Bolivian Coup and Indian Wars on
Thanksgiving
By
Finian Cunningham
November 28/29, 2019 "Information
Clearing House"
- Apt it is, in a heinous
way, that as the United States celebrates
its annual Thanksgiving Day this week, the
indigenous people of Bolivia are being
slaughtered by a US-backed coup unfolding in
the Andean nation.
When former President Evo Morales was
threatened out of office on November 10 by
orchestrated, massive street violence, US
President Donald Trump hailed it “a great
day for democracy”. What Trump meant was “a
great day for plutocracy”. The new regime in
Laz Paz is the colonial-descendant, ruling
class back in power, rolling back the gains
made after 14 years of progressive socialism
and democracy for the indigenous majority of
Bolivians.
The coup was
carried off by Washington’s smearing of
Morales’ re-election on October 20 and by
fascist paramilitaries directed by Bolivian
oligarchs who are well connected in
Washington, as
documented
by Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton.
The
Bolivian oligarchs and their supporters
espouse a rightwing Christian fundamentalism
which disparages the indigenous culture as
pagan. The violent racism towards the
indigenous majority was expressed by the
self-declared “interim president”, Jeannie
Anez, who, like other oligarchic figures,
denounced the native and largely poor
population as “satanic”.
The
takeover in Bolivia is as much about taking
control of the country’s wealth – natural
gas and minerals – as it about a racist
revenge on the native Indian population who
dared to rule the country under Morales’
leadership for the benefit of the poor
majority.
Morales has been warned that if he returns
from exile in Mexico he will be jailed for
terrorism. The new regime has instructed
state forces to “hunt down” members of
Morales’ Movement to Socialism (MAS) party.
It has given impunity for the police and
army to shoot dead protesters who are
holding strikes and other demonstrations
against the new regime. The latter made
earlier promises to hold new elections –
without MAS being allowed to participate
despite the party having a majority of
lawmakers in the country’s Congress. It
looks like even those hollow promises are
now being scrapped.
Since Morales
was ousted, over 30 people have been killed
and hundreds injured as state forces fire
live rounds at unarmed protesters.
Reporting
from on the ground, Medea Benjamin says the
indigenous communities are living in fear of
increasing atrocities and the return to the
old days of military dictatorship.
In
one incident in El Alto on November 19, army
and police, reinforced with helicopters,
killed eight people, including children, who
were among MAS supporters holding an unarmed
strike against the new regime.
“I
saw the doctors and nurses desperately
trying to save lives, carrying out emergency
surgeries in difficult conditions with a
shortage of medical equipment,” reported
Benjamin. “I saw five dead bodies and dozens
of people with bullet wounds… A grieving
mother whose son was shot cried out between
sobs: ‘They’re killing us like dogs’.”
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The
coup in Bolivia is consistent with the wider
historical perspective of Indian Wars waged
for centuries across the entire American
continent. From the Spanish and Portuguese
conquistadors in the 15th century who wiped
out the Mayan and smaller Andean
civilizations in the central and southern
continent, to the later British and other
European colonialists who dispossessed and
destroyed the native tribes in the north in
what became the United States and Canada.
It
may sound cliched, but nevertheless should
never be forgotten that the United States
and other modern American states were built
on genocide of the native populations. That
genocide has never been properly atoned for.
Existing American-Indians live in
predominantly marginalized, impoverished
conditions. Their bountiful lands stolen and
poisoned by industrial capitalism.
Official celebrations like Thanksgiving and
Columbus Day stick in the craw because they
sanitize the real and brutal history of the
US being founded on barbaric crimes against
humanity.
If
there is no official acknowledgment – let
alone atonement – for the exterminatory
foundations of the US, and its economic and
military power, then no wonder that the
state permits itself to continue waging wars
and subversions against other nations. It is
above the law because it always has been
above the law from its very inception.
The
Hollywood-like depiction of Thanksgiving
tells us that English settlers arriving on
the northeast coast in the early 1600s were
befriended by the indigenous people who
shared their food and showed the foreigners
how to survive harsh winters. What gets
lopped out from this rosy narrative is the
subsequent centuries when the European
colonizers expanded their rapacious
land-grabbing and pushed the natives to
extinction, often by slaughtering them in
their camps.
Native American
elder Leonard Peltier (now 75), who has been
in jail for nearly 40 years on a trumped-up
conviction for killing two FBI officers,
wrote the following
reflection
for this year’s Thanksgiving: “As I let my
mind wander beyond the steel bars and
concrete walls, I try to imagine what the
people who live outside the prison gates are
doing, and what they are thinking. Do they
ever think of the indigenous people who were
forced from their homelands? Do they
understand that with every step they take,
no matter the direction, that they are
walking on stolen land? Can they imagine,
even for one minute, what it was like to
watch the suffering of the women, the
children and babies and yes, the sick and
elderly, as they were made to keep pushing
west in freezing temperatures, with little
or no food? These were my people and this
was our land.”
In
his reflection, Leonard Peltier makes a
direction connection with the coup in
Bolivia to past crimes against the
indigenous people of all America.
“We
also remember our brothers and sisters of
Bolivia, who are rioting, in support of the
first indigenous President, Evo Morales. His
commitment to the people, the land, their
resources and protection against corruption
is commendable. We recognize and identify
with that struggle so well,” he writes.
The
crime against Bolivia is allowed to happen
because the US by and large is held in a
condition of historical amnesia by its
plutocratic system and its obedient
corporate mass media. Thanksgiving Day is
followed by a day of consumerist frenzy,
known as Black Friday, when crowds queue up
for shops to open their doors for sales.
People fill up their empty lives with cheap
gadgets and techno-fetichism. And so
plutocrats like Trump and his evangelical
Christian cabinet can espouse the crass
nonsense that what is happening in Bolivia
is “a great day for democracy”.
As Canadian
singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn
put it
beautifully: “You thought it was over but
it’s just like before. Will there never be
an end to the Indian Wars?”
Finian Cunningham
has written extensively on international
affairs, with articles published in several
languages. He is a Master’s graduate in
Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a
scientific editor for the Royal Society of
Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before
pursuing a career in newspaper journalism.
He is also a musician and songwriter. For
nearly 20 years, he worked as an editor and
writer in major news media organisations,
including The Mirror, Irish Times and
Independent.
