July 3, 2024 • 39 mins
Mia and James discuss the economic crisis and splits in the MAS and Bolivia's social movements that led to the worst coup attempt in modern history.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
All Media. Welcome to you kadapp here a podcast that
is groaning under the oppression of whoever keeps changing the
stupid zoom interface. It's different every time. It always gets worse.
It never gets better. Please stop.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
We had trads for zoom zoom layout.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Just get it, get it one time, put the recording
thing on the stupid panel on the bottom, and then
never change it. It simply never gets better. Yeah, this
is be a who's extremely annoyed at zoom with me?
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Is James yep also extremely annoyed at zoom high just
in solidarity with Mia fuck him?
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Yeah, and also also extremely annoyed. Right now is the
man stages the world's worst coup? Ask to report to prison.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
I don't think we can call it the world's worst coup. Mia,
that's a bold claim. You're forgetting silver Core.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
No, so okay, here's the thing about Silver Court, right,
The guys who defeated Silver Court had guns.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
But Silver Corp didn't. They had b B guns.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Yeah, but here's the thing, right they they those guys Again,
those guys did not have real guns, defeated by guys
with guns. These guys had guns. They had a lot
of guns. They were defeated by people with.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Flags Yeah yeah, and a guy standing in a doorway
being like, no, you can't come in, go home.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
You know, so we we are.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
I genuinely believe this is the worst cup I've ever
seen in my entire life.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
And you know, we lived in Venezuela. One.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
I distinctly remember stepping out of a post office and
checking my phone and getting eighteen messages from my friends
that said, do.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
You do you?
Speaker 1 (01:49):
What do you know about the coup and Turkey? That
was a terrible coup. Was they they could have they
could have just saved us all this trouble of shot
aired wh douf a jet fighter, but they didn't. You know,
there's there's been plenty of bad ones. There was that
that coup recently in the Democratic public of the Congo
to the fiasco. Yeah, hilariously, This coup Oblivia recovering today
happened exactly one year and three days after the the
(02:12):
march of the Wagner Corp.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Oh yeah, I've gotta forgot about that one. What if? Wow? Yeah,
well we wanted to try it.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Guys, if you believe you can achieve, give it a
go to a coup. If you want to why not
it's gonna trump paye try one did what very well? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Yeah, I mean we really I also, I mean, we
can't forget January ninth, even the.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
The well, I don't.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
I don't because January sixth was already farce, but like
we forgot the farceest, farst version of it in Brazil.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Yeah even there. Yeah, yeah, they owed a building coup.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Yeah, lots of lots of very stupid cues, but this
this is probably the worst one. And so we're going
to be explaining sort of what happened. But the thing
about this coup is that in order to understand what's
happening with this coup, we have to get through, I
think a part of Bolivian history that has not been
(03:09):
really well understood or talked about on the left, which
is effectively what happened in Bolivia.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
After the coup in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
I think I think people sort of know that there
was a coup and that got overturned, but coma that
was sort of the point at which which the sort
of Anglo media and like the sort of press that
hits the left here kind of just took off. So
you have your sort of twenty nineteen coup. The place
where sort of everything getting lost kind of starts is
(03:42):
that so there's this coup. The left sort of response
to the coup is not very strong because the sort
of social movements have been hallowed out by the sort
of incorporation into the Bolivian state, so they sort of
just don't have the juice to really kind of you know,
(04:02):
roll this coup back. This is this is this is
makes basically this is the twenty nineteen coup, not the
twenty twenty four coup.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
And you know the thing about the twenty nineteen coup
that makes it very different from this one is that
that one was you know, there was a broad base
of support for this right in this sort of in
this sort of like far right out of Santa Cruz
and also out of sort of like like more moderate
center right factions. So you know, there there are sort
of large street with favor of this. This is not
(04:30):
true if those recent.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
One yeah, absolutely not.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Yeah, but you know in by by by twenty twenty,
as twenty twenty is sort of progressing a Anya's's coup
government is a fiasco. Their management of COVID is just terrible.
Enormous numbers of deaths. I mean, actually I mean not
by American standards, I guess, but you know, really really mismanaged.
I mean, my I have friends there who were talking
(04:55):
about how if you were going to the hospital and
you needed to use like a piece of medical equipment,
you had to buy the medical equipment or a part
to fix a machine and then show up to the
hospital with the part because they couldn't order it.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
I've yeah, I've seen that in a few places in
the world. It's never, never a good time.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Yeah, it's it's not good. It was a real shit show.
And by by sort of I think about September early
September twenty ninth of twenty twenty, there are the left
has sort of gotten it shipped together and there are
these this massive set of roadblocks. Bolivian Blivion social politics
tends to sort of be about roadblocks because you know, country,
(05:32):
a lot of mountains, a lot of roads you can
very easily block off and then prevent anything from you know,
for example, entering a city, yep. Idea. So they're they're
able to just basically shut down the Blivion economy. The
government is once again on the Vergia collapse and once again,
and we'll get to the first time this happened, but
even Morallies once again sort of pulls the supporters off
(05:53):
of the barricade so you can go win an election
rather than you know, attempt to just bring down the
sort of coup government. So you know that eventually happens.
The government is forced to hold elections because you know,
they've they've lost control of the country, and them as Takes,
you know, wins this election by overwhelming margins. The MAS
(06:15):
is even Morales's party, it's the sort of like party.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Of the oblivion left. But yeah, the guy comes to
the power. As Lewis R.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Say, he's an interesting figure because he is kind of
We're going to get more into sort of what the
MS is in a bit, but he is from a
kind of right wing of the party that's not talked
about very much.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Yeah, he he is.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
A you know, he's not a guy who comes from
the social movements in the way that sort of Morales did,
like he was. Even Morales was a guy from the
the he was like the president of the coca growers union.
Arsay is a banker. He's an an economist and a banker.
He comes out of the the Central Bank of Bolivia,
and he he has had been kind of the guy
(06:59):
running living economic policy. But but he is from the
developmentalist wing of the party, which means he is effectively
from the wing of the party that are the kind
of like center left capitalists that the social movements kind
of allied themselves to under Moralees in order to do
this sort of national economic development policy. So these are
a lot of these are a lot of minding sector guys.
(07:22):
These are a very specific sort of cadra of these
central bank guys, you know.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
And and I think this is the part.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
The thing about the MIAs that's kind of relevant here
is that it usually also has a base support among
people you wouldn't expect. I mean, there's a lot of
small business owners who support them, because, you know, the
Maas really did for most of the time they've been
in power preside over sort of astonishing economic growth. They
sort of did this by marrying these social movements to
this kind of national bourgeoisie developmentalist faction.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
And the other thing that that the MAAS sort of
does in the period between when they come back to
power in late twenty twenty one and now is they
do they actually go after the people who did the coup?
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Right?
Speaker 1 (08:06):
And yes, who was the previous president is just in
prison for helping you do the coup. The the other
big person who's been arrested is Luis Fernando Camacho, who
is a man who, in one hundred percent complete seriousness
calls himself Bascho Camacho. So that's that's a sign, Yeah,
that that's an oication of who this guy is, which
(08:28):
is he is a really fanatical, really fanatical Christian nationalist.
He's playing a very similar role to I mean, actually
I think even even in a lot of ways sort
of more radical role to what Bolsonaro played in Brazil,
where Camacho in Bolivia is this kind of he he's
the guy who's rallied both sort of Evangelicalism and Catholicism.
(08:50):
Althose rallied both of them into this sort of virulent
and and and specifically in Bolivia anti indigenous sort of
political force. The the twenty nineteen coup is seen in
very very explicitly is seen in religious terms.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Both ideas.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Kabacha talk about how like the Word of God is
back at the Capitol and the wheel, but like all
of the sort of indigenous various indigenous stuff is just
never going to come back. So Kabacho gets arrested in
twenty twenty two for you know, doing this coup, and
this sets off so he, by the way, like is
the governor of the state of Santa Cruz. And this
(09:28):
sets off a bunch of like a right wing general strike,
a bunch of riots, like hundreds of people are injured
in street fighting between his sort of fanatics and everyone
else in the country. It does an enormous amount of
economic damage. It sets off at a roadblocks the government,
I mean Kamacho I think also is still in prison,
(09:49):
but it kind of you know, the government's kind of
forced to make concessions.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
To these people.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
So, you know, the whole the whole sort of are say,
government is kind of on shaky footing from the beginning.
