Massive protests last month forced Bolivia’s postcoup government to pledge that elections will take place on October 18. But Luis Arce, presidential candidate for Evo Morales’s MAS party, told Jacobin that democracy is still in danger, with powerful private interests standing to gain from the continuation of the current regime.
Bolivia’s MAS party will confront numerous challenges when returning to power. But its resounding victory against the authoritarian right and its roots as a party of social movements represent a radical vision of hope at a time when we need it most.
A clumsy, short-lived coup last month couldn’t bring Bolivia’s discredited conservative forces back to power. But the divide between Luis Arce and Evo Morales over the legacy of the Movement for Socialism could give those forces a bigger opening.
Bolivia’s ousted vice president Álvaro García Linera told Jacobin about last Sunday’s coup d’état and the murderous violence now being unleashed against Evo Morales’s supporters.
Nine months after the right-wing coup that ousted Bolivian president Evo Morales, elections still have not been held and popular discontent with the coup regime is boiling over. Democracy must be restored, no matter what the golpistas and their allies in Washington want.
Last weekend’s Bolivian elections saw socialist Luis Arce romp to victory with 55 percent of the vote. Former senate president Adriana Salvatierra told Jacobin how the restored MAS government can undo the damage caused by last year’s coup — and set Bolivia back on the path to social transformation.
In November, Evo Morales was forced out of office in a right-wing coup. He was trying to avoid a campaign of terror from the Right — but under Bolivia’s new ultraconservative president, Jeanine Áñez, that terror, now carried out by paramilitaries, is still escalating.
In 2019, a right-wing coup deposed Bolivia’s elected government. But the people fought back — and now the socialist government they elected in its place is more popular than ever.
Victory for socialist candidate Luis Arce in last month's Bolivian election seemed to turn the page on the overthrow of Evo Morales last fall. But the murder of miners' leader Orlando Gutiérrez just after the election shows that the coup plotters are still a violent threat — and will do all they can to silence working-class Bolivians.
Marxist historian Vijay Prashad talks about his new book Washington Bullets and the history of US-backed coups, from the post–World War II period to the recent successful right-wing coup in Bolivia.
Six months after the coup in Bolivia, Luis Arce is presidential candidate for Evo Morales's MAS. Oliver Vargas interviewed him about the postcoup regime, its handling of coronavirus, and what the delayed election means for the Left's chances of returning to power.
Bolivia's coup government has announced that elections slated for September will be pushed back yet again. It's another reminder that the right-wing coup-makers care nothing about democracy — they only want to institute neoliberal policies and repress Evo Morales's leftist party, who they know would win a free and fair election.
Under MAS, Bolivia has seen massive decreases in poverty — but its social movements have grown weaker.
Peru heads for presidential elections on Sunday, when voters will have a choice between two very different candidates: left-wing trade unionist Pedro Castillo and far-right politician Keiko Fujimori.
The US spends around $48 billion on the war on drugs each year. The massive spending doesn’t do much to stop drug use, but it has been a major boon for arms and security contractors and human rights abusers around the world.
The riots in Brazil have drawn Jan. 6 comparisons, but they’re even more reminiscent of a different episode: the Bolivian coup that liberals misguidedly backed. Another big difference from Jan. 6: Brazil is actually prosecuting its high-level coup plotters.
US media outlets like the New York Times rightly dismissed bogus claims of electoral fraud by Donald Trump. Now they need to start applying the same standards to Latin America, where such claims have been used to justify the violent overthrow of elected left-wing governments.
Fifteen years after Evo Morales was first elected president of Bolivia, his socialist party has returned to power. The far right hasn’t given up — but the indigenous masses that reversed the right-wing coup and forced elections have proven themselves a formidable force for justice and democracy.
A year since the Organization of American States made unfounded claims of electoral fraud in Bolivia, leftist leaders from across the region have called for its Trumpian secretary general to resign. Throughout its history, the OAS has been a tool of Washington's domination of Latin America — and an obstacle to genuine efforts at regional integration.
Bolivians went to the polls last week for the first local elections since the 2019 coup. Evo Morales’s Movement Toward Socialism party won big — and it would have even performed even better without the undemocratic scheming of the Right.