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2024-06-29 Caribbean-Latin America
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Bolivia Coup: Fight for Russian Lithium in US Backyard
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Ol'ga Kuznetsova
[REGNUM] The night in the Eastern Hemisphere and the evening in the Western turned out to be unusually restless: everyone was closely watching what was happening on the streets of the de facto capital of Bolivia - La Paz (legally the capital of the South American country is Sucre) - and wondering whether the glory days of Latin American dictatorships had returned or not yet.
Continued from Page 4
The Ecuadorian security forces' raid on the Mexican embassy gave many hope that radicalism was once again becoming a local political trend. However, Bolivian General Juan José Zúñiga was a disappointment.
He led army units to Murillo Square, where the residence of the country's leadership is located. He staged a “battle of views” with President Luis Arce himself and refused to carry out the order, disbanding the troops. But after just a few hours, the rebel retreated along with his entourage. Later he appeared in the media as an arrested ex-military leader.
True, Zúñiga did manage to provoke a wave of whispers. He calmly - and obviously knowing what awaited him - waited for his arrest, appeared before journalists and declared that he had arranged everything on the orders of President Arce, who thus hoped to "regain his popularity."
How close are such “stuffings” to the truth? Hard to tell. But they have already caused problems for the current leadership of Bolivia.
RIOTERS' DEMANDS
At the height of the riot, while Arce was giving a press conference right in the presidential palace, calling on Bolivians to take to the streets and the international community to condemn the attempted coup, General Zúñiga was proclaiming the creation of a temporary transitional government that would have very specific goals.
In particular, Zúñiga proclaimed that the era of the socialist regime of the ruling MAS party had come to an end.
Now, democratic governance in Bolivia will be “restructured” and all political prisoners will be released – most notably the former right-wing governor of Santa Cruz province, Luis Fernando Camacho, and the center-right former president, Jeanine Áñez.
There were also plans to pardon all military personnel who took part in the 2019 protests against the team of former Bolivian leader Evo Morales.
No one, at least at the time of the riot, responded happily to such plans. Jeanine Agnes telegraphed from places not so remote (where, by the way, she ended up, among other things, for organizing the military coup in 2019), which condemns the actions of the rioters.
Ex-Governor Camacho responded almost a day later. He called what was happening not an attempted coup, but “fraud,” and in further appeals to the public he continued to work on the theses put on the agenda by General Zúñiga.
For example, he said that the governance model of Bolivia’s ruling party “has exhausted itself” and demanded an explanation from President Luis Arce about what happened in Plaza Murillo.
What was this, they say? A media spectacle? The madness of individual soldiers or a demonstration of the Bolivian leadership's lack of control over the national armed forces?
Additionally, Camacho demanded the creation of a parliamentary commission that could investigate what happened. Of course, with the support of international observers. Thus, the coup - even if it ended unsuccessfully - did the Bolivian opposition a certain service.
Now we can speculate on the topic of President Arce's potential participation in organizing the rebellion, and make guesses that cast a shadow on everyone involved in the activities of the ruling party, almost indefinitely. Well, at least until 2025 (when the next presidential elections in Bolivia will take place).
And the words of the Bolivian leadership that the national armed forces are under complete control, in this context, are very difficult to perceive as truth: in addition to Zúñiga, the heads of the Navy and Air Force were arrested.
Almost nothing is known about the detention of characters of lower rank. As well as about the number of soldiers who took part in the coup (only forty arrest warrants and 17 detainees are known). The investigation is only at the very beginning, what kind of “full control” is there?
"WRONG" PROTEST
Despite certain destructive processes in the Bolivian state that this failed coup entailed, there are also many questions about its organizers and executors.
What effect did Zúñiga's army units expect when they began to spray tear gas on citizens flocking to the main square of La Paz? Citizens began to gather, heeding the calls of both Luis Arce and former President Evo Morales, who had roused trade unions and public institutions to strike against the army.
Promises to release Camacho from prison could, of course, have led to the start of anti-government demonstrations in the province of Santa Cruz, where he was governor, but at the right moment this did not happen either.
Some experts suggest that Zúñiga expected that the police would go over to the side of the rioters - this also did not happen.
A little later, the disgraced general admitted that the goal of the uprising was not achieved due to "delayed reinforcements." It turns out that several units, as well as personnel from the Navy and Air Force, did not have time to arrive at the scene.
Perhaps Zúñiga is telling the truth, or, according to some versions, he was misled by the organizers of the rebellion, who promised him some support but ultimately did not provide it. Perhaps intentionally, but perhaps for reasons completely beyond their control.
Who can be considered the organizers of this event? At first glance, the answer suggests itself.
But not everything is so simple.
BENEFICIARIES
A couple of weeks before the events described, US Charge d'Affaires Debra Hevia was summoned to the Bolivian Foreign Ministry. It was brought to her attention that the American embassy was engaged in “interfering in the internal affairs” of Bolivia.
And a little later, on June 13, the Bolivian Minister of Economy directly accused the US Embassy of preparing a "soft coup" against the government of Luis Arce by inciting protest sentiments due to fuel problems and the economic crisis. That is, for approximately the same theses that General Zúñiga voiced.
In fairness, it is worth recalling that Bolivia's fuel problems are a secret to few. It was for consultations and to find a solution to this problem that President Arce recently visited St. Petersburg.
True, there is an additional nuance. In St. Petersburg, Arce discussed the lithium complex project, which is being implemented in Bolivia by the company Uranium One, part of the Rosatom structures.
The facility is scheduled to be operational in 2025, but it has been causing a stir for the past year, with US Southern Command chief Laura Richardson recently calling the "lithium triangle" countries (Chile, Argentina and Bolivia) "a national security problem in our backyard."
In this regard, some experts have suggested that the goal of the coup could have been US claims to Bolivian lithium and the desire to limit Russian companies' work in the region.
Here it is necessary to acknowledge that actions with a similar goal are undertaken with enviable regularity, including in the form of inciting protests in certain regions specifically against Russian projects.
But there is another point of view. Western colleagues who run the English-language Telegram channel /CIG/ Telegram | Counter Intelligence Global believe that Washington's position on Bolivia is not so simple.
Of course, American “specialists” were involved here, but that’s only half the story.
It turns out that President Arce's presence in power - including after the 2025 elections - is much more in line with American interests (including the interests of American and Chinese businesses) than the potential restoration of Evo Morales to power.
By now it is known that there is a serious split in the ruling Bolivian party MAS between the teams of Arce and Morales – and the attempted coup has allowed Western media to remind the international community of this.
The failed coup itself allowed Arce to carry out the necessary changes in the military leadership and consolidate power in his hands with the full approval of the international community and without any noticeable reaction from the United States. This will most likely cause Morales certain problems in future elections.
In this light, the Russian side should not let down its vigilance and should closely monitor attempts to incite protests in lithium mining areas. It is possible that we will hear about them again.
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2024-06-29 12:01||
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