related to the alleged diversion of public resources from the Indigenous Development Fund (Fondioc), a case in which former Presidency’s Minister Juan Ramon Quintana has also been mentioned.
“If the Prosecutor finds enough evidence during the extension of the investigation, they will be called to testify,” Gil said referring to Arce and Quintana.
The extension of the judicial investigation was requested by the current Fondioc director, Rafael Quispe, a well-known opponent of the Morales administration who was appointed to that position by the government of Jeanine Añez.
Since the coup d’etat consummated on November 10 in Bolivia, numerous MAS militants have been subject to judicial persecution.
In this regard, the MAS leader Evo Morales said that the current U.S.-backed de facto regime does not seek justice but “revenge and impunity.”
Former Minister of Economy Luis Arce is one of the intellectuals who designed the economic model that allowed Bolivia to keep high growth rates for more than a decade.
January 22, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties | Bolivia, Latin America |
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Wednesday, January 22 marks the day that Jeanine Añez is set to stand down as “interim” President of Bolivia, beginning the process for fresh elections set for May 3. Añez came to power in November, following a U.S.-backed coup that deposed the Movement to Socialism’s (MAS) Evo Morales. However, she is certainly not acting as if she intends to relinquish her power, let alone move towards new elections. Instead, she has sent the military, replete with tanks and other armored fighting vehicles, into the capital cities of all nine departments of the country.
MintPress News’ Ollie Vargas was on the scene in the center of the capital La Paz, where he filmed hundreds of armed soldiers performing drills outside the Cathedral of St. Francis and dozens of military vehicles circling the city, sirens on and guns drawn.
“The purpose of that is to intimidate people ahead of possible protests against the coup on the 22nd of January… This was a show of force saying you are not going to be able to march where you want. The military is preparing for war-style operations if marchers do arrive in the city. It is about intimidating the people,” he said in an interview with TeleSUR English; “The point was to be a show of force, rather than itself be an act of repression. It was there to show what repression could come.”
The military played a leading role in the November coup, demanding Morales resign and handpicking Añez as his successor. The police, too, were crucial, rebelling against Morales and later repressing protests from the country’s indigenous majority, even conducting massacres in the towns of Sacaba and Senkata. “It seems like the police are following the instructions of the far-right in Bolivia,” said United Nations Special Rapporteur Alfred de Zayas. Last week, Añez rubber stamped a pay rise for the country’s police, bringing their salaries up to that of the military’s.
For an interim government, the Añez administration has certainly made some sweeping policy changes, both at home and abroad. Internally, it has begun a mass privatization program aimed at conducting a fire sale of the country’s considerable natural resources. Since November it has been at war with the press, launching a crackdown on all media hostile to it, closing down multiple TV stations, with critical journalists disappearing or being found dead in suspicious circumstances. It has also set up new SWAT-like secret police battalions aimed at suppressing what is calls subversive voices, both domestic and foreign.
Añez has completely reoriented the country’s foreign policy, pulling out of multiple international and intercontinental organizations, expelling thousands of foreign nationals, recognizing Israel and inviting the Israeli Defense Forces to train the Bolivian security services and closing its own anti-imperialist military school.
It has also moved far closer to the United States than previously, recognizing U.S.-backed figure Juan Guaidó as the legitimate head of state of Venezuela. Earlier this month, a team from the U.S.-funded group USAID arrived in the country to advise the government on how to best conduct the upcoming election. Given the U.S.’ history in overthrowing heads of state across Latin America, the news has not been greeted with pleasure by all. Thus, while many inside the country have voiced their concern over the suspension of democracy, no one is accusing the new government of being lazy or unambitious.
MAS candidates forced to organize abroad
Under very difficult circumstances, the MAS party yesterday announced that its candidates for the May elections will be a ticket of Luis Arce Catacora for president and David Choquehuanca for vice-president. MAS leaders met in neighboring Argentina due to the repression in their own country. The location meant that a number of key figures accused of crimes by the new administration, including up-and-coming star Andrónico Rodríguez, could not attend. Arce, 58, Western-educated and middle-class, was Minister of Finance under Morales in an era when Bolivia generated high and sustained economic growth. Many see him as far from radical. His running mate is David Choquehuanca, an indigenous activist from a peasant background. He was Morales’ longtime Foreign Minister and was also secretary of ALBA, an intercontinental organization Añez has recently pulled the country out of. He is commonly seen as the driving force behind Bolivia’s anti-imperialist foreign policy, currently being dismantled by the coup government. Some will be disappointed that Andrónico Rodríguez, a charismatic indigenous 30-year-old union organizer groomed by Morales for a leadership position, was not chosen.
