Sunday 17 November 2019

Bolivia's 'Lithium Coup'


Bolivia's 'Lithium Coup' 
ANOTHER Crime Against 
Democracy: U.S. Backs local 
Fascists



Public Enquiry


As For Bolivia’s Natural Resources, The American Establishment Wants It All 

It’s well known that Bolivia has the largest reserves of lithium in the world. As reported by Bloomberg News last year in ‘Bolivia’s Almost Impossible Lithium Dream’ based on Bolivia’s lithium reserves: 

Demand for lithium is expected to more than double in 2025. The soft, light mineral is mined mainly in Austria, Chile and Argentina. Bolivia has plenty-9 million tons that have never been mined commercially, the second-largest amount in the world-but until now, there’s no practical way to mine and sell it.

Bolivia’s legitimate President, Evo Morales now in exile in Mexico said that the “The OAS is in the service of the North American empire” and that he “could not understand” how his military leaders betrayed Bolivia. “That confirms that my great crime is to be indigenous. It’s a class problem” rt.com reported. https://www.globalresearch.ca/u-s-bac... 

Regardless, Morales still has the support of the majority of the Bolivian people. Morales’ made history as Bolivia’s first indigenous president who was a poor farmer and without a college education. 

“The exiled president said that after freeing itself from the International Monetary Fund, the Bolivian economy was doing better” the report said. 

Historically speaking, many Bolivian presidents before Morales were aligned with Washington’s interests and were oppressive against the poor and indigenous peoples. They had murdered workers who were on strike and they even sold off Bolivia’s mineral wealth to U.S. and European corporations. The Bolivian people remained poor for decades under right-wing dictatorships who joined forces with the U.S. and even militarized coca producing regions where Morales experienced firsthand tyranny according to an Al Jazeera story from 2014 on Evo Morales’s rise to power titled ‘Bolivia: Has Evo Morales Proven His Critics Wrong? “One event vividly stuck out for Morales after moving to the coca-growing region: In Chipiriri, a cocalero (coca farmer) was killed by the military for refusing to plead guilty to trafficking drugs. 

“Without any contemplation, [the military] covered his body in gasoline and, in front of many people, burned him alive” Morales said. 

However, the story also mentioned Morales’s success 

“The GDP has steadily grown from 2009 to 2013, and the UN reports that Bolivia has the highest rate of poverty reduction in Latin America, with a 32.2 percent drop from 2000 to 2012. Employment rates and wages have also gone up, with a notable 20 percent minimum wage raise last year.” Morales’s economic plan turned out to be successful as stated by Al Jazeera “Morales approach of putting various industries under state control, from mines to telecommunications companies, has generated enormous funds for the government, which it is using for infrastructure – only 10 percent of the country’s roads are paved – and social programmes to lift children, mothers and the elderly out of poverty. Thanks to a successful literacy programme, UNESCO has declared the country free of illiteracy.” 

When Morales was declared the winner in the October 20th elections, violent right-wing protests soon followed. The leaders of the opposition led by mostly fascist elements of Bolivian society including Luis Fernando Camacho who Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton of The Grayzone described him as “a powerful multi-millionaire named in the Panama Papers, and an ultra-conservative Christian fundamentalist groomed by a fascist paramilitary notorious for its racist violence, with a base in Bolivia’s wealthy separatist region of Santa Cruz.” 

No surprise that Camacho has the support of the right-wing governments of Colombia and Brazil along with the Venezuelan opposition leaders who are still trying to overthrow Nicolas Maduro after their recent failures to do so. The violent protests that has erupted against the Morales government has led to extreme violence resulting in deaths, beatings of politicians which forced the resignation of Morales and his vice president García Lineran and others in his administration on the advice of army officials and police chiefs who were bought and paid for by Washington. The Morales government called it a coup by U.S. backed opposition forces. Morales did propose dialogue with the opposition parties, but was flatly rejected. It was reported that Morales even accepted Washington’s lackey, the ‘Organization of American States’(OAS) advice to set up new elections, but was ignored. 

The violent protests were directed at leaders of the Movement To Socialism (MAS) which is Morales’s political party and journalists who were beaten by right-wing mobs. 

The BBC reported that the mayor of a small town in Bolivia was dragged from her home and then they covered her in red paint and cut her hair.

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