The Stark Contrast: Progressive Protests in Chile & a Reactionary Uptick in Bolivia
By: Saber Of Truth
Tags: Communism, Chile, Politics, Bolivia

That fascist scourge and butcher general Pinochet was not formally indicted until 1996 and brought to trial only in 1998, following his arrest and extradition after seeking medical treatment in Spain. The imperialists did everything they could to get him off the hook, and eventually ruled he was “unfit for trial” based on his poor health. He was later released and died a simple death in 2006, in the country he terrorized and wreaked havoc in for so damn long.

In the words of Paul Sweezy,

“The Chilean tragedy confirms what should have been, and to many was, obvious all along, that there is no such thing as a peaceful road to socialism.”

Allende’s widow, Hortensia Bussi, realized this grave mistake after the coup, saying that “it is not enough to achieve power through elections. The people should have been armed or have had an army at their service.” We should learn from this lesson, that the road of armed revolution is the only way to seize political power and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. Armed revolutionaries are the only force that can nip fascism in the bud and destroy it once and for all.

But, the story doesn’t end here. Chile eventually hurled away the mirage of fighting for democracy and was forced to concede to the cruelty and brutality of the Pinochet regime. Subsequent to the fall of Pinochet in the national referendum of 1988, Patricio Aylwin, who erupted as the new president, ordered and designated the National Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which exposed the most visible instances of callousness and ruthlessness on the behalf of Pinochet’s bloody and repressive regime amid its sixteen years of arrant tyranny. Not all perpetrators met justice. By the late 1990s to the early 2000s, most barriers to charging and convicting war criminals and humyn rights violators have been removed, but to this day we find that fugitives are still sought after and being located. In the words of revisionist and Soviet flunky Fidel Castro,

“Come what may, from now on history will be different in Chile.”

Notwithstanding the actual changes that had broken out, the transition in the last instance was relatively minor. Chile never returned to a full-fledged bourgeois-democracy, until 2006 with the election of Michelle Bachelet. Imprisoned and tortured by the Pinochet fascist regime, she won asylum and returned only in 1979. A member of the revisionist Socialist Party of Chile, she became president in the course of the Pink Tide as it soared throughout South and Latin America. She was also the first female president and served from 2006 to 2010 and again from 2014 to 2018. Accomplishing free education for universities and decriminalizing abortion, the political bands established under Pinochet seemingly were ebbing away. However, the dictates of capitalism continued to rise on top and the economic law of the dictatorship of capital remained. In 2006, the Penguins’ Revolution got weaving on. Students continued to rise up in demand of free use of public transit, against crowding in the subway systems, and at the climax of the protests, over 700,000 stood up and marched while over a thousand were arrested. Bachelet acquiesced and genuflected to a meager stack of demands, but the student movement would not be halted in its dash against oppression. Bachelet threw in the towel again and put her stamp on more changes. The students, unperturbed, continued trekking on, to warn the government they would not be hoodwinked by such ineffective reforms.

Capitalism as a system functions according to its own dynamics, and the outermost stretches of capitalism were forced to close back in. At the outset of the 2018 elections, a new challenger popped up, a hard-rightist.

Analyzing Today

Billionaire fascist Sebastián Piñera was elected for a second term in 2018, even after having an approval rating of only 50% in 2014. He is no stranger to mass protests against his incompetence. In 2011, a series of protests were generated in Magallanes y la Antártica Chilena Region. Prompted to increase the price of natural gas for consumers to 16.8%, protests were sparked and a flag was flown saying “no to the increase of gas [prices] in Magallanes!” At least 2 died, and then, the Chilean Winter set in motion as led and directed by students around the country. Outraged at the insane levels of inequality and the gross privatized educational system, and the realization of protests raging the world, people rose up and raised their demands. A student died and several hundred were injured. With water cannons and tear gas, the terrain was bloodied and people continued to fight without backing down. Piñera was disgraced and exposed naked to the oppressed as a mere puppet of the imperialist west. The Piñera regime has also routinely given elbow room for fascists to organize and gain ground in the country. In 2018, fascists attacked a feminist rally, stabbing participants and called for mass sterilization against wimmin.

Zooming to 2019, we see that Piñera is still hated by the public. Starting on October 19th, protests have culminated across Chile over the adverse effects of the neoliberal system and austerity programs that plague the masses of people. Hundreds of thousands to millions of protesters have taken to the streets in Santiago and all around the country, originally as a student upheaval against a surge in the cost of gas and electricity, plus a hike in transportation prices, with subway fares increasing by 4% and metro and bus fares also rising. The devaluation and depreciation of the Chilean peso — to the point it led to an over two-year low in September of last year — has meant for the masses of people unexplainable and skyrocketing costs for daily necessities.