Whether those candidates will, until May, be able to remain in their positions – or even out of prison – is an open question. Many MAS officials, including President Morales and Vice-President Alvaro Garcia Linera, have been forced to flee the country or face arrest. Another MAS leader, Walter Ferrufino was arrested this weekend as he was traveling to Argentina for the meeting.
In the October election, Morales and the MAS gained 47 percent of the vote in the first round, enough to secure an overall victory. In contrast, Añez’s party, the Democrat Social Movement, received four percent. While all sides continue to behave as if a vote will take place in May, the absurdity of holding an election under the circumstances of a military takeover, where by far the most popular party is being repressed, means that there is a very real possibility the proceedings end up lacking credibility.
Alan MacLeod is a Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent.
January 21, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties | Bolivia, Latin America |
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By Paul Antonopoulos | January 20, 2020
Last Wednesday, the coup government of Bolivia launched a massive military operation claiming to be a pre-emptive strike against the expected violence to occur this Wednesday during Plurinational State Foundation Day celebrations that memorializes the change in the name of the country and the adoption of a new constitution in 2009 under the Presidency of Evo Morales. Heavily armed military personnel on the streets, arrest warrants and the denouncements of deputies who are intimidated by violent groups has just continued under the U.S.-backed coup government in La Paz.
The increased militarization has occurred despite violence, vandalism and looting decreasing since November when Morales was driven out of Bolivia. However, the fear continues and justice has been politicized to such a degree that the coup government has itself reported that there are more than 64,000 judicial proceedings in progress against former authorities and officials associated with Morales’ administration – all leading up to the elections on May 3.
However, the dilemma for the putschists is a fear that Morales’ Movement to Socialism (MAS) Party may win. Morales has refused to legitimize the current leader of Bolivia, Jeanine Añez, further complicating the upcoming elections. It is for this reason, with the huge popularity of Morales remaining, that the coup government fears what might occur on Wednesday, which is not only a Morales-era public holiday, but also the date on which the constitutional mandate of the Executive and Legislative powers ends. Even if the parliament decides to ratify the extension of the mandate by the Constitutional Court, the frustrations of the people might explode.
This comes as the Bolivian people were reinvigorated with Morales stating “If between now and in a little while… I were to return [to Bolivia] or someone else goes back, we must organize as in Venezuela, armed militias of the people,” referring to Bolivarian people’s militias organized by Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. However, this could be a dangerous statement that could serve to justify further repression and the militarization of Bolivia.
Evo Morales then went to Twitter to say “Peace, reconciliation and unity in Bolivia they will only be achieved by restoring the rule of law, eliminating motorcycle groups and fighting, ultimately, against inequality, discrimination and poverty.”
It is this very symbol of Bolivian sovereignty and independence that Añez has prioritized the removal of statues and images of Morales from the public sphere. However, it is very unlikely that this would be enough to remove the memory of Morales that Bolivians have for the country’s first indigenous president. Bolivian people know the removal of references to Morales publicly will not erase his achievements from their memory.
With Bolivia being mired by a political crisis for months that still has no solution, the next few days before the anniversary of the founding of the Plurinational State on January 22 has put the government on top military alert, which now realizes that it cannot erase a country’s history at a stroke or deny its identity. However, Añez has decided to silence those voices as she cannot dissuade them by deploying the army and police to the streets.
The little widespread popularity that the coup government has will continue to decline, especially after the visit of Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director of the United States National Security Council’s Western Hemisphere Affairs directorate, Mauricio Claver-Carone, to Bolivia who reiterated his support for Añez on behalf of Trump. Claver-Carone and Añez talked about Trump’s priorities in this so-called transitional period. In the regional domain scheme, Trump cannot let the Andean country escape from his hands, which is why it is likely that he pushed Añez to rename the anti-imperialist school that Morales created in the Armed Forces of Bolivia in 2016, which was renamed on Friday to Heroes of Ñancahuazu – after the Bolivian military unit that killed revolutionary figure Ernesto “Che” Guevara in 1967, according to TeleSUR. This was of course part of a wider effort to destroy the memory of Morales in Bolivia.
The arrival of Áñez to power, by a coup d’etat in November, gave a twist to Bolivia’s international policy, which during the almost 14 years of Morales’ administration had assumed an “anti-imperialist” position, including the expulsion of the U.S. ambassador and the U.S. anti-drug (DEA) and ending cooperation with (USAID) agencies. Claver-Carome’s visit certainly improved several steps of rapprochement between La Paz and Washington after the fall of Morales in November.