And all of this is before the Bolivian economy really
hits the ship. But before before we get to the
Bolivian economy. Do you know what else hits the ship?
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Oh uh?
Speaker 3 (10:15):
Is it the meal kit preparation delivery service that we
are not allowed to mention for legal reason. It is, yes, yeah, yes, yeah,
you'll be pooping your brains out, don't do it.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
We are back. So let's talk about the other thing
that's popping in Bolithya.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Well, okay, see other.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Thing, the one of the four other things that's reppening
in Bolivia, and that.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Is the real sort of collapse of the Bolivian economy.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
So the Bolivion economy Oblivia has been kind of different
from the rest of the sort of kind of left wing,
pink tied governments that were elected in the in the
in the sort of two thousands era sort of anti
globalization politics. Most of those countries' economies imploded a long
time ago, like Venezuela sort of obviously the most famous case,
(11:16):
but all of these economies fell apart because these were
all economies based on the commodity boom. We've talked about
this in some of our Brazil episodes. But the very
short version is that a lot of a lot of
countries that produce sort of primary commodities, so like you know,
your copper, your sort of your natural gas, you know,
I mean things like soybeans to kind of fall in
(11:37):
this category, you know, so you're you're you're sort of
mining stuff or you're some some of some of your
farming stuff. All of these sort of industrial input primary
commodity stuff all got you know, massive price spikes in
early two thousands because the Chinese economy had integrated into
into the rest of the world economy fully by you know,
(11:58):
joining the joining the World Trade Organization, and this set
off this massive industrialization boom in China, and you know,
the Chinese. The levels of sort of demand that this
induces is unbelievable because Chinese economic growth in that period
is unreal, and it's it's economic growth that is unreal
in a country with a billion people in it. So
(12:19):
this produced a kind of shock of demand for all
of these sort of mineral resources that was not entirely
unprecedented but enormously large, and also allowed all of these
sort of social democratic economies to you know, kind of
paper over the inherent contradictions of their base being both
(12:39):
capitalist and also a bunch of like unions by there
just sort of being enough state revenue from all of
these all of these exports to just kind of buy
everyone off of paper everything. Clantalism, yeah, yeah, and that
stops working when the economy goes under. But Bolivia's economy
does a lot better than the rest of the economies
in the region.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
There are There are a lot of reasons for this.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Part of it is that, you know, are say, who
is running the economy of Bolivia in the sort of
the period like post two thousand and eight period, when
everyone else economies are collapsing. He is genuinely doing some
pretty interesting macroeconomic stuff. Also, the other thing that's going
on is that Bolivia main expert and people. Okay, so
(13:22):
people in the US tend to think of Bolivia as
a country that produces lithium. That's not true. That might
be true maybe thirty years in the future that will
be Bolivia's primary export. But Bolivia's primary export for the
last two decades has been natural gas, and natural gas
prices didn't quite do the same thing that sort of
oil prices did that kind of imploded the Venezuelan economy. Yeah,
(13:45):
and so through through sort of like economic management and
these sort of political alliances and you know, the high
price in natural gas, the Bolivian economy has sort of
been fine. Unfortunately, what's happening right now is that Bolivia
is running out of natural gas. And because it's running
out of natural gas, and also because their economy is
(14:06):
an export based economy based on natural.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Gas, not so good nutsge good vibes. Yeah, it's very bad.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
The entire economy is falling apart because you know, this
is this is a very very classic kind of economic crisis,
you know, the economic crisis are having. I'm not seeing
it described as a balance of payments crisis, but that's
what it is, which is that the blivid economy works
on buying things with American dollars. So you know, like
a lot of the businesses in the country involved are
(14:32):
sort of import businesses, right, you know, I mean I
know people who run businesses like this in Bolivia where
you know, you're importing shoes or like motors, yeah, stuff
like that, and you buy them with American dollars and
you sell them in Bolivia. But the thing is this
requires a constant supply of American dollars to go buy
good manufacture goods from other places. Because Bolivia's manufacturing economy
(14:53):
is effectively is a joke. And this is something that
was true of all of these economies. I mean, Bolivia
never they kind we've tried to industrialize in the seventies,
but they've never got as far along with it as
a country like Brazil or country like Venezuela.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Did in the seventies.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
And the other thing about these all these sort of
pink Tai governments is they all took power in economies
that have been completely deindustrialized maneoliberalism. Right.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
We talked about this with Brazil.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
Brazil went from a country that was a kind of
like effectively a first not quite a first, right, but
maybe a second tier a large, a powerful second tier
industrial power to a country whose economy is almost entirely
based on sort of primary commodity production and farming bullshit.
So they've they've moved down that they've moved down the
value chain. They've been manufacturing less stuff. They're producing shit
(15:36):
that's on the bottom. They're getting less value from the
value added bullshit moving up the chain. And this is
this is also the problem with the Blivion economy. And
because the natural gases is drying up, they don't have
enough dollars coming into the economy for people to use
to buy things. And the Bolivian currency is also pegged
to the dollar, right, so there's supposed to be an
(15:56):
official exchange rate at which you know, x amount of
money worth x amount of dollars and that's all falling apart.
People are sort of running around in the streets trying
to find people who will exchange like their currency for dollars.
This is this is you know, so this is this
is a classic short of balance of payments. Yeah, well
it's kind of because it's kind of like kind of
(16:17):
a balancing, but they're having a giant dollar shortage. This
is really really messing up. No, I mean not just
the economy, but the entire political system is really kind
of coming apart under this Now, okay, I I I
talked about things kind of coming apart there there there
is another thing that is coming apart in Bolivia, which
(16:38):
is the m A S is shattering, Yes, shattering, it's
it's it's splintering in two. So what is the m
A S. So the m AS is this part? Oh okay,
So it has a slightly weirder history, which is that
So the m A S was a completely random, actually
kind of kind of right wing political party, but it
(17:00):
had electoral status. So it's a party that was taken
over by the social movements at the end of the
sort of stuff we're going to get to in order
to be able to run like in order to be
able to run candidates for office. But this means that
because again because it was literally it was an existing, legal,
registered party that was taken over from the outside, and
because of how it emerged, it's always been seen as
(17:24):
sort of a movement party, right, it's supposed to be
like the assembly of Oblivia, sort of left.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
Wing social movements.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
And these left wing social movements are the movements that
emerges isn't quite the right word, but there the movements
that solidified and began to sort of exert their power
from two thousand and two thousand and six and in
this enormous sequence of social uprising against sort of Bolivia
and neoliberalism. Of the most famous of these are the
water and gas wars, which are these fights against water
(17:51):
privatization and the sort of gas line.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
And this alliance of.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Peasant unions sort of the traditional sort of urban urban
sort of proletariat like traditional sort of like urban left.
These these new street movements, coca growers unions, miners unions,
and a whole array of indigenous groups that we frankly
do you don't have time to get into here because
the politics there are extremely the philosophy is extremely complicated.
(18:17):
I don't know if I've talked about this on the
show before, but one of the I mean we're talking
about like like they have like philosophical constructs that I
don't understand. It's this philosophical construct that's like a dialectic,
but there's three parts of it, and they don't it
doesn't resolve. They just all kind of grind intension with
each other, right, So like, Okay, we're not really going
to get into that. Yeah, yeah, it's outside the scope
(18:39):
of the show of If you're more interested in this,
read rhythms of the Patchacuti or get a doctorate.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
I guess, yeah, yeah, we returned to grad school. Your
options are limited.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
But you know, so there's this coalition of of all
of the kinds of unions, these rural unions, urban unions,
urban street moves, real straight movements, gathered together, gathered their strength,
set up a million roadblocks, and just.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Smash the neoliberal right. They are.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
The Bolivia's right is basically completely destroyed from the period
of two thousand and six until twenty nineteen's that was
the first time they ever took power. They did it
in a coup and they held power for about one
year before they were kicked out of power again, so
they basically completely reshaped all of politics in Bolivia. Those
(19:34):
the second round of roadblocks very nearly destroyed the Bolivian
state until as I sort of allated to earlier even
where Allies pulled his supporters out the barricade in order
to get an election in two thousand and six. And
this is the election the MAAS one. And to understand
the kind of seismic change of this, right, the MAAS
is the first party in the history of Bolivia to
win a majority of the season of the Parliament by itself,
(19:55):
first party ever. It completely destroyed the existing sort of
political system. And again this this, this was supposed to
be a sort of a sort of new kind of party. Right.
