Bolivia: President Arce urged Armed Forces not to join coup attempts

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – “The role that the strategy of the national and international far-right assigned the Armed Forces in the November 2019 coup must never be repeated again,” Arce said at a military event in El Alto, neighboring La Paz.

This was the most direct call to the military by the socialist ruler – about to complete his first year in office – since his denunciation of alleged coup plots, linked to a recent national strike and a campaign against financial control laws escalated early this month.

The speech came a day after the government presented a report claiming that through the efforts of then Defense Minister Luis Fernando López, hired assassins and paramilitaries landed in the country in October 2020 to kill Arce two days before the general elections and stayed until two days after they were held.

Government Minister Eduardo del Castillo on Monday stated that among the paramilitaries involved in the event were some who on July 7 this year took part in the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moise, according to preliminary investigations in the Caribbean country.

An investigation by the U.S. news site The Intercept also reported that Bolivia was on the verge of a new coup d’état and of an armed invasion by U.S. mercenaries after Arce’s electoral victory.

The Intercept said disagreements among Ministers and division within the Armed Forces, exacerbated by the weight of Arce’s victory on October 18, 2020, appeared to have derailed the plan.

In 2019, Bolivian military chiefs urged President Evo Morales to resign amid mass protests over that year’s October elections, then backed the de facto government of Jeanine Áñez and participated in a crackdown on protests that left over 30 dead.

Part of these events were taken up again on Tuesday by Arce, who recounted Bolivian history since the Spanish colonization through cycles of military dictatorships, to justify the creation of the Plurinational State in 2009 under the Morales government, and called on the uniformed forces to respect the current “process of change.”

“This great change is what the Plurinational State represents, it is what some privileged sectors try to reject and even regress, and this change is what you are standing up for with your constitutional duty,” the president said.

According to Arce, “the bad Bolivians are trying to again knock on the barracks’ doors,” but the people and the Armed Forces “will build, each one from their own field of action, a Bolivia with full economic and political independence.”

The President added that the Armed Forces must honor the “sacrifice” of the struggle against the government of Áñez and for democracy, and highlighted that in the elections a year ago “the Bolivian people sent the message that they want to live in peace, with the certainty that the future will not be an unknown.”

Arce made these statements while representatives of victims of the 2019 massacres began a march through the highlands towards La Paz, demanding justice, while civic committees, transport and informal trade sectors announced new protests against the economic policy.

Demonstrators called for the conviction of Áñez and her associates, while opponents demanded the repeal of anti-money laundering regulations, among other issues.