BOLIVIA, or golpe mania

November, 2019.

If Portugal ranks as the 4^th most peaceful country in the world (my previous blog), Bolivia must rank at the bottom of the list.  On the other hand, the country is a leader in violent military coups, or golpes are they are known in Latin America.  Golpes in Bolivia are rather straightforward, case book scenarios whereby an existing government, democratic or not, is overthrown by non-democratic forces, such as a military putsch, a dictator or a political faction. 


This time around, Bolivia over did it: two golpes took place consecutively.  By tinkering with the Constitution and then rigging the ballot box, Evo Morales, the president, resorted to a political golpe to stay in power.  Street protests and bloodshed followed.  With the objective of restoring order, the military forced Morales to resign, an ultimatum which looks like a military golpe.  Morales fled into exile in Mexico.

                                                              Marching for their rights


I spent two years in Bolivia (1978-80), and during this short period I experienced four golpes out of a total of about 190 since Bolivia’s independence in 1825.  The fourth golpe took place the day of my planned departure and I was later evacuated with a planeload of stranded tourists.  Since 1912, 24 presidents were forcibly removed from office, and I met seven of them.  It was my first UN assignment.  In Bolivia, I discovered the meaning of hardship posting!


Working conditions in cold, high altitude and landlocked Bolivia were hardship enough without the additional concern of avoiding being shot at by opposing military forces (it happened to us during the second golpe).  The geological survey where I was seconded was a hotbed of personal conflicts, and racial strife, with UN expats standing in the crossfire.  I would have lost my sanity and health without the moral comfort provided by my Brazilian boyfriend and my cat Arsouille[1].  After my Bolivian experience, I was battle hardy, ready to face any adversity, such as the hazard of UN bureaucracy.


Evo Morales was elected in 2006, the first president ascending from the indigenous majority, and a transformative leader; he was certainly the longest serving democratically elected president.  He had played his political cards wisely and did not follow Hugo Chávez’s catastrophic approach in Venezuela.  Morales’ plentiful oil and gas revenues were prudently used to develop the country, particularly in the poor Indian regions. 


His only controversial vanity project was the construction of the ugly presidential palace in downtown La Paz.  He cannot be blamed for being wary of sleeping in the presidential palace colloquially known as Palacio Quemado (Burnt Palace).  It was burned to the ground during an uprising in 1875.  Three past presidents were murdered in the palace; the last gruesome murder took place in 1946 when a mob found Gualberto Villaroel López hiding in a closet and lynched him.  His body was thrown out the window and hung naked from a lamppost.  

                                                                    Vanity Project


Morales was so confident that a fourth mandate was a fait accompli that he never considered grooming an heir who could have taken over the party in his absence.  His pigheaded and disastrous decision to run has seriously endangered the social and economic progress achieved during the past decade. Morales has self-sabotaged his legacy. 


In spite of Morales’ 14 years of ethic pacification, the historic racial and geographical divide has reopened between the poor indigenous Andean people, and the richer Euro-descendants of the southeast.  The longer the conflict, broader the racial gulf will become.  Neighboring country leaders seem unable help, either plunged in their own domestic unrest or too ideologically polarized to offer honest broker assistance.  

Bolivians have to sort out the political mess themselves.  Already a circus of ideological grandstanding, South America risks becoming a battleground.  In Bolivia, things will probably get worse before they get better.

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[1] Arsouille could not be evacuated with me.  He spent another two weeks with a friend in La Paz.  We were reunited in France.