The theory of the m AS is is the organization
of social movements. Former vice president and sometimes Marxist Garcia
Leneira described it as quote, there's a dialectical relationship between
(20:16):
the social movements and the party. Now this is a lie.
Or more precisely, if this is a dialectic, it is
not a Hegelian or a Marxist dialectic, where the subplation
of two parts creates a concrete totality or a whole
that is neither of the things that as for it.
This is a Maoist dialectic where two sides face off
(20:36):
each other with each other and one of them hits
the other side of the help with a hammer until
it dies.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
It's just a conflict.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
It's just there are two three people and they both
want to control the thing.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
So it's just that's that's what ends up happening, right,
is so the social movements and the Indigenous movements in
particular have been fracturing for a decade. You know, they're
they're a whole series of large fights, even even in
sort of like the early twenty tens over sort of
over the NAS doing these infrastructure things that everyone else
(21:09):
in the country was like, why are you building a
road to indigenous land.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
There's huge fights, many such cases.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Yeah, So, you know, this is the kind of hollowing
out in the kind of conflict that had led to
the social movements being completely unable to overturn the coup
in twenty nineteen, and it taking them until the end
of twenty twenty to really pull their shit together and
you know, overturn the coup and you know, you know
what else overturns coups.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
That's a that's a fyrom. It is it arming the
working class.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
It is ming the working class.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
We are sponsored by yeah, or in the entire working class.
We're back. So okay, So now we get to the
present split of the social movements.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
What has happened now is that you know, are Say
and and even Morales had always kind of gotten along usually,
but once you know, our Say took power, he instead
of he didn't want to sort of just be a
proxy for even Morales. He had his own sort of
actually like not great agenda either, a sort of more
(22:29):
technocratic agenda. Although you know, you have to sort of
ask Evil, like you're the one who brought these people
into the party, Like, I don't know what you were expecting.
He brought these people in that they weren't going to
as governed as a sort of center left technocratic capitalist government.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
You know, you could have seen this coming.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
But they they have been increasingly fighting, and the two
sides are now implacably hostile. They are saying evil fucking
hate each other. And this this divide has split every
single social movement in Bolivia from landless workers' movement, to
the co growers, to the indigenous federations, to the fucking
urban trade unions, to the miners unions. Every one of
these organizations either has officially split into two factions as
(23:08):
one's in EVO faction and ones in our Save faction,
or they are in the middle of the fight where
you know, they're they're they're both sides are still fighting.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
For control over over you know, their union federation.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
And this is not a clean left right split, which
is this is actually, I mean, that was kind of
what I was expecting ish when this fight started, that
I was sort of expecting that this was going to
end up as a fight between sort of you know,
the left of social movements and the sort of center
right base.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
But that's not really what happens.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
It is kind of a left right split, but you know,
it's also a split over the person of EVO himself.
And because partially a split over EVO himself, there's a
lot of like sort of more left wing groups that
are kind of are kind of backing our say, because
they don't want even more allies to come back into
power and re solidify his control over all of these
(23:57):
all the solo social movements and they're you know, angry
at him for a whole series of attempts to sort
of co opt their movements. It's also you know, it's
also it's also split about sort of how autonomous the
social movement should be, should be able to be from
government policy. It's it's a it's you know, it's kind
of external to this. But one of the other thing
that's going on is that EVO has been really unpopular
(24:18):
with a lot of feminist groups in Blivia for a
very long time for a lot of reasons, including I mean,
you know, one of the big ones is Bolivia's horrific
femicide crisis, which the MS has been in power for
almost twenty years and has done jack shit to actually
like deal with, right, you know, So there's there, there
are all of these sort of fractures breaking out. Partially also,
(24:40):
it's a war between for control of the maas, between
the coca goers unions and the miners unions. So this
is a shit show. It is a complete fiasca. And
then you know, the thing that makes it more with
fiasco is, you know, we talked about this sort of
with uh. We did an episode about kind of what's
been happening with with the sort of pink.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
Tied governments a while back.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
And you know, one of the things you talked about
in that episode was Ecuador, where Ecuador has this left
wing base that should win every single election until the
end of time, and they don't because they're constantly fighting
each other. And this is effectively the beginning of hopefully
it doesn't turn into that, but I mean, the ma
S if it is, if it is even sort of united,
is in unprecedented Bolivian political juggernaut. It should win every election,
(25:24):
like I mean, not till the end of time. They
probably probably should only win I don't know that they
have had demographic issues right now, but you know they
should still be winning effectively every every election and they're not.
And the reason that they're not is because of this
shit or loasion. They might not is because of because
of all of these, all all of these splits, and
these are very these this isn't a these are very
(25:46):
very serious political splits. I mean, uh, one of the
miners workers meetings, very famously, the two sides broke into
into fist fights. I think one hundred and forty people
were injured. So you know, this is this is the
these are the these are very serious fights. There's also
a whole disaster right now over who actually is the
candidate of the MAS. Because Evo held this Congress of
(26:08):
the NAS it was his supporters that Arsei was not
at and they said that because he didn't because Arsee
didn't show up, he was kicked out of the party.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
Classic, so this is this whole thing. So he's typically
been expelled.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
But like the courts got the electoral courts are now
involved because the electoral courts have to decide what like
you know that, they have to figure out what what
candidate their party's running. So it's this it's a complete catastrophe.
And in the midst of this complete catastrophe there is
(26:41):
the worst coup of the twenty first century. So a
lot of let's get into finally this coup. So this
coup is run by a guy named Kwan Jose Zunjega
is the he's the commander of the Bolivian Army. He
is hand picked by Arsaye to run the army, to
be the guy who.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Yes, say dude, yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
And this is you know this, this this has sort
of shades of the fact that Pinochet was sort of
elevated by by all End in the Social Democrats.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
But reminds me of Franco as well, that getting promoted
about yeah this was this, those were tragedy, This is farce.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
So what happens is that on Tuesday of last week,
Sniega goes on TV and says, I am going to
like Louis evil Brallies cannot be allowed to take power again.
I will stop him from taking power. And our say
is like, dude, what the fuck? Just immediately fires him,
(27:42):
because you know you can't do that.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
Yeah, Like almost every every country with a codified constitution
has prohibitions on its military intervening and its politics, right, like, yeah,
the basics of democracy.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Bolivia has had a series of military governments and military
ques across the sort of twentieth century, including the god
the fucking cocaine coup that I've talked about at length
in Our World at the Communist League episodes that ends
with like Klaus Barbie fucking running around, right, So I mean,
you know, like, this is a country that has had
(28:21):
military ques quite literally staffed by actual Nazis, right, So
you know this this is a place that take that
takes the threat of a military queue, very very seriously,
there hasn't been one, blessedly in a long time, but
there's a lot of people who are fucking alive for
the last one, and you know, and so this this
is you know, people are extremely unhappy, even people who
(28:43):
I think in theory would be okay with, you know,
the government being deposed, like absolutely, under no circumstances want
the fucking military running the country because again, right, everyone
fucking remembers how bad that shit was. But what appearstrauff
happened is that Zaninka realizes that so he's just been fired, right,
which means that he has a very short time window
(29:05):
in which he could try to pull some shit, which
means that whatever whatever he may have been planning, I
don't know what his actual plans were, he may have
been actually planning a coup, he may not have been
until here, and which just immediately like, well, I guess
we have to do it now. If it was planning,
been planning very well, yeah, yeah, what results from this
for this very I think results on this very short
timetable is the worst coup I've ever seen. So what
(29:26):
appears to have happened is that on Wednesday, he gathers
the troops that he's able to gather, which is not
that I mean we're talking like a hundred guys. Maybe
it was not a you know, they had a decent
number of armored vehicles, but it was not like a
lot of troops.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
It does not pay that he even had the support
of a lot of troops, right.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Like, yeah, a lot of the army suits have kind
of been sitting there going what the fuck is going on?