Different groups of people have unified in a struggle of the oppressed and poor classes against the puppet regime. Joining hand-and-hand with other disgruntled and fed-up people, protesting low wages, privatization, and abominable inequality, the protests are now opening up a new chapter in Chilean history. The masses are at a class war with their exploiters and oppressors, and the heightened militarization of the cowardly state has only fueled the outrage and indignation of people.

A curfew was issued and a state of emergency was declared by the baleful and tyrannical regime. The measures deployed by Piñera are reflective of the brutality of the Pinochet days and are actually the result of powers vested to him by the Pinochet-era constitution. Armored vehicles patrolled the vast streets of Santiago in an attempt to quell the people with intimidation and force.

Cowards.

Barricades have been lit ablaze and an energy company has been firebombed as thousands have been detained, a good bulk of which are young protesters, and hundreds have been injured. At least 20 have died, and numerous cases of rape and torture by the government’s security forces have been exposed. The malignant crackdown has been criticized by thousands around the world, most notably by over 4,000 academics that signed a petition urging the Chilean puppet regime to put the cork on its violent attempts to quell the protests and demonstrations.

As of late, new demands have opened up about changing the Pinochet-era constitution and drafting a new one with a further sense of bourgeois-democracy imbued within its pages. Bowing down to the anchored behest of the masses, the regime has at last conceded and agreed to readjust and change the constitution. But after it was revealed that the people would be excluded from Congress and its process of rewriting the constitution, the people refused to stand down and continued to strike and protest in fury.

Engulfed in a williwaw of furor and vigor, the hard-right puppet state of Chile has been caught red-handed in its attempts to quell the brave masses of people who’ve erected in the teeth of struggle for their liberation! Through unending murders which equate to massacres and mass incarceration of innocent people… the Chilean state exposes thoroughly it’s own illegitimate standing as a lapdog of the western imperialist armada.

Fire is both physical and ideological, it represents both the physical destruction of the old and the burning passion of the masses.

We must supply everlasting support and endorsement to the Chilean people in their undying courage and intrepidity. Neoliberalism and its sidekick, imperialism, have tormented the masses for far too long.

The Bolivian Situation

Down in Bolivia, a sinister uptick of a different sort has begun to crop up, one backed by the big-time national bourgeoisie and the monopoly-capitalists of the west. It is deplorable what is going down right now, but before we can make any comments, it is necessary to dissect the history underscoring it all.

The landscape of Bolivia was born in the Andean region of South America. Settled at least 21,000 years ago, the population began to grow. The Moche and Nazca cultures began to make an appearance, and by 300 B.C., Waru Waru, an agricultural system, developed and the highlands were used for the benefit of people. A thriving ancient civilization, the Tiwanaku empire, rose quickly to prominence in the Titicaca basin as a major city-state in the region. Firmly rooted in agriculture, the people learned swiftly to conquer the environment around them. The population without cessation grew as a result of the sharp-witted path towards agricultural development they took up. Urbanization eventually took hold by about 600 C.E, and they started to become a major religious and cultural hub.

Architecture was essential to the empire, and large monuments and buildings spellbound onlookers and travelers from a great distance away. Large temples like Pumapunku were constructed Art flourished with tons of jewelry and pottery prevailing, and the people came together to forge culture and enhance their society. Religion was everywhere and open spaces were prevalent throughout the society, dedicated solely for religious ceremonies. The people were no doubt proud of their achievements and what they could accomplish. However, climate change began to kick-off and as it went underway in depleting precipitation, at a time when rain was held to be sacred — and proved necessary for survival — it became as plain as a pikestaff the religious control of the ruling class began to fall headlong.

In due time, they were arrogated and overpowered as the seven regional Aymara Kingdoms, steeled by the astonishing ability to adapt to the new climatic conditions, came pounding in. The capital was abandoned and the central governing body collapsed as drought was inflicted; a departure from the past was now being forged. The indigenous Aymara people came to power, but conflict between the Uru people in the southern Andes and the Quechua people in the northern highlands led to a new trajectory: the upsurge of the Incas, led by the emperor Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui. Western and south-central Bolivia were swallowed up for the purpose of harnessing the land’s agricultural potential. While there were occasional insurgent movements, they were all quelled in due time. Much could be said about these early events, but the crux of the matter is that the indigenous people were invulnerable and able to preserve their culture and customs even in the face of suppression. Bolivia was now a mere export colony, picked, raped, and maimed for the Crown.

