At some point hopefully someone with knowledge of Bolivian Army insignia will chime in and identify which units are participating in this coup.
"Bolivia is among the world’s most politically turbulent nations, having had nearly 200 coups and revolutions since it won independence from Spain two centuries ago. Morales was ousted by the army as recently as 2019 after a disputed election."
And for those unable or unwilling to view The Site Formerly Known as Twitter, the payload is:
Elon Musk: "We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it."
Bolivia just stopped him from mining in their country. I'd say they dealt with it pretty well.
Archive link: <https://archive.is/JjyYL>Ido Vock, who has the BBC byline, is a freelance journalist not a BBC reporter. https://muckrack.com/ido-vock
Marcelo Rochabrun from the Bloomberg piece is Bloomberg's Lima Bureau Chief. https://www.bloomberg.com/authors/AWGVgQgsdOs/marcelo-rochab...
South America has a history of military dictatorship but after the pendulum swings enough to the other side people seem to lose their memory a bit.
Arab leaders are likewise domestically widely regarded as sockpuppets of the USA. On the rare occasion a democratic election happens, the president suddenly dies, gets assasinated, or a coup d'état happens and gets hanged. Off the top of my head see [2] for an example.
This is not to say democracy would work in a Russia- or China- dominant world. It seems democracy only works for the nations who can sufficiently defend against infiltration by the NSA/foreign intelligence agency of the dominant power. And I don't think that's easy, or feasible at all. You can't expect an African nation of 10M population who gained independence 2 decades ago to have the skilled people to be able to conduct this sort of intelligence operations.
And of course, the US is the peacekeeper of the world, only bringing democracy and welfare to the poor nations held back by their authoritarian leaders and backward ideologies and religions. Long live Imperium Americana!
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Egyptian_coup_d%27%C3%A9t...
Democratic governments and political parties, unions, student organizations, journalists, artists, teachers, intellectuals, opponents to the military juntas and left-wing sympathizers (including socialists, peronists, anarchists and communists)
Crazy they just green lighted the whole segment of the population who were fighting for their own destiny.The unions declared an indefinite general strike
https://x.com/redstreamnet/status/1806068831984783583
And as I write this it seems like they’re outnumbered in the plaza
What wouldn't surprise me even more is if this coup were staged to allow Arce the excuse to put the country into martial law before being voted out.
-----
Evo Morales’ party expels President Luis Arce and deepens political war in Bolivia
https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-10-05/evo-mora...
In Bolivia, an “Intense” Battle Between Arce and Morales
https://www.americasquarterly.org/article/in-bolivia-an-inte...
This isn't so much my take as that of the European Parliament and Human Rights Watch.
1. recognizing the wrongheadedness of the kirchners' policies, we elected an opposition leader who favors capitalism. unfortunately, he's a total nutbag, and his advocacy of freedom seems to be strictly limited to freedom of enterprise (not, for example, freedom of abortion, freedom to protest, or freedom to use public transit anonymously)
2. we aren't a petro-state
many such cases!
i mean people have elected all kinds of madmen as heads of state, so that's not the unprecedented part. but i don't think any country has ever elected a minarchist as a head of state. two weeks ago he gave a speech at a cato forum here describing the state he now heads as by nature a violent and criminal organization. he may be right about that, but generally believing such things makes you unelectable
we are in uncharted waters. this is going to be exciting!
Hence, you can't evaluate other countries governments based on whether they're aligned with the Kirchners or not, it says almost nothing other than they're not on the extreme right. You have to judge them on their own terms.