But it was you know, I was watching the videos
or were like the livestreams from journalism the ground of
these troops, and they're just they're just worth it, any
of them.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
No, they really went like it was.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
The whole thing was just really fucking shocking, like shocking bad.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
They didn't even surround the building. They just went up
to one door.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Yeah, so so what happens is they used our vehicle
to ram the door of the presidential palace and they
try to take control of it. But the thing is right,
are saying, is it in the presidential palace? He and
his cabinet are in the next building over.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
So they've taken the wrong building.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
Things are going great, and again this this is not
a sort of you know, this is not a coupe
that follows the standard coup repertoire of I seize the
president's sees the radio station, sees the airport, sees the trains, right, yeah,
and have been tray control over the military barracks, which
is your short this is your sort of basic five
step plan to how to do a coup.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
They will be doing that episode soon by the way. Yeah, yeah,
given today's to find court, we're in there.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
Yeah yeah, we're in the yeah, planning to do a coup.
But you know, so they don't even receive a part one,
so they're they're kind of just kind of milling around
the front of the presidential palace and try to get
into the next building where the president actually is. So
it's also the demands are also very weird. So Nika
(31:20):
claims that he's not overthrowing the governments. He claims that
he's still loyal to our say, but he's going to
form a new cabinet.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Oh he's useful. Yeah, that's how you normally do that. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
So he's like yelling about the economic crisis, says he's
going to quote restored democracy and quote release political prisoners.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
Which I kind of get.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
Okay, So the political prisoner's thing, I think is about
the people who've been arrested for doing the twenty nineteen coup.
I have no idea what restored democracy means. I don't
know if he had any idea what he meant by
restored democracy. Something was happening. But the thing is the
other thing about this coup is that he has no
backing at all. I mean, it doesn't even have back
in the army. But it has no It doesn't even
have backing among the right. Both Macho Camacho and Jeanine
(32:05):
on Ony you with people who did like the last one,
both condemned the coup. So people she is trying to
break out of prison condemned the coup. Right, this is
going nowhere.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
Worst coup I've ever seen.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
So meanwhile are say it is cabinet are in the
next building over appointing a new commander of the army,
so that the new commander of the army can go
outside and order them order the troops to go back
to their barracks. This is kind of what's happening. But
also meanwhile outside so that these troops have like taken
over the square in front of the presidential Palace and
(32:41):
that they have sort of successfully managed to take over
the square with a bunch of sort of military police
and riot gear.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
But there's this sort of crowd who's.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
Come to yell at the army, right, and it's just
very weird spectacle because it's there's all these soldiers who
all have long guns, right, being protected by a light
of cops with riot shields.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
Yeah, like if you open up on the crowd like like, oh, yeah,
I have enough numbers to get.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
Every every single one of you is going to be
individually executed.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
Yeah, So they're all people are gonna have guns.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
And unless they that that that you know, and when
I say execute, I mean they're they're gonna get executed
by the goverment. That that's assuming they live long enough
and are not just beaten to death by the crowd,
which is also a real possibility. But you know, so
this crowd is sort of approaching a lot of riot police.
They're getting tear gas a bit. But this is and
I kind of emphasize this enough, This is not a
kind of normal like highly organized Bolivian mass protest where
(33:38):
you know, all of the union, the Union's college general.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
Strike in the middle of this.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
Yeah, but again, this this whole thing lasts maybe two
and a half hours, so there's not time to do
the actual kind of sort of roadblocks and stuff like that.
There's not time to actually do the organization that you
would need to do.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
Overturn this coup.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
This coup falls apart so fast that people don't have
time to make protest signs only have our flags. They
do not have time to write signs out. That is
that they don't have time to go up with chance.
I was watching the funniest part about this whole thing.
So I was watching a live stream of the protesters,
and the protesters had gotten this kind of I guess
(34:16):
you call it sort of a kind of metal gate.
I guess it was this big sort of it almost
looked like, you know how there's you get this those
white shelves that have like metal bars, and it was
kind of like that like cross hashed.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
It was, you know, it was pretty big.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
I was like bigger than a person, and like three
people are like carrying in front of them, like going
to the police lane, presumably to use it as a
battering ram. But the troops run away so fast that
these guys couldn't get their gate up to the police
line fast enough to use it.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
That's how you know it's going.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
Well, it was staggering, it was amazing. So you know,
the entire coup calls apart. Zuniga gets arrested on Life TV.
It's like giving a press conference and they just like
arrest them.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
Amazing.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
But at the end of this, as it's falling apart,
the one genuinely masterful stroke that Zunjinga pulls in this
entire I mean it missed a just a cavalcade of failure.
The one actual genius line that he does is as
as he started being arrested, he says, it's in prison too.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
He claims that he's been ordered by Arsay to do
this in order to bolst Arsey's poll numbers, which are dogshit.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
Fake yeah yeah, now okay.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
This, this whole scheme begs the question, what was Arsay
supposed to get out of this? Sorry not again, why what?
Speaker 2 (35:37):
What? What is? What does he get out of it?
Speaker 1 (35:39):
Right?
Speaker 2 (35:39):
Because she's just going to prison.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
It's like, why would he do it if it was
just under orders from the president Because this is a
lose lose for him, so none of it makes any sense.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
But coma. This is immediately picked up by morell I supporters.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
You fucking hate her, say, and they all immediately begin
sort of peting is. And now this has become sort
of the official line. I mean, even Moreeles has been
on TV on social media is just saying, yeah, this
was this was a fake coup. This was a coup
that are say did against himself to help his poll numbers,
and this is you know, this is a This has
(36:17):
turned into a real thing, and there's a lot of
people who are sort of like, I don't know, the
whole coup was really weird, right, And there's a lot
of people who believe this because they're you know, I mean,
either because they want to believe it, or because you know,
I mean it does look weird, or because they fucking
just hate our say from the beginning, right, this is
(36:39):
all you know, as funny as it sort of is,
this has had a sort of catastrophic effect on sort
of just like regular oblivion people, because people are fucking terrified,
you know, they're terrified that this is the beginning of
the Army coming back into politics. They're terrified that someone
else is going to do a coup. I mean even
Morales has been saying for a very long time. Actually,
(37:00):
both of them have been trading accusations that the other
one is going to do a cue against them.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Yeah, they've been banging the coup drum for a little while.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
Yeah, everyone, everyone has sort of been claiming that there's
going to be CU's happening. And all of this is
creating this sort of cauldron of things that are extremely
bad for the Bolivian left. The economic boom that wielded
their coalition together is over. It's not clear anyone can
bring it back, because again, this is a this is
a natural gas based thing, right. And the other problem
(37:30):
that they have is, you know, the problem that all
social democracies have, which is that they've created a middle
class base of small business owners and people with middle
class salaries and professional jobs. And we talked about this
in the Brazilian context, and this is something that Garcia
la n Earra has talked about too, which is that, well,
he doesn't say it in these words because he's a
coward and a capitalist, but social democracy produces its own
(37:53):
grave diggers by creating a middle class that despises them
and then eventually destroys everything. The social democrats thought to create,
and that this is very possible that what we are
in right now is the opening stages of of this
entire political project coming apart. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
I fucking hope it doesn't.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
And I hope that, you know, but again, like the
the only, the only actual way to resolve the inherent
sort of political and social contradictions of attempting to have
a sort of left wing socialist political base and a
capitalist government is to eliminate the capitalist state. Yeah, so
either either you do that or you get another one
of these shitty fucking cues.
Speaker 3 (38:31):
Yeah, you're just constantly vulnerable to this ship, right, like
at any point, Yeah, yeah, you're creating the condition switch a.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
Wealthy and I mean, and we've we've we've already seen
the coup that's capable of knocking them out of power, right,
it's the cue that actually has sort of a mass,
like a mass backing from the right.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
And this was not that cue. This was this was
this was.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
The comedian's cup, This was the joker coup, This was the.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
This is the worst coup.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
Yeah, but you know, the next one, the next one
might not.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
Be yes, and that's quite serious.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
Yeah, So until then, hopefully hopefully we don't reach there.
But until this has been naked, happen here yet, you
too can overturn a coup by yelling, not even particularly
menacing at a muns your troops.
Speaker 3 (39:19):
Yeah yeah, practice practice at home in case do you
have a need to do it.
Speaker 4 (39:28):
It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
For more podcasts from.
