Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[feelotraveller]

Nice result in, and for, Bolivia.  I particularly liked the classy statement from the new President-elect (cited from above link):

“We think that our comrade Evo has every right, if he so wishes, to return to the country and defend himself,” Arce said.

Let's see what happens. 

[Reelya]

I was just reading that trade unions supported the ouster of Evo Morales. You might think that trade unions would support a progressive candidate, but just think of the role that trade unions play - they're a middle-man between management and workers. Ultimately, the organizations that persist are ones that act in ways that persist their organization, not the ones that are the most effective at obtaining their 'stated' goals. Consider that you can make more money from treating the symptoms of a disease that from curing it. So, trade unions persist where there's ongoing conflict or tension between workers and management, and if those problems get solved then the union isn't needed any more. Hence, quite a few unions are anti-progressive: a lot of them have pacts or understandings with the management class. They have a role to play in a well regulated machine.

Evo is a good guy. You can tell that because of how he left office. There were unsubstantiated rumors of electoral irregularities following his election victory. But, just about everywhere has those and they're an easy claim for the opposition to make. Then there were three weeks of protests, and they demanded Evo resign. The critical point is: he did resign, even though he probably had no reason to. He didn't dig his heels in or use law enforcement to crack down on the protests or rally his supporters. Basically, he stood down to avoid violence and chaos from the other guys.

On 4 December 2019, the OAS released its final report related to 20 October election, detailing what they called "deliberate" and "malicious" tactics to rig that election in favor of President Evo Morales.[21][22] Two subsequent independent non-peer-reviewed analyses of election data from different sources disagreed with the statistical analysis of election data presented by the OAS, with CEPR accusing OAS of doing a "basic coding error" resulting in what appeared to be inexplicable changes in trend.[23] OAS's counter-response stated that doing statistical exercises on what they described as falsified data does not prove the data is not false, and said that the counter-analyses do not address or discount other alleged evidence of fraud in the report.

The OAS is basically a tool of Washington. They had election data, and used bogus math to make it look like the data was rigged. However, when other academics pointed out their glaring math flaws and that there was no smoking gun, they moved the goalposts and said that of course there was no "smoking gun" since the data itself was false to start with. So, the data was supposed to be fake because of telltale signs, but when those telltale signs were debunked, they moved to the idea that since the data was fake, then they could rig things without telltale signs, so not having any signs of false data is in fact now a trait of false data. See the logic here?

So they rigged a report and then branded that with their 'authority', then when their own rigging was exposed, they resorted to sheer rumor mongering without any evidential basis. As for the 'other alleged evidence' - I'm guessing that this was rumors from right-wing groups in the nation. Basically a form of the Gish Gallop- present a million unconnected bits of 'evidence' then when any one of them is debunked you merely state that they didn't debunk all the bits of evidence. This works because disproving rumors takes more effort than just stating and accepting the rumors without any critical analysis.

[Cheesy Honkers]

One thing you're wrong about: Evo didn't resign willingly. It was only after the military suggested that unless he does so the country would fall to violence. So, it was more like a coup than a resignation.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-50369591

[Dostoevsky]

Yeah, it was a (semi-, initially) bloodless coup, but it was still a coup.

Perhaps ironically, Evo's the one who substantially built up the country's military.

(Regardless, I'm hopeful about the election outcome. Main opposition candidate did concede too.)

[Reelya]

One thing you're wrong about: Evo didn't resign willingly. It was only after the military suggested that unless he does so the country would fall to violence. So, it was more like a coup than a resignation.

What I really mean is that if he was the kind of thug some were making him out to be then he wouldn't have stepped down, he'd have converted his supporters into makeshift meatshields to prop himself up in office and/or have already converted the military into his personal army. So yeah, he stood down to avoid violence in the end. A lot of leaders wouldn't have done that. There are plenty of populists who, faced with that situation, would have called their supporters to rally at the capital building and built a wall of humans around the place, so that if the military wanted to take over, they'd have to shoot their way though men women and children, effectively calling their bluff.

I wasn't really debating the motives of the other side or whether it was a coup or legitimate resignation, but the fact that he peacefully stood aside to avoid that clash.

Part of the point here is that the means by which he left power is more than a little at odds with the narrative they were trying to push. So, on one hand, the story is that he's a heavy handed defacto dictator who rigs the polls, so he's like Saddam Hussein, yet apparently he has no control whatsoever over the military's response to said manipulation. The story doesn't add up. So there are allegations, then a few weeks of protests against the allegations, then the military demands the president stand down. That's clearly not how things go in a "dictatorship".

It's also comical how some on the right started labeling democracies as a dictatorship based on the fact that the supporters of the guy they don't like has majority support, and that's fundamentally unfair. If it's someone like Evo or Chavez, who is popular, but not with the "right" people then the true ruling elite is being oppressed at the ballot box by the unfair dictatorial means of the mass population turning up to vote.