The face of Bolivia changed agonizingly when the Inca people were overpowered by the Spanish conquistadors. After an internal struggle for power following Huayna Capac’s death, the Spanish led by Francisco Pizarro and his bloody clique came racing to find gold, treasures, and people to enslave for wealth. Although among the indigenous population there were tons of resistance, there were interior contradictions and alliances, and the Spaniards came out on top and rebel armies were crushed. Thousands of Incans were massacred. Encomiendas piled with indigenous people were formulated and people were coerced to accept Christianity. Humyns from Africa were abducted and forced to thrall on silver mines and slave on large haciendas. A cultural genocide had initiated and slave labor was everywhere, all to avail the Spanish economy and world hegemony.

Production began to decline and a depression set in motion by the end of the seventeenth century. The masses were heavily taxed and continued to toil on large colonial estates, and animosity continued to foster until the tipping point. After periodic and endless upheavals, the people rose up in a major armed violence against the Spanish conquerors in Upper Peru (now Bolivia) from 1780-onward with help from Túpac Amaru II. Under his direction as a combatant for liberation to organize local communities, crisis hit the Spanish Viceroyality. Over 6,000 oppressed people stood up and overwhelmed the royalists at Sangarara, but after suffering horrific numbers of fatalities, the insurrectionists were subdued and Túpac Amaru II was captured. His body was dragged to Cuzco until he was tortured and barbarously martyred.

In 1809, El Libertador Simón Bolívar ignited a wave of resistance to free Bolivia and much of South America from its ball and chains. Not only that, it would bestow Bolivia the name it holds to this very day. In the Draft of a Constitution for Bolivia, Bolívar wrote that “Bolivia is and will be forever independent of all foreign domination and cannot be the patrimony of any person or family.” He ensured that “in it are included every guarantee of permanence and freedom, equality and order.” Truly, this was a new epoch, but not everything was solved. Slavery was abolished, but the Creole elite still restricted the rights of indigenous people, even extracting and stealing their land, also trying to “civilize” what they perceived as an ignorant population.

El Libertador Simón Bolívar.

In the late 1920s, a border squabble was powering up, between Bolivia and Paraguay. Although accorded access to the Paraguay River, the quarrel ended in humiliation and Paraguay’s control over the disputed land remained. The Act of Conciliation was signed in 1929 before the conflict could explode any further. But by 1931, another border incident with Paraguay broke out, and the economic conditions only declined. During the Chaco War, Bolivia and Paraguay fought in a bloody incident over an arid territory of forests full of important raw materials and natural resources. At least 100,000 were slain, and imperialist countries were pestering and behind different sides in the conflict. The oligarchs that pushed so many lives to the brink, led the country into depression, and spoiled tin production and incited mass layoffs were abhorred by the broad masses of people, and uprisings of several types had proliferated, notably from the unions, miners, and indigenous population. A law of “Social Defense” split open and communists, phony-socialists, and other radicals were suppressed, and large-scale demonstrations were instigated against the aggressive crackdown.

Bolivia has rarely ever had a chance at stability and was always in a perpetual state of social unrest. With some 185 different changes in government from the entrance of independence until 1970, the people have suffered time and time again. To note, populist Victor Paz Estenssoro, head of the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement, led for many years in a manifold of successful elections and was at first unwelcome by the right-wing as well as the west. During this time, the indigenous population grew exponentially in the millions, but were still forced to barely cling on to survival in extreme poverty. In 1952, mines were nationalized and a year later, the Agrarian Reform Law was passed which finally abrogated forced labor of peasants and allocated land to the indigenous community. Large landlords resisted, but the goal was set and attained and the people to this day celebrate this landmark achievement. Workers and peasant masses were invited to work in local and national affairs, and this outbreak was a formidable strike to the life-blood of capitalism-imperialism, but the mixed program of bourgeois and opportunistic politics was unable to fundamentally break with the class character of this system. Regardless, this was known as the “National Revolution”, but it would not last long.

A coup was fostered in 1964 and General Rene Barrientos Ortuiio assumed his post with massive backing by the United $nakes. One could also never forget what happened afterwards with the center-left (but somewhat radical) leadership of Alfredo Ovando, who after distancing himself from the regime and death squads that assassinated and martyred Che Guevara and his focoist comrades, turned to the left and dovetailed the country into yet another change in political leadership through a coup. In a startling shift from the past, he nationalized the exploitative U.$-based Gulf Oil Company. Announced to a roaring and cheering crowd, his popularity winged its way up in spite of the radical left’s enmity to the regime’s unwearying centrism.