Speaker 4 (39:32):
Cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zonemedia dot com,
or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources
for It could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zonemedia
dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
All Media. Welcome to you kadapp here a podcast that
is groaning under the oppression of whoever keeps changing the
stupid zoom interface. It's different every time. It always gets worse.
It never gets better. Please stop.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
We had trads for zoom zoom layout.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Just get it, get it one time, put the recording
thing on the stupid panel on the bottom, and then
never change it. It simply never gets better. Yeah, this
is be a who's extremely annoyed at zoom with me?
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Is James yep also extremely annoyed at zoom high just
in solidarity with Mia fuck him?
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Yeah, and also also extremely annoyed. Right now is the
man stages the world's worst coup? Ask to report to prison.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
I don't think we can call it the world's worst coup. Mia,
that's a bold claim. You're forgetting silver Core.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
No, so okay, here's the thing about Silver Court, right,
The guys who defeated Silver Court had guns.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
But Silver Corp didn't. They had b B guns.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Yeah, but here's the thing, right they they those guys Again,
those guys did not have real guns, defeated by guys
with guns. These guys had guns. They had a lot
of guns. They were defeated by people with.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Flags Yeah yeah, and a guy standing in a doorway
being like, no, you can't come in, go home.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
You know, so we we are.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
I genuinely believe this is the worst cup I've ever
seen in my entire life.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
And you know, we lived in Venezuela. One.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
I distinctly remember stepping out of a post office and
checking my phone and getting eighteen messages from my friends
that said, do.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
You do you?
Speaker 1 (01:49):
What do you know about the coup and Turkey? That
was a terrible coup. Was they they could have they
could have just saved us all this trouble of shot
aired wh douf a jet fighter, but they didn't. You know,
there's there's been plenty of bad ones. There was that
that coup recently in the Democratic public of the Congo
to the fiasco. Yeah, hilariously, This coup Oblivia recovering today
happened exactly one year and three days after the the
(02:12):
march of the Wagner Corp.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Oh yeah, I've gotta forgot about that one. What if? Wow? Yeah,
well we wanted to try it.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Guys, if you believe you can achieve, give it a
go to a coup. If you want to why not
it's gonna trump paye try one did what very well? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Yeah, I mean we really I also, I mean, we
can't forget January ninth, even the.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
The well, I don't.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
I don't because January sixth was already farce, but like
we forgot the farceest, farst version of it in Brazil.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Yeah even there. Yeah, yeah, they owed a building coup.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Yeah, lots of lots of very stupid cues, but this
this is probably the worst one. And so we're going
to be explaining sort of what happened. But the thing
about this coup is that in order to understand what's
happening with this coup, we have to get through, I
think a part of Bolivian history that has not been
(03:09):
really well understood or talked about on the left, which
is effectively what happened in Bolivia.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
After the coup in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
I think I think people sort of know that there
was a coup and that got overturned, but coma that
was sort of the point at which which the sort
of Anglo media and like the sort of press that
hits the left here kind of just took off. So
you have your sort of twenty nineteen coup. The place
where sort of everything getting lost kind of starts is
(03:42):
that so there's this coup. The left sort of response
to the coup is not very strong because the sort
of social movements have been hallowed out by the sort
of incorporation into the Bolivian state, so they sort of
just don't have the juice to really kind of you know,
(04:02):
roll this coup back. This is this is this is
makes basically this is the twenty nineteen coup, not the
twenty twenty four coup.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
And you know the thing about the twenty nineteen coup
that makes it very different from this one is that
that one was you know, there was a broad base
of support for this right in this sort of in
this sort of like far right out of Santa Cruz
and also out of sort of like like more moderate
center right factions. So you know, there there are sort
of large street with favor of this. This is not
(04:30):
true if those recent.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
One yeah, absolutely not.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Yeah, but you know in by by by twenty twenty,
as twenty twenty is sort of progressing a Anya's's coup
government is a fiasco. Their management of COVID is just terrible.
Enormous numbers of deaths. I mean, actually I mean not
by American standards, I guess, but you know, really really mismanaged.
I mean, my I have friends there who were talking
(04:55):
about how if you were going to the hospital and
you needed to use like a piece of medical equipment,
you had to buy the medical equipment or a part
to fix a machine and then show up to the
hospital with the part because they couldn't order it.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
I've yeah, I've seen that in a few places in
the world. It's never, never a good time.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Yeah, it's it's not good. It was a real shit show.
And by by sort of I think about September early
September twenty ninth of twenty twenty, there are the left
has sort of gotten it shipped together and there are
these this massive set of roadblocks. Bolivian Blivion social politics
tends to sort of be about roadblocks because you know, country,
(05:32):
a lot of mountains, a lot of roads you can
very easily block off and then prevent anything from you know,
for example, entering a city, yep. Idea. So they're they're
able to just basically shut down the Blivion economy. The
government is once again on the Vergia collapse and once again,
and we'll get to the first time this happened, but
even Morallies once again sort of pulls the supporters off
(05:53):
of the barricade so you can go win an election
rather than you know, attempt to just bring down the
sort of coup government. So you know that eventually happens.
The government is forced to hold elections because you know,
they've they've lost control of the country, and them as Takes,
you know, wins this election by overwhelming margins. The MAS
(06:15):
is even Morales's party, it's the sort of like party.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Of the oblivion left. But yeah, the guy comes to
the power. As Lewis R.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Say, he's an interesting figure because he is kind of
We're going to get more into sort of what the
MS is in a bit, but he is from a
kind of right wing of the party that's not talked
about very much.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Yeah, he he is.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
A you know, he's not a guy who comes from
the social movements in the way that sort of Morales did,
like he was. Even Morales was a guy from the
the he was like the president of the coca growers union.
Arsay is a banker. He's an an economist and a banker.
He comes out of the the Central Bank of Bolivia,
and he he has had been kind of the guy
(06:59):
running living economic policy. But but he is from the
developmentalist wing of the party, which means he is effectively
from the wing of the party that are the kind
of like center left capitalists that the social movements kind
of allied themselves to under Moralees in order to do
this sort of national economic development policy. So these are
a lot of these are a lot of minding sector guys.
(07:22):
These are a very specific sort of cadra of these
central bank guys, you know.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
And and I think this is the part.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
The thing about the MIAs that's kind of relevant here
is that it usually also has a base support among
people you wouldn't expect. I mean, there's a lot of
small business owners who support them, because, you know, the
Maas really did for most of the time they've been
in power preside over sort of astonishing economic growth. They
sort of did this by marrying these social movements to
this kind of national bourgeoisie developmentalist faction.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
And the other thing that that the MAAS sort of
does in the period between when they come back to
power in late twenty twenty one and now is they
do they actually go after the people who did the coup?
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Right?
Speaker 1 (08:06):
And yes, who was the previous president is just in
prison for helping you do the coup. The the other
big person who's been arrested is Luis Fernando Camacho, who
is a man who, in one hundred percent complete seriousness
calls himself Bascho Camacho. So that's that's a sign, Yeah,
that that's an oication of who this guy is, which
(08:28):
is he is a really fanatical, really fanatical Christian nationalist.
He's playing a very similar role to I mean, actually
I think even even in a lot of ways sort
of more radical role to what Bolsonaro played in Brazil,
where Camacho in Bolivia is this kind of he he's
the guy who's rallied both sort of Evangelicalism and Catholicism.
(08:50):
Althose rallied both of them into this sort of virulent
and and and specifically in Bolivia anti indigenous sort of
political force. The the twenty nineteen coup is seen in
very very explicitly is seen in religious terms.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Both ideas.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Kabacha talk about how like the Word of God is
back at the Capitol and the wheel, but like all
of the sort of indigenous various indigenous stuff is just
never going to come back. So Kabacho gets arrested in
twenty twenty two for you know, doing this coup, and
this sets off so he, by the way, like is
the governor of the state of Santa Cruz. And this
(09:28):
sets off a bunch of like a right wing general strike,
a bunch of riots, like hundreds of people are injured
in street fighting between his sort of fanatics and everyone
else in the country. It does an enormous amount of
economic damage. It sets off at a roadblocks the government,
I mean Kamacho I think also is still in prison,
(09:49):
but it kind of you know, the government's kind of
forced to make concessions.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
To these people.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
So, you know, the whole the whole sort of are say,
government is kind of on shaky footing from the beginning.
