Bolivia: “For saying there was a coup d’état, they call you ‘seditious’ and persecute you criminally”

In Bolivia you have to be careful with what you say and do, if you don't want a judge to accuse you of “sedition and terrorism” to put you behind bars. This was the case with Argentine and Venezuelan journalists who visited the country to report on the massacres. But the accusation is also directed at those whom the media have targeted. This is the case of former Deputy, former Government Deputy Minister, and current member of the National Assembly, Gustavo Torrico who, through Paris-La Paz contact, told us he practically takes his imminent arrest for granted.

The Bolivian coup: what the mainstream media don’t tell you

The Comite Ciudadano (Citizens Committee), a right-wing coalition led by Bolivia’s ex-vice-president, Carlos Mesa, and Luis Fernando Camacho, a multimillionaire entrepreneur, leading the extreme right-wing pressure group Comite Civico (Civic Committee) of Santa Cruz, jointly launched a brutal wave of violence in many areas of the country aimed explicitly at ousting democratically elected President Evo Morales.

The stakes in the Bolivian elections

Bolivians vote in a general election on October 20th.  Evo Morales has been the President since 2006, winning three successive terms as President.

A victory for him would continue the development of the economy and the rise in living standards since he took office.  It would be a considerable boost to the left across Latin America, which otherwise faces the impositions of Bolsonaro, Macri and Moreno, backed by the US and in some cases the IMF.  Socialists internationally have every reason to support a Morales victory.

World Bank, dictatorship and the Amazon: the history of deforestation in Brazil

During the 1980s a series of shocking images and films appeared of massive devastation underway in the Amazonian state of Rondonia. There, an area of old growth rainforest roughly equivalent to the size of Great Britain was being ripped down at record rate. As the fires generated huge smoke clouds, thousands of indigenous people who had been living in the forest died off at the hands of the ranchers and farmers, gunned down, poisoned or deliberately infected with smallpox.

Evo Morales: fighting the Amazon fires and providing leadership in times of adversity

While other South American leaders stood idly by, and delayed operations to fight fires days after the flames began to spread across the Brazilian Amazon, the President of the Plurinational State of Bolivia, Evo Morales Ayma, personally led efforts to confront the tragedy in the area of Chiquitanía, located in the country’s southeast, between Gran Chaco and Amazonía.