[Dostoevsky]

He definitely has had his fair share of opponents/obstacles killed (I know somebody well who has had several colleagues killed by him when he was president), though you are right that here he didn't go down that path.

He had some dictator-like elements going on, though he didn't have an iron grip on the country or anything like that. And he was better than the folks before him, for sure.

EDIT: Dropping an edit in here for anyone who happens to stumble across it - this is all incorrect; I was misremembering my conversations with the mentioned person.

[Reelya]

Do you have sources for those killings. I'm trying to find articles with those allegations in them, found nothing yet. Checked Wikipedia, BBC and New York Times, none of which are particularly friendly to Chavista types
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-12166905

The only relevant thing I can find is this:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/apr/17/bolivia-assassination-plot-evo-morales

Police in Bolivia have shot dead three men, including one identified by local officials as an Irish national, over an alleged plot to assassinate the country's president, Evo Morales.

The three were shot during a fierce gun battle after police uncovered an apparent plot which involved suspects believed to come from countries including Hungary and Croatia, as well as Ireland, government officials said yesterday.

Police attempted to arrest a group of men in the centre of Santa Cruz, an eastern Bolivian city and hub of anti-Morales sentiment, but they fled to a hotel where the shootout took place around 4am (9am BST), witnesses and police said.

The alleged assassins detonated a grenade inside the hotel, blowing out its windows during the gunfight, according to police.

Unless I'm missing something, it doesn't look like any reputable publication is publishing those allegations. I can't even find a hint of the allegations.

Even FOX News didn't mention a whiff of that when they covered his resignation:
https://www.foxnews.com/world/bolivia-president-evo-morales-resigns-election-fraud-allegations

Morales became the first president from Bolivia’s indigenous population in 2006 and presided over a commodities-fed economic boom in South America’s poorest country. The former leader of a coca growers union, he paved roads, sent Bolivia’s first satellite into space and curbed inflation.

Basically that's FOX's entire bio on his presidency. Infrastructure and cutting inflation. No mention of political assassinations or even hinting at any allegations. If there are stories about that, they're pretty deep down some rabbit hole or other. So yeah, I'm open to the accusations that I'm glossing over less salubrious aspects of his regime here, but i literally can't find corroboration that such claims exist.

I just googled "killed by evo morales" in quotes to limit the search, and got literally one google result, some random no-name website, and the story was about some 20 year old kid killed in street clashes between pro and anti government groups, and opposition groups claiming it was like Evo had killed him. So, no the term "killed by evo morales" brings up literally zero google hits except for that one. So, it's not like I haven't checked for this stuff.

If there are people who have had colleagues murdered and they accuse Evo Morales as being behind the murders, well there don't seem to be any sources whatsoever which back up the idea that this is a thing. Perhaps the same security forces which ousted Evo Morales were behind some killings of these people, and the people then blame Evo Morales as being "behind" the killings. But there's no evidence that Evo had his own personal hit squad. Quite the opposite since he clearly can't control the military.

[ChairmanPoo]

Note that Bolivia doesn´t even have capital punishment currently. I think Dostoevsky is mixing Evo Morales up with someone else.

[Reelya]

Ah, that's possible. I did a pretty exhaustive search after all to try and find accusations that he killed anyone, couldn't find even a whiff of that. Not even on fringe far right sites. However, it's possible some people working for an opposition group were killed and they pinned it on Evo Morale's government as rumor mongering.

But if any even moderately well known opposition leaders were being murdered then there would be conspiracies and/or rumors implicating Morales in the killings, so from the lack of any reporting, we can deduce that there aren't any such killings - consider the conspiracy theories about the Clintons and Vince Foster's suicide. So whoever has been murdered must be of sufficiently low public profile that their death isn't generating any press. This fact makes if far less credible that Morales is involved in any way. If they're not actually important people to the opposition movement, why would Morales be personally targeting them? And if they were important people, why is nobody in the media kicking up a stink about it or using it to implicate Morales?

[Dostoevsky]

No, it's Evo.

I know somebody who worked with indigenous groups in Bolivia; sometimes groups opposed local industrial development or resource exploitation, and out of that group a subset would get beaten or killed by government thugs.

Edit to elaborate a bit: this person had been working in Bolivia before Evo as well, and was initially really amazed and hopeful when he was elected, but over the years grew increasingly disillusioned. Not that he was the worst Bolivia had seen, but that a lot of hope ended up dying.

As to why it's not getting attention, these are small indigenous groups in a 'backwater' nation-- generally not much attention is getting paid to them at all, and in some cases it's communities that some Americans would think of as 'savages'. Not like the wealthy white urban (often racist) folks that make up a good portion of the opposition groups in Bolivia.