And all of this is before the Bolivian economy really
hits the ship. But before before we get to the
Bolivian economy. Do you know what else hits the ship?
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Oh uh?
Speaker 3 (10:15):
Is it the meal kit preparation delivery service that we
are not allowed to mention for legal reason. It is, yes, yeah, yes, yeah,
you'll be pooping your brains out, don't do it.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
We are back. So let's talk about the other thing
that's popping in Bolithya.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Well, okay, see other.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Thing, the one of the four other things that's reppening
in Bolivia, and that.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Is the real sort of collapse of the Bolivian economy.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
So the Bolivion economy Oblivia has been kind of different
from the rest of the sort of kind of left wing,
pink tied governments that were elected in the in the
in the sort of two thousands era sort of anti
globalization politics. Most of those countries' economies imploded a long
time ago, like Venezuela sort of obviously the most famous case,
(11:16):
but all of these economies fell apart because these were
all economies based on the commodity boom. We've talked about
this in some of our Brazil episodes. But the very
short version is that a lot of a lot of
countries that produce sort of primary commodities, so like you know,
your copper, your sort of your natural gas, you know,
I mean things like soybeans to kind of fall in
(11:37):
this category, you know, so you're you're you're sort of
mining stuff or you're some some of some of your
farming stuff. All of these sort of industrial input primary
commodity stuff all got you know, massive price spikes in
early two thousands because the Chinese economy had integrated into
into the rest of the world economy fully by you know,
(11:58):
joining the joining the World Trade Organization, and this set
off this massive industrialization boom in China, and you know,
the Chinese. The levels of sort of demand that this
induces is unbelievable because Chinese economic growth in that period
is unreal, and it's it's economic growth that is unreal
in a country with a billion people in it. So
(12:19):
this produced a kind of shock of demand for all
of these sort of mineral resources that was not entirely
unprecedented but enormously large, and also allowed all of these
sort of social democratic economies to you know, kind of
paper over the inherent contradictions of their base being both
(12:39):
capitalist and also a bunch of like unions by there
just sort of being enough state revenue from all of
these all of these exports to just kind of buy
everyone off of paper everything. Clantalism, yeah, yeah, and that
stops working when the economy goes under. But Bolivia's economy
does a lot better than the rest of the economies
in the region.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
There are There are a lot of reasons for this.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Part of it is that, you know, are say, who
is running the economy of Bolivia in the sort of
the period like post two thousand and eight period, when
everyone else economies are collapsing. He is genuinely doing some
pretty interesting macroeconomic stuff. Also, the other thing that's going
on is that Bolivia main expert and people. Okay, so
(13:22):
people in the US tend to think of Bolivia as
a country that produces lithium. That's not true. That might
be true maybe thirty years in the future that will
be Bolivia's primary export. But Bolivia's primary export for the
last two decades has been natural gas, and natural gas
prices didn't quite do the same thing that sort of
oil prices did that kind of imploded the Venezuelan economy. Yeah,
(13:45):
and so through through sort of like economic management and
these sort of political alliances and you know, the high
price in natural gas, the Bolivian economy has sort of
been fine. Unfortunately, what's happening right now is that Bolivia
is running out of natural gas. And because it's running
out of natural gas, and also because their economy is
(14:06):
an export based economy based on natural.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Gas, not so good nutsge good vibes. Yeah, it's very bad.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
The entire economy is falling apart because you know, this
is this is a very very classic kind of economic crisis,
you know, the economic crisis are having. I'm not seeing
it described as a balance of payments crisis, but that's
what it is, which is that the blivid economy works
on buying things with American dollars. So you know, like
a lot of the businesses in the country involved are
(14:32):
sort of import businesses, right, you know, I mean I
know people who run businesses like this in Bolivia where
you know, you're importing shoes or like motors, yeah, stuff
like that, and you buy them with American dollars and
you sell them in Bolivia. But the thing is this
requires a constant supply of American dollars to go buy
good manufacture goods from other places. Because Bolivia's manufacturing economy
(14:53):
is effectively is a joke. And this is something that
was true of all of these economies. I mean, Bolivia
never they kind we've tried to industrialize in the seventies,
but they've never got as far along with it as
a country like Brazil or country like Venezuela.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Did in the seventies.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
And the other thing about these all these sort of
pink Tai governments is they all took power in economies
that have been completely deindustrialized maneoliberalism. Right.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
We talked about this with Brazil.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
Brazil went from a country that was a kind of
like effectively a first not quite a first, right, but
maybe a second tier a large, a powerful second tier
industrial power to a country whose economy is almost entirely
based on sort of primary commodity production and farming bullshit.
So they've they've moved down that they've moved down the
value chain. They've been manufacturing less stuff. They're producing shit
(15:36):
that's on the bottom. They're getting less value from the
value added bullshit moving up the chain. And this is
this is also the problem with the Blivion economy. And
because the natural gases is drying up, they don't have
enough dollars coming into the economy for people to use
to buy things. And the Bolivian currency is also pegged
to the dollar, right, so there's supposed to be an
(15:56):
official exchange rate at which you know, x amount of
money worth x amount of dollars and that's all falling apart.
People are sort of running around in the streets trying
to find people who will exchange like their currency for dollars.
This is this is you know, so this is this
is a classic short of balance of payments. Yeah, well
it's kind of because it's kind of like kind of
(16:17):
a balancing, but they're having a giant dollar shortage. This
is really really messing up. No, I mean not just
the economy, but the entire political system is really kind
of coming apart under this Now, okay, I I I
talked about things kind of coming apart there there there
is another thing that is coming apart in Bolivia, which
(16:38):
is the m A S is shattering, Yes, shattering, it's
it's it's splintering in two. So what is the m
A S. So the m AS is this part? Oh okay,
So it has a slightly weirder history, which is that
So the m A S was a completely random, actually
kind of kind of right wing political party, but it
(17:00):
had electoral status. So it's a party that was taken
over by the social movements at the end of the
sort of stuff we're going to get to in order
to be able to run like in order to be
able to run candidates for office. But this means that
because again because it was literally it was an existing, legal,
registered party that was taken over from the outside, and
because of how it emerged, it's always been seen as
(17:24):
sort of a movement party, right, it's supposed to be
like the assembly of Oblivia, sort of left.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
Wing social movements.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
And these left wing social movements are the movements that
emerges isn't quite the right word, but there the movements
that solidified and began to sort of exert their power
from two thousand and two thousand and six and in
this enormous sequence of social uprising against sort of Bolivia
and neoliberalism. Of the most famous of these are the
water and gas wars, which are these fights against water
(17:51):
privatization and the sort of gas line.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
And this alliance of.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Peasant unions sort of the traditional sort of urban urban
sort of proletariat like traditional sort of like urban left.
These these new street movements, coca growers unions, miners unions,
and a whole array of indigenous groups that we frankly
do you don't have time to get into here because
the politics there are extremely the philosophy is extremely complicated.
(18:17):
I don't know if I've talked about this on the
show before, but one of the I mean we're talking
about like like they have like philosophical constructs that I
don't understand. It's this philosophical construct that's like a dialectic,
but there's three parts of it, and they don't it
doesn't resolve. They just all kind of grind intension with
each other, right, So like, Okay, we're not really going
to get into that. Yeah, yeah, it's outside the scope
(18:39):
of the show of If you're more interested in this,
read rhythms of the Patchacuti or get a doctorate.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
I guess, yeah, yeah, we returned to grad school. Your
options are limited.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
But you know, so there's this coalition of of all
of the kinds of unions, these rural unions, urban unions,
urban street moves, real straight movements, gathered together, gathered their strength,
set up a million roadblocks, and just.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Smash the neoliberal right. They are.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
The Bolivia's right is basically completely destroyed from the period
of two thousand and six until twenty nineteen's that was
the first time they ever took power. They did it
in a coup and they held power for about one
year before they were kicked out of power again, so
they basically completely reshaped all of politics in Bolivia. Those
(19:34):
the second round of roadblocks very nearly destroyed the Bolivian
state until as I sort of allated to earlier even
where Allies pulled his supporters out the barricade in order
to get an election in two thousand and six. And
this is the election the MAAS one. And to understand
the kind of seismic change of this, right, the MAAS
is the first party in the history of Bolivia to
win a majority of the season of the Parliament by itself,
(19:55):
first party ever. It completely destroyed the existing sort of
political system. And again this this, this was supposed to
be a sort of a sort of new kind of party. Right.
