Anton Flaig is the organizer of the Wiphala Movement Germany and a student of political science and sociology.
It’s been two years since the right-wing coup against Evo Morales’s socialist government. One of his former ministers tells Jacobin about how the US war on drugs helped create a Bolivian military free from popular control.
Faced with the Left’s lead in the polls, coup-installed president Jeanine Áñez has suspended Bolivia’s election for the third time. The COB trade union federation has responded with a general strike and road blockades around Bolivia — showing that the country’s mighty social movements will not allow an illegitimate regime to continue clinging to power.
With Bolivia’s coup government delaying presidential elections for the third time, the country’s largest union federation is threatening to launch a general strike this Monday. In an interview with Jacobin, the labor federation’s leader explains why trade unions are fighting to ensure the vote goes ahead.
Luis Arce is far in the lead in polls for Bolivia’s repeat election, after his MAS comrade Evo Morales was overthrown in last November’s military coup. The postcoup regime has attracted almost no popular support — the question now is whether Bolivia’s right will even allow free elections to take place.