60% of the population during this time were peasants, and the exploitation and neo-colonial plunder of the country severely harmed the masses. The economy was still bound to the historic legacy of colonialism and genocide and dependent on exporting tin and other natural resources to the imperialist centers, and western monopolies constrained economic independence and growth. Any hurdle in the pathway of the imperialists was to be met with resistance. By October 1970 the rightist forces regrouped, and a coup took place, displacing the left and pseudo-left, and Ovando fled to a foreign embassy. This, in particular, is very interesting when glancing at the current situation. Nevertheless, the reactionary, pro U.$ general Hugo Banzer then came to power. Opening relations with the fascist Pinochet regime, the brutal repression of the people was two carbon-copy policies of the two countries.

Thousands were arrested, tortured, or disappeared into what appeared to be thin air. Nazis were employed in some of the highest political positions in the country and the U.$. exploitation of the country only intensified.

Later forced to step down, in an irregular and undoubtedly corrupted election, Juan Pereda came to power, in one of Bolivia’s most unstable periods in history. After just a few months, military general David Padilla came to power for a short allotment of time in an attempt to turn the country toward a mature bourgeois-democracy. After nine months, general elections were called. No candidate received a majority of the vote, although Hernán Siles, part of the Left-Wing Revolutionary Nationalist Movement, received the largest share. Therefore, according to the constitution, Congress had to decide the next leader. Remarkably, there was no unanimous agreement until a third opportunity arose, Wálter Guevara. He would later be disposed of in a butchery coup, led by Alberto Natusch. Lidia Gueiler, the first female president, then came to power. A popular leftist, she led a country for a short space of time, but she was also discarded in another bloody coup, this time pioneered by General Luis García Meza. Thousands died or disappeared. He was forced to resign as the anti-communist and repressive tyrant, General Celso Torrelio, rose to the presidency in 1981. The global recession and debt crisis did not fare well though for this leader, and a junta came to fruition in 1982 with the rule by the Commanders of the Armed Forces, until it was dissolved by Guido Vildoso. Hernán Siles later became president again, elected by the Congress. He was arrested for a short while during a botched military coup, but he jumped back even with the constant erosion of support. Hyperinflation continued to plague the country, and he was subsequently forced to step down.

By 1985, Victor Paz Estenssoro ran again for election (even with a strong corrosion of support) but under a neoliberal banner. In October, an international tin crash had gone underway, which caused tin production in Bolivia to plunge by one-third. Low prices for tin and high production costs led to tin mines fracturing and becoming fruitless. The economy just kept on declining, and the pallid-faced government would begin to brook the draft of a New Economic Policy to revamp the failures that kept crashing down on the country. For his fourth term as president, Supreme Decree 21060 was put in place which linked the U.$. and Bolivian currency, liberalized the market, and privatized enterprises. Wages in the public sector were frozen and state-run businesses were broken up. By up to 1000%, prices rose for basic foodstuffs. A strike was declared and sustained for over seventy hours and hundreds were arrested, with many being sent to prison camps sequestered from public view.

Nearly two-thirds of the population is indigenous and the legacy of the adoption of neoliberal structural adjustment programs has always harmed the people. From 1991 and 2003, indigenous movements around the country were vanguarding demonstrations and protests against the oppression they were subject to for centuries, against the violations of their rights, entitlements, land, and production. While certainly participation in local government affairs and policy-making had been fleshed out by the early 2000s, the basic demands of the people were rarely, if ever, met. Land that was stolen was never recovered and self-determination was restricted. Quickly, indigenous forces came to the realization that force was the only tongue the reactionary regime would listen to. From blocking roads — to disrupt “life as normal” — to kidnappings of highly-valued political leaders, collective action of the oppressed was blooming.