Although Claver-Carome said that his visit sought to deepen the links between the two countries, of which he said they had the same democratic interests and values, the attempts to destroy the memory of Morales is likely to backfire and create a renewed vigor for support behind the MAS. It is for this reason that Áñez must consider scaling down the violence and persecution against Morales’ supporters, especially as Wednesday will be a highly charged and emotive day, in which Morales supporters view the resistance to her putschist government as part of an anti-imperialist struggle.
Paul Antonopoulos is a Research Fellow at the Center for Syncretic Studies.
January 20, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Aletho News | Bolivia, Latin America, United States |
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Social leaders in Colombia are under threat since the peace agreement of 2016. | Photo: EFE
The Cordobexia Social Foundation denounced Saturday the assassination of social leader Luis Dario Rodriguez, the second activist killed in the northwestern department of Cordoba this week and the 21st so far in Colombia this year.
According to the statement released by the foundation, the social leader was murdered on Friday afternoon as he was returning home from a fishing trip in the municipality of Tierralta.
“He was shot by men on a motorcycle,” denounced the Cordobexia Social Foundation, as well as calling on the national government to protect and guarantee the exercise of human rights in Colombia.
Rodriguez was a member of the Association of Displaced and Vulnerable Families of Tierralta and of the human rights network of southern Cordoba. Also a father of three children and dedicated himself to fishing and agriculture.
His activism consisted of speeding up land claim processes after the flooding of the Alto Sinúu lands by the URRA 1 hydroelectric plant.
Less than a week ago, social leaders, Jorge Luis Betancourt and Tulio Sandoval were also murdered in their respective municipalities.
Betancourt also from Cordoba was killed in the municipality of Montelibanom and was a farmer’s rights activist.
While, Sandoval, who was participating in the crop substitution program, was killed by armed individuals who broke into his house, dragged him out and shot him repeatedly in front of his family.
In this context, Attorney General Fernando Carrillo recently called for an end to what he described as “the systematic murder of social leaders.”
Since the peace agreement signing, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Peace in Colombia has counted more than 300 murders of human rights leaders.
January 20, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | Colombia, Human rights, Latin America |
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US experts are again claiming that Russian social media campaigns have disrupted US elections, sowed anti-Western sentiment in Africa, and “inspired China and Iran to adopt similar tactics against protesters and political adversaries”, the New York Times alleges, attempting to highlight the purported global influence of Moscow.
The New York Times on Sunday alleged, citing analysts from the US Department of State, that Russia’s online influence campaigns in Latin America have been active for a long time.
In particular, the analyses suggested that Twitter accounts “likely linked to the Russian state” produced a number of posts during the 2019 unrest in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Colombia and Chile, according to the media report.
State Department experts concluded that this short-term spike of activity is “likely linked” to social media accounts and could be regarded as evidence of a powerful disinformation campaign, The New York Times said.
According to State Department officials cited by The New York Times, purported Russian efforts in Latin America “appear aimed at stirring dissent in states that have demanded the resignation of President Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela”.
“We are noting a thumb on the scales […] It has made the normal dispute resolutions of a democratic society more contentious and more difficult”, said the deputy assistant secretary of state, Kevin O’Reilly, cited by The New York Times.
The report, cited by the US-based media outlet, concludes that the surge in unrest in Latin America in 2019 cannot be attributed to any one particular factor, leaving an alleged Russian-linked influence campaign in question.
As an example of their findings, experts allege that RT Espanol and Sputnik Mundo have been a primary source of information for Russian-linked Twitter accounts. Another supposed pattern “spotted” by American analysts suggests that certain Twitter accounts posted in Spanish and English were targeting the Chilean public and foreign audiences last autumn, according to The New York Times.
Chilean authorities have also reportedly made their own findings, suggesting that one-third of all social media posts during the nationwide unrest in 2019 were disseminated from abroad. Chileans have, however, questioned the document as the posted figures fail to show reliable evidence that a foreign power played a role.
Despite US claims that State Department experts reportedly used sophisticated computer-generated data-mining analyses to support their conclusions, the Moscow-blaming campaign remains precarious for want of hard evidence.
According to The New York Times, citing State Department data, a Twitter campaign with the hashtag #chile – popular among the allegedly Russian-linked accounts in October 2019 during the peak of the unrest in the Latin American nation – failed to gain even the bottom position in the regional top 100.
Russia has been constantly blamed for waging influence and meddling campaigns throughout the world, in particular in the US, the EU, as well as some Africa and Latin American countries. Moscow has repeatedly denied all the accusations, highlighting that no proof has been ever furnished.
On Friday, Acting Secretary of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Chad Wolf accused Russia of pursuing tactics that include actions “that disrupt and undermine the American way of life”, saying that the US is expecting “Russia to attempt to interfere in the 2020 elections to sow public discord and undermine our democratic institutions”.
January 20, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | Latin America, New York Times |
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