How Bush Tried to Bring Down Evo Morales

[Judi Lynn]

November 18, 2008
How Bush Tried to Bring Down Evo Morales
Orchestrating a Civic Coup in Bolivia

By ROGER BURBACH

Evo Morales is the latest democratically-elected Latin American president to be the target of a US plot to destabilize and overthrow his government. On September 10, 2008 Morales expelled US Ambassador Philip Goldberg because “he is conspiring against democracy and seeking the division of Bolivia.”
Observers of US-Latin American policy tend to view the crisis in US-Bolivian relations as due to a policy of neglect and ineptness towards Latin America because of US involvement in the wars in the Middle East and Central Asia. In fact, the Bolivia coup attempt was a conscious policy rooted in US hostility towards Morales, his political party the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) and the social movements that are aligned with him.

“The US embassy is historically used to calling the shots in Bolivia, violating our sovereignty, treating us like a banana republic,” says Gustavo Guzman, who was expelled as Bolivian ambassador to Washington following Goldberg’s removal. In 2002, when Morales narrowly lost his first bid for the presidency, US ambassador Manuel Rocha openly campaigned against him, threatening, “ if you elect those who want Bolivia to become a major cocaine exporter again, this will endanger the future of US assistance to Bolivia.” Because he led the Cocaleros Federation prior to assuming the presidency, the US State Department called Morales an “illegal coca agitator.”Morales advocated “Coca Yes, Cocaine No,” and called which for an end to violent U.S.-sponsored coca eradication raids, and for the right of Bolivian peasants to grow coca for domestic consumption, medicinal uses and even for export as an herb in tea and other products.

“When Morales triumphed in the next presidential election,” says Guzman, “it represented a defeat for the United States.” Shortly after his inauguration, Morales received a call from George Bush, offering to help "bring a better life to Bolivians." Morales asked Bush to reduce US trade barriers for Bolivian products, and suggested that he come for a visit. Bush did not reply. As Guzman notes, “the United States was trying to woo Morales with polite and banal comments to keep him from aligning with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.” David Greenlee, the US ambassador prior to Goldberg, expressed his "preoccupation" with Bolivia's foreign alliances, while Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and others at the Pentagon began talking about "security concerns" in Bolivia.

Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Shannon, the highest ranking US official to attend Morales’ inauguration, declared a willingness to dialogue with Morales. In fact, what followed were almost three years of diplomatic wrangling while the U.S. provided direct and covert assistance to the opposition movement centered in the four eastern departments of Bolivia known as “La Media Luna”. Dominated by agro-industrial interests, the departments began a drive for regional autonomy soon after Morales, the first Indian president in Bolivian history took office. (About 55% of the country’s population is Indian.) Headed by departmental prefects (governors) and large landowners, the autonomy movement has been determined to stymie Morales’ plans for national agrarian reform, and bent on taking control of the substantial hydro-carbon resources located in the Media Luna.

The Bush administration has pursued a two-track policy similar to the strategy the United States employed to overthrow the democratically-elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973. The diplomatic negotiations initiated by Shannon centered almost exclusively on differences over drug policies, with the Bush administration continually threatening to cut or curtail economic assistance and preferential trade if Bolivia did not abide by the US policy of coca eradication and criminalization. At the same time, the United States through its embassy in La Paz and the Agency for International Development (USAID), funded political forces that opposed Morales and MAS. The US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), with 37 in-country agents, appears to have acted like the CIA in Bolivia, gathering intelligence and engaging in clandestine political operations with the opposition.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/burbach11182008.html