The 2003 Cochabamba Water War was a massive inflow of unemployed miners, coca growers, peasants, and other like-minded people and coalitions that joined together to annul the decision of Cochabamba’s water companies to privatize and to protest the mammoth increase in the price of water that derived from such a harebrained decision. The movement extended to many other places in the country, especially in the battle against the French-owned Aguas del Illimani, which failed to deliver water to around 20% of the city’s population. While they certainly were forced to exit the country by the demand of the government, the overall problem only certain to foment. The 2005 Gas Wars (Guerra del Gas), to state another example of these blooming protests, was a towering upheaval during which 70 unarmed people were nastily put to death and 470 others were wounded. In 1999, gas was privatized which led to a surfeit of disastrous economic problems, and the buoyant demand for gas around the world was not being taken advantage of, and private oil corporations and multinational corporations were exploiting the vast reserves of the country to the anger of the people. The jubilant plea to renationalize gas and against the insane rise in poverty and extreme poverty was raised in the formation of social protests that swept so hard that it forced the acting president to resign. Today this is designated as Octubre Negro.

Large uprising of the people amid the Water Wars.

Bolivia for many years was known as the poorest country in all South America, with 65% of citizens living below the poverty line. According to the World Bank, about 14.4% of the citizenry were living on less than $1 a day. A wave of popular and national protests burst out against neoliberalism, the privatization of water supplies, and the exploitation of natural gas reserves by the imperialist centers in the west. To repeat, the presidents Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada and Carlos Mesa were driven out of office, forced to vacate the department by commercial airline. An interim government was called to function and a new set of elections were announced. It is with that knowledge in mind that Evo Morales was able to run for president. But we should also understand what the pernicious neoliberal malady is that infected Bolivia and a plethora of other South American countries.

Understanding Neoliberalism

Neoliberalism is a power project and economic tactic of certain segments of the international bourgeoisie. Under the smokescreen of depleting inflation, boosting production, and poverty-lifting, neoliberalism has entered through force in many third-world countries, pauperizing the many and enriching the first-world. An integrated and unipolar U.$.-dominated world has been the end result of the modern phase of parasitic globalization and predatory neoliberalism.

“Free trade” is professed, that is, the easy flow of goods and resources from the Global South to the belly of the Global North is taken up, markets are theorized as innately self-regulating and as perfect mechanisms to relieve the world of its problems, state intervention is toned down and market forces take the helm, and that the free market can generate and serve all economic needs is deemed self-evident are hallmark concepts of neoliberal thought. But we live in the era of imperialism, wherein free competition has deceased and a clique of countries dominates the world scene. There are no longer “free markets” in the pure sense of the word, but rather, monopolies control from each corner of the globe. Uncontested U.$. hegemony, erected through all-out imperialism on a world scale, has meant the submission of the third-world to U.$. global demands. Attempts to step outside the lines of demarcation set in stone by the internal logic of imperialism are met with violent suppression through intervention and war. This proves the necessity of moving beyond this system and looking past the contemporary framework.

Any attempt to spur neoliberalism has led to failure and has required the governments to adopt basic social safety-nets to quench the demands of the people who bear the brunt and to avert total economic collapse. Shortages of food, of equitable shelter, of self-mastery for the masses, total inequality and a widening gap between the rich and poor… these are inherent negative consequences bound to the logic of neoliberalism. To sustain neoliberalism would mean disaster for the masses of people and only bring to light the possibility and necessity of escaping this system.

From the exercises of the World Bank and the IMF, to the imperialist alliances that encircle the third-world, to the imperialist heartlands and their super-exploitation of the masses through invasions and occupations, multinational corporations, and the crushing of movements that endeavor economic and political independence, the world is loaded with chains, and neoliberalism is at the forefront of this evil. But neoliberalism cannot survive forever, and it could not keep a beating heart in Bolivia.

The Bolivian Class Struggle

At the apogee of the Bolivian people’s struggle against neoliberalism came the preponderance of a party known as the Movimiento al Socialismo, endowed by Evo Morales, a celebrated Aymara leader, in the course of the broad class struggle blustering the country. Heaps of coca farmers, unions, political leaders, indigenous rights activists, campesinos, and more came to the defense of the movement against structural adjustments, neoliberal hegemony, and the brutal repression of the people. The critical distinction of Morales from the past traditional leaders is that his party was designed to listen to the mass base of peasants and workers, to collaborate based on cooperation, teamwork, and consensus at the grassroots of the poorest and marginalized peoples. It is no wonder that in the 2005 elections, Morales became known as the first triumphant indigenous president in the country with the highest indigenous population in all the western hemisphere.

He won at least 53.7% of the vote, and something of a new type was being paved, and history was being made. By May, the oil sector and enormous gas reserves were nationalized. This signaled a vital rupture from the past. With the second-largest spare of natural gas on the South American continent, foreign firms have always had an interest in controlling and dominating over these natural resources. Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, among the corrupt yes-men of the imperialists that preceded Morales, sold out his country’s wealth in petroleum resources to foreign investors and markets in the west to the disadvantage of the Bolivian economy. It was past-due for a permute of the country’s social, political, and economic order.