The theory of the m AS is is the organization
of social movements. Former vice president and sometimes Marxist Garcia
Leneira described it as quote, there's a dialectical relationship between
(20:16):
the social movements and the party. Now this is a lie.
Or more precisely, if this is a dialectic, it is
not a Hegelian or a Marxist dialectic, where the subplation
of two parts creates a concrete totality or a whole
that is neither of the things that as for it.
This is a Maoist dialectic where two sides face off
(20:36):
each other with each other and one of them hits
the other side of the help with a hammer until
it dies.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
It's just a conflict.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
It's just there are two three people and they both
want to control the thing.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
So it's just that's that's what ends up happening, right,
is so the social movements and the Indigenous movements in
particular have been fracturing for a decade. You know, they're
they're a whole series of large fights, even even in
sort of like the early twenty tens over sort of
over the NAS doing these infrastructure things that everyone else
(21:09):
in the country was like, why are you building a
road to indigenous land.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
There's huge fights, many such cases.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Yeah, So, you know, this is the kind of hollowing
out in the kind of conflict that had led to
the social movements being completely unable to overturn the coup
in twenty nineteen, and it taking them until the end
of twenty twenty to really pull their shit together and
you know, overturn the coup and you know, you know
what else overturns coups.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
That's a that's a fyrom. It is it arming the
working class.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
It is ming the working class.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
We are sponsored by yeah, or in the entire working class.
We're back. So okay, So now we get to the
present split of the social movements.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
What has happened now is that you know, are Say
and and even Morales had always kind of gotten along usually,
but once you know, our Say took power, he instead
of he didn't want to sort of just be a
proxy for even Morales. He had his own sort of
actually like not great agenda either, a sort of more
(22:29):
technocratic agenda. Although you know, you have to sort of
ask Evil, like you're the one who brought these people
into the party, Like, I don't know what you were expecting.
He brought these people in that they weren't going to
as governed as a sort of center left technocratic capitalist government.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
You know, you could have seen this coming.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
But they they have been increasingly fighting, and the two
sides are now implacably hostile. They are saying evil fucking
hate each other. And this this divide has split every
single social movement in Bolivia from landless workers' movement, to
the co growers, to the indigenous federations, to the fucking
urban trade unions, to the miners unions. Every one of
these organizations either has officially split into two factions as
(23:08):
one's in EVO faction and ones in our Save faction,
or they are in the middle of the fight where
you know, they're they're they're both sides are still fighting.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
For control over over you know, their union federation.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
And this is not a clean left right split, which
is this is actually, I mean, that was kind of
what I was expecting ish when this fight started, that
I was sort of expecting that this was going to
end up as a fight between sort of you know,
the left of social movements and the sort of center
right base.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
But that's not really what happens.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
It is kind of a left right split, but you know,
it's also a split over the person of EVO himself.
And because partially a split over EVO himself, there's a
lot of like sort of more left wing groups that
are kind of are kind of backing our say, because
they don't want even more allies to come back into
power and re solidify his control over all of these
(23:57):
all the solo social movements and they're you know, angry
at him for a whole series of attempts to sort
of co opt their movements. It's also you know, it's
also it's also split about sort of how autonomous the
social movement should be, should be able to be from
government policy. It's it's a it's you know, it's kind
of external to this. But one of the other thing
that's going on is that EVO has been really unpopular
(24:18):
with a lot of feminist groups in Blivia for a
very long time for a lot of reasons, including I mean,
you know, one of the big ones is Bolivia's horrific
femicide crisis, which the MS has been in power for
almost twenty years and has done jack shit to actually
like deal with, right, you know, So there's there, there
are all of these sort of fractures breaking out. Partially also,
(24:40):
it's a war between for control of the maas, between
the coca goers unions and the miners unions. So this
is a shit show. It is a complete fiasca. And
then you know, the thing that makes it more with
fiasco is, you know, we talked about this sort of
with uh. We did an episode about kind of what's
been happening with with the sort of pink.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
Tied governments a while back.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
And you know, one of the things you talked about
in that episode was Ecuador, where Ecuador has this left
wing base that should win every single election until the
end of time, and they don't because they're constantly fighting
each other. And this is effectively the beginning of hopefully
it doesn't turn into that, but I mean, the ma
S if it is, if it is even sort of united,
is in unprecedented Bolivian political juggernaut. It should win every election,
(25:24):
like I mean, not till the end of time. They
probably probably should only win I don't know that they
have had demographic issues right now, but you know they
should still be winning effectively every every election and they're not.
And the reason that they're not is because of this
shit or loasion. They might not is because of because
of all of these, all all of these splits, and
these are very these this isn't a these are very
(25:46):
very serious political splits. I mean, uh, one of the
miners workers meetings, very famously, the two sides broke into
into fist fights. I think one hundred and forty people
were injured. So you know, this is this is the
these are the these are very serious fights. There's also
a whole disaster right now over who actually is the
candidate of the MAS. Because Evo held this Congress of
(26:08):
the NAS it was his supporters that Arsei was not
at and they said that because he didn't because Arsee
didn't show up, he was kicked out of the party.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
Classic, so this is this whole thing. So he's typically
been expelled.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
But like the courts got the electoral courts are now
involved because the electoral courts have to decide what like
you know that, they have to figure out what what
candidate their party's running. So it's this it's a complete catastrophe.
And in the midst of this complete catastrophe there is
(26:41):
the worst coup of the twenty first century. So a
lot of let's get into finally this coup. So this
coup is run by a guy named Kwan Jose Zunjega
is the he's the commander of the Bolivian Army. He
is hand picked by Arsaye to run the army, to
be the guy who.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Yes, say dude, yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
And this is you know this, this this has sort
of shades of the fact that Pinochet was sort of
elevated by by all End in the Social Democrats.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
But reminds me of Franco as well, that getting promoted
about yeah this was this, those were tragedy, This is farce.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
So what happens is that on Tuesday of last week,
Sniega goes on TV and says, I am going to
like Louis evil Brallies cannot be allowed to take power again.
I will stop him from taking power. And our say
is like, dude, what the fuck? Just immediately fires him,
(27:42):
because you know you can't do that.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
Yeah, Like almost every every country with a codified constitution
has prohibitions on its military intervening and its politics, right, like, yeah,
the basics of democracy.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Bolivia has had a series of military governments and military
ques across the sort of twentieth century, including the god
the fucking cocaine coup that I've talked about at length
in Our World at the Communist League episodes that ends
with like Klaus Barbie fucking running around, right, So I mean,
you know, like, this is a country that has had
(28:21):
military ques quite literally staffed by actual Nazis, right, So
you know this this is a place that take that
takes the threat of a military queue, very very seriously,
there hasn't been one, blessedly in a long time, but
there's a lot of people who are fucking alive for
the last one, and you know, and so this this
is you know, people are extremely unhappy, even people who
(28:43):
I think in theory would be okay with, you know,
the government being deposed, like absolutely, under no circumstances want
the fucking military running the country because again, right, everyone
fucking remembers how bad that shit was. But what appearstrauff
happened is that Zaninka realizes that so he's just been fired, right,
which means that he has a very short time window
(29:05):
in which he could try to pull some shit, which
means that whatever whatever he may have been planning, I
don't know what his actual plans were, he may have
been actually planning a coup, he may not have been
until here, and which just immediately like, well, I guess
we have to do it now. If it was planning,
been planning very well, yeah, yeah, what results from this
for this very I think results on this very short
timetable is the worst coup I've ever seen. So what
(29:26):
appears to have happened is that on Wednesday, he gathers
the troops that he's able to gather, which is not
that I mean we're talking like a hundred guys. Maybe
it was not a you know, they had a decent
number of armored vehicles, but it was not like a
lot of troops.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
It does not pay that he even had the support
of a lot of troops, right.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Like, yeah, a lot of the army suits have kind
of been sitting there going what the fuck is going on?