Also to add: these deaths weren't at all related to the election -- sorry if I wasn't clear on that. This person stopped their work in Bolivia a few years ago for unrelated reasons. And sorry for not having citeable sources; I understand if you choose not to believe - I trust this person a lot and they still opposed the coup against Evo, for what it's worth.

EDIT: Dropping an edit in here for anyone who happens to stumble across it - this is all incorrect; I was misremembering my conversations with the mentioned person.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

That's a common story in South American nations to be sure, but I'm not sure why you blame Evo for it. The resource extraction transnationals are outright genocidal towards indigenous people the world over. Stopping that isn't going to be easy for anybody, particularly given how deeply ingrained the white Christian fascist groups were in the Bolivian government until Evo.

Don't get me wrong, I think Evo should have purged the fuck out of those groups, but as we saw not getting couped in countries that are at the top of the CIA's murder list is really difficult. He obviously never had full control of the government, or else he'd still be in power. Blaming him for the people who were around long before him and desperately wanted to put a knife in his back doesn't really make sense.

[Dostoevsky]

Evo's not the sole person to blame, for sure, but some of these were high-enough profile infrastructure projects for him to be personally involved.

(I should also add this isn't like hundreds of people or anything-- this person knew 3 or 4 people killed, roughly half a dozen more badly injured.)

Further edit, because I'm writing these too quick: and yes, I don't want to make the perfect the enemy of the good. Just trying to say he's not a saint, is all.

EDIT: Dropping an edit in here for anyone who happens to stumble across it - this is all incorrect; I was misremembering my conversations with the mentioned person.

[ChairmanPoo]

No offense but this is very anecdottal. By that rule of thumb I could claim, say, that Tom Hanks eats babies.

Not that I think that Evo's a saint but I'll need something hardier to take at face value a claim about anti-native death squads. Specially since the man's support comes mostly from rural communities

[Reelya]

The only thing I could find after google bolivia infrastructure killings was an incident in 2011, where police suppressed a protest and anecdotally 4 deaths occured, but the suppression was condemned by Morales basically right away.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Bolivian_indigenous_rights_protests

https://web.archive.org/web/20111023185812/https://edition.cnn.com/2011/09/29/world/americas/bolivia-protests/

However, part of the prelude to the conflict was this:

Following more than a week of protests, the marchers staged a larger demonstration in which they sought to circumvent a police crackdown by forcefully holding Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca to march with them.[9] A group of female marchers grabbed Choquehuanca and insisted that he lead them through the police cordon that separated them from pro-government marchers so they could continue their journey to La Paz.

So, you had a police cordon separating pro and anti government rallies, and the anti government rally people then kidnapped a government official and tried to use him to force their way through the cordon because they were being unfairly hindered in their movements by the police cordon. What the police were doing was merely separating pro and anti government groups to avoid conflict, and the anti-government people here clearly goading things to come to a violent head so they could get the trigger they wanted to topple people. Give it a few more weeks of similar provocations, and the police snapped and actively suppressed the demonstrators, and you had the event they could then blame on Evo Morales.

Basically after the event in question all police were made to stand down in face of the protests, while the minister in charge of that was made to resign.

As the protesters entered the city, people in La Paz cheered them by waving Bolivian flags and white handkerchiefs. As a gesture of goodwill both police and riot control vehicles were withdrawn from their positions outside the presidential palace, while the information minister offered an official welcome to the protesters.

Again, this isn't how wannabe dictators conduct matters.

BTW for comparison there have been 19 deaths related to BLM protest crackdowns in the USA, and I don't see too many people who would see the 2011 protest deaths as being Evo Morale's fault making much of that.

I'm fairly certain this is the event you were talking about, but the reality is extremely far from the insinuation that Evo Morales routinely orders the murders of political opponents.

[Dostoevsky]

No offense but this is very anecdottal. By that rule of thumb I could claim, say, that Tom Hanks eats babies.

Not that I think that Evo's a saint but I'll need something hardier to take at face value a claim about anti-native death squads. Specially since the man's support comes mostly from rural communities

As I said before, understandable if you choose not to believe since it is ultimately one anonymous person giving hearsay on the internet. And again, it's not about widespread killings (and definitely not about racist death squads; they weren't killed for being indigenous but were situations where the pockets of resistance just so happened to be small indigenous groups), but a few cases this person was personally familiar with. Can't say for sure whether Evo was involved, but those affected were left with that impression.

Left enough of an impression on me to speak up here, at any rate.

[The 2011 incident]

This person certainly had opinions on that incident, but this wasn't the particular event in question.

EDIT: Dropping an edit in here for anyone who happens to stumble across it - this is all incorrect; I was misremembering my conversations with the mentioned person.