Álvaro García Linera and Evo Morales.

In 2006, the constitution was reinvented in favor of the popular classes, and Evo Morales saw that Bolivia had to be refounded; that a new and better future was in reach. The Senate was pressured to approve a bill crafted by Morales which sought to establish a Constitutional Assembly, and after being approved, by June 2006, the Movimiento al Socialismo won 52% of the Constitutional Assembly. Alarmed that indigenous upheaval was all the rage, the United $nakes began sweating and tried everything in the book to quash the movement. The amerikans disseminated lies that Morales was a drug trafficker and terrorist and warned about withdrawing all aid to the small and impoverished country, and at a time when the U.$ funded and was directly behind the coup against Hugo Chavez, strongly intervened in the Nicaraguan elections, and was enclosed in a thundering war of aggression for a “New Middle East”, the threat was nothing to dismiss. But, boldly, Morales pushed ahead. The domestic Hydrocarbon reserves were nationalized, medical clinics and schools were constructed, and a state-run food agency was announced.

In 2009, Evo ran again in order to continue the road he and others had been paving toward better bourgeois-democracy, the consolidation of stability, and overcoming the 500-year legacy of colonialism. Obstacles and sectarianism (backed by the U.$. and the imperialist camp) obviously blocked the peaceful highway of wholesale structural changes that were being built. The regional divide, albeit, in Bolivia during the international 2008 financial crisis led to a series of unrest and protests that distressed the country. In particular, we saw that non-indigenous, principally white, forces took to the streets to protest the legitimacy of the election process. Many bellowed for “independence” and “autonomy”, in a part of the country which contains among the biggest oil and gas reserves. The resource-rich segments of the country in control by rightists began to enact various forms of atrocious violence, being bankrolled by the CIA in the millions during the process. A form of martial law was called to action in Pando as fascists began a horrifying massacre, in which 11 people were slain. This was another instance of a “fascist, racist coup” in Bolivian history, to quote Morales himself. The militant and determined response of the government, peasants, and ultimately the masses of people as a whole rubbed the U.$. imperialist sharks the wrong way, considering the entire event was an attempt to meddle in Bolivian internal affairs and retake the country back into their tightening grip. The military later recaptured the city, and Evo, in his fashion, carried on and won 64.08% of the vote.

Despite U.$. hostility and intervention, in the 2014 elections, Evo ran again. Although there was some widespread debate over the constitutionality of term limits and how they applied to this election, Evo carried on. For this third-term, he won over 61% of the vote, beating capitalist Samuel Doria Medina, and the Movimiento al Socialismo held 88/130 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 25/36 seats in the Chamber of Senators. While much of the right-wing opposition cried foul and accused the elections of fraud, there was never any evidence presented for their case.

President Evo Morales decided to run for re-election again in 2019, and because of a massive outpouring of support, he was allowed to, but without ease. There were challenges to be seen, such as the fact that a referendum denied his right to proceed in the process, but typical, he marched on. The Constitutional Court lifted limits on the ability of individuals to run for re-election, and the Supreme Electoral Court approved Morales’ candidacy for the national elections alongside eight others. By a 10.3% lead, Evo Morales won 46.95% of the vote while his contender, Carlos Mesa, obtained only 36.6% of the vote. Needless to say, the fascist crybullies have cried foul.

Donald Trump, for example, received only 46.1% of the vote in 2016 and was sworn in as president. Al Gore in the 2000 U.$. elections received 48.4% of the vote, but his opponent, war-criminal George Bush — who received hundreds of thousands of votes less — won anyway. For those concerned about the integrity of Bolivia’s democracy under Morales, it’s perhaps time to focus on some other irregularities in other countries. But, as we know, fascists don’t care about “corruption” unless it's in their favor.

“Communist” Evo?

Evo Morales was and is not a communist and was definitely an ally of the Chinese-Russian social-imperialist bloc. Morales did not seek to break with imperialist domination and overlords, and instead was an advocate of the Chinese domination of the production of lithium in the country and the “peaceful” betrayal of the people. Moreover, Morales collaborated with German imperialism, to the point of trusting a 20-man ruled German company with the fate of lithium-mining in one city. Morales’ support for the Russian imperialist regime is undeniable too, with him calling to “strengthen the close bonds of friendship” between the two countries. The door for the west was shut, but the backdoor was opened by others for the upper hand of the national and comprador bourgeoisie.