But it was you know, I was watching the videos
or were like the livestreams from journalism the ground of
these troops, and they're just they're just worth it, any
of them.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
No, they really went like it was.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
The whole thing was just really fucking shocking, like shocking bad.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
They didn't even surround the building. They just went up
to one door.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Yeah, so so what happens is they used our vehicle
to ram the door of the presidential palace and they
try to take control of it. But the thing is right,
are saying, is it in the presidential palace? He and
his cabinet are in the next building over.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
So they've taken the wrong building.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
Things are going great, and again this this is not
a sort of you know, this is not a coupe
that follows the standard coup repertoire of I seize the
president's sees the radio station, sees the airport, sees the trains, right, yeah,
and have been tray control over the military barracks, which
is your short this is your sort of basic five
step plan to how to do a coup.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
They will be doing that episode soon by the way. Yeah, yeah,
given today's to find court, we're in there.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
Yeah yeah, we're in the yeah, planning to do a coup.
But you know, so they don't even receive a part one,
so they're they're kind of just kind of milling around
the front of the presidential palace and try to get
into the next building where the president actually is. So
it's also the demands are also very weird. So Nika
(31:20):
claims that he's not overthrowing the governments. He claims that
he's still loyal to our say, but he's going to
form a new cabinet.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Oh he's useful. Yeah, that's how you normally do that. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
So he's like yelling about the economic crisis, says he's
going to quote restored democracy and quote release political prisoners.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
Which I kind of get.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
Okay, So the political prisoner's thing, I think is about
the people who've been arrested for doing the twenty nineteen coup.
I have no idea what restored democracy means. I don't
know if he had any idea what he meant by
restored democracy. Something was happening. But the thing is the
other thing about this coup is that he has no
backing at all. I mean, it doesn't even have back
in the army. But it has no It doesn't even
have backing among the right. Both Macho Camacho and Jeanine
(32:05):
on Ony you with people who did like the last one,
both condemned the coup. So people she is trying to
break out of prison condemned the coup. Right, this is
going nowhere.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
Worst coup I've ever seen.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
So meanwhile are say it is cabinet are in the
next building over appointing a new commander of the army,
so that the new commander of the army can go
outside and order them order the troops to go back
to their barracks. This is kind of what's happening. But
also meanwhile outside so that these troops have like taken
over the square in front of the presidential Palace and
(32:41):
that they have sort of successfully managed to take over
the square with a bunch of sort of military police
and riot gear.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
But there's this sort of crowd who's.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
Come to yell at the army, right, and it's just
very weird spectacle because it's there's all these soldiers who
all have long guns, right, being protected by a light
of cops with riot shields.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
Yeah, like if you open up on the crowd like like, oh, yeah,
I have enough numbers to get.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
Every every single one of you is going to be
individually executed.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
Yeah, So they're all people are gonna have guns.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
And unless they that that that you know, and when
I say execute, I mean they're they're gonna get executed
by the goverment. That that's assuming they live long enough
and are not just beaten to death by the crowd,
which is also a real possibility. But you know, so
this crowd is sort of approaching a lot of riot police.
They're getting tear gas a bit. But this is and
I kind of emphasize this enough, This is not a
kind of normal like highly organized Bolivian mass protest where
(33:38):
you know, all of the union, the Union's college general.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
Strike in the middle of this.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
Yeah, but again, this this whole thing lasts maybe two
and a half hours, so there's not time to do
the actual kind of sort of roadblocks and stuff like that.
There's not time to actually do the organization that you
would need to do.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
Overturn this coup.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
This coup falls apart so fast that people don't have
time to make protest signs only have our flags. They
do not have time to write signs out. That is
that they don't have time to go up with chance.
I was watching the funniest part about this whole thing.
So I was watching a live stream of the protesters,
and the protesters had gotten this kind of I guess
(34:16):
you call it sort of a kind of metal gate.
I guess it was this big sort of it almost
looked like, you know how there's you get this those
white shelves that have like metal bars, and it was
kind of like that like cross hashed.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
It was, you know, it was pretty big.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
I was like bigger than a person, and like three
people are like carrying in front of them, like going
to the police lane, presumably to use it as a
battering ram. But the troops run away so fast that
these guys couldn't get their gate up to the police
line fast enough to use it.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
That's how you know it's going.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
Well, it was staggering, it was amazing. So you know,
the entire coup calls apart. Zuniga gets arrested on Life TV.
It's like giving a press conference and they just like
arrest them.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
Amazing.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
But at the end of this, as it's falling apart,
the one genuinely masterful stroke that Zunjinga pulls in this
entire I mean it missed a just a cavalcade of failure.
The one actual genius line that he does is as
as he started being arrested, he says, it's in prison too.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
He claims that he's been ordered by Arsay to do
this in order to bolst Arsey's poll numbers, which are dogshit.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
Fake yeah yeah, now okay.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
This, this whole scheme begs the question, what was Arsay
supposed to get out of this? Sorry not again, why what?
Speaker 2 (35:37):
What? What is? What does he get out of it?
Speaker 1 (35:39):
Right?
Speaker 2 (35:39):
Because she's just going to prison.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
It's like, why would he do it if it was
just under orders from the president Because this is a
lose lose for him, so none of it makes any sense.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
But coma. This is immediately picked up by morell I supporters.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
You fucking hate her, say, and they all immediately begin
sort of peting is. And now this has become sort
of the official line. I mean, even Moreeles has been
on TV on social media is just saying, yeah, this
was this was a fake coup. This was a coup
that are say did against himself to help his poll numbers,
and this is you know, this is a This has
(36:17):
turned into a real thing, and there's a lot of
people who are sort of like, I don't know, the
whole coup was really weird, right, And there's a lot
of people who believe this because they're you know, I mean,
either because they want to believe it, or because you know,
I mean it does look weird, or because they fucking
just hate our say from the beginning, right, this is
(36:39):
all you know, as funny as it sort of is,
this has had a sort of catastrophic effect on sort
of just like regular oblivion people, because people are fucking terrified,
you know, they're terrified that this is the beginning of
the Army coming back into politics. They're terrified that someone
else is going to do a coup. I mean even
Morales has been saying for a very long time. Actually,
(37:00):
both of them have been trading accusations that the other
one is going to do a cue against them.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Yeah, they've been banging the coup drum for a little while.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
Yeah, everyone, everyone has sort of been claiming that there's
going to be CU's happening. And all of this is
creating this sort of cauldron of things that are extremely
bad for the Bolivian left. The economic boom that wielded
their coalition together is over. It's not clear anyone can
bring it back, because again, this is a this is
a natural gas based thing, right. And the other problem
(37:30):
that they have is, you know, the problem that all
social democracies have, which is that they've created a middle
class base of small business owners and people with middle
class salaries and professional jobs. And we talked about this
in the Brazilian context, and this is something that Garcia
la n Earra has talked about too, which is that, well,
he doesn't say it in these words because he's a
coward and a capitalist, but social democracy produces its own
(37:53):
grave diggers by creating a middle class that despises them
and then eventually destroys everything. The social democrats thought to create,
and that this is very possible that what we are
in right now is the opening stages of of this
entire political project coming apart. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
I fucking hope it doesn't.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
And I hope that, you know, but again, like the
the only, the only actual way to resolve the inherent
sort of political and social contradictions of attempting to have
a sort of left wing socialist political base and a
capitalist government is to eliminate the capitalist state. Yeah, so
either either you do that or you get another one
of these shitty fucking cues.
Speaker 3 (38:31):
Yeah, you're just constantly vulnerable to this ship, right, like
at any point, Yeah, yeah, you're creating the condition switch a.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
Wealthy and I mean, and we've we've we've already seen
the coup that's capable of knocking them out of power, right,
it's the cue that actually has sort of a mass,
like a mass backing from the right.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
And this was not that cue. This was this was
this was.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
The comedian's cup, This was the joker coup, This was the.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
This is the worst coup.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
Yeah, but you know, the next one, the next one
might not.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
Be yes, and that's quite serious.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
Yeah, So until then, hopefully hopefully we don't reach there.
But until this has been naked, happen here yet, you
too can overturn a coup by yelling, not even particularly
menacing at a muns your troops.
Speaker 3 (39:19):
Yeah yeah, practice practice at home in case do you
have a need to do it.
Speaker 4 (39:28):
It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
For more podcasts from.
Speaker 4 (39:32):
Cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zonemedia dot com,
or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources
for It could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zonemedia
dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
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Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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