It’s been about a month since Evo Morales resigned as president of Bolivia following weeks of civil protests over disputed results of the country’s general election in October. After initially seeking asylum in Mexico, Morales flew to Argentina on Thursday to be granted refugee status. Gabriel Hetland, an assistant professor of Latin American, Caribbean and U.S. Latino Studies, shares his insights on the political crisis and why he believes the resignation was a military coup.
It’s been about a month since Evo Morales resigned as president of Bolivia following weeks of civil protests over disputed results of the country’s general election in October.
After initially seeking asylum in Mexico, Morales flew to Argentina on Thursday to be granted refugee status.
Gabriel Hetland, an assistant professor of Latin American, Caribbean and U.S. Latino Studies, shares his insights on the political crisis and why he believes the resignation was a military coup.
Hetland’s research focuses on urban and national politics, participatory democracy and social movements. Learn more about his work.
Article mentioned: “Many wanted Morales out. But what happened in Bolivia was a military coup” (Written by Gabriel Hetland for The Guardian)
Photo credit:”Quito, Acto en solidaridad con el señor Presidente del Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia, Evo Morales,” by Cancillería Ecuador.
The UAlbany News Podcast is hosted and produced by Sarah O'Carroll, a Communications Specialist at the University at Albany, State University of New York, with production assistance by Patrick Dodson and Scott Freedman.
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Sarah O'Carroll:
Welcome to the UAlbany News Podcast. I'm Sarah O'Carroll. I have with me Gabriel Hetland. His research focuses on urban and national politics, participatory democracy, and social movements. I have Hetland here to give insight on the political crisis in Bolivia following the resignation of former president Evo Morales, and what to expect in the coming weeks.
NEWS CLIP 1:
The violent street protests over allegations of a stolen election in Bolivia forced President Evo Morales to resign and flee into exile. The aftershock...
NEWS CLIP 2: [foreign language 00:00:49].
NEWS CLIP 3: Morales arrived in Buenos Aires, Argentina with other former government officials as political asylees. Morales, who was in power for nearly 14 years in Bolivia, accepted an offer of political asylum from Mexico in November.
[foreign language 00:01:04].
Sarah O'Carroll: Gabriel, thank you for being here.
Gabriel Hetland: Yeah. A pleasure to be with you, Sarah.
Sarah O'Carroll:
To understand what's happening in Bolivia, I think we need to take a step back and look at the weeks, and even months, leading up to the President's resignation. Can you help us make sense of why political unrest was growing, and who the key players were that set this chain of events in motion?
Gabriel Hetland:
Sure. To go back even further, very briefly, Evo Morales was elected in 2006. He was the first indigenous president in Bolivia's history. It's a majority indigenous country, so it was a very big deal when he got elected in 2005. He took office in 2006. And he'd been President since then.
Gabriel Hetland:
And so, the current election, which happened on October 20th of this year, was controversial because in 2016, Morales attempted to change Bolivia's constitution, which allows only a single reelection, which he had already done. And he lost narrowly a referendum, and it was a little bit, there's some dirty politics involved in his losing, but he clearly lost that referendum.
Gabriel Hetland:
About a year and a half later, the highest electoral court in Bolivia, the Supreme Constitutional Tribunal, declared that anyone could run for reelection and prohibiting them would be a violation of the human rights. And so that was a position that allowed Morales to run in this election in 2019, but it was widely rejected by some, not all, within Bolivia.
Gabriel Hetland:
So that sets the context for the dispute. And there was increasing calls by mostly middle-class and some more right-wing conservative sectors calling Morales a dictator. I don't think that claim had a lot of analytical merit, but it was certainly made. So there was controversy even before the election. There was claims for months that the right wing within Bolivia, which is largely based in the Eastern lowlands of the country, whereas Morales and the capital is in the highlands in the Andes.
Gabriel Hetland:
There was calls that the election would not be free. That if Morales won, it would be a fraud, without any evidence, obviously. So this was even before. So there was a narrative that was happening for a number of months before the election even happened.
Gabriel Hetland:
Then the election did happen on the 20th. And there's no dispute about the fact that Morales got the largest plurality. So the initial returns from a quick count showed that he had at least 45% of the vote, and the second place finisher had about 37 point something percent. So, Morales was up by almost a little under 8% of the vote. But he would need to get 10% margin to avoid a second round runoff. And that was a big deal, because if he had gone to a runoff, many people thought he might lose, including himself to some extent.
Gabriel Hetland:
And so, as the full results came in, his margin increased from roughly 8% to over 10%, about 10.5, 10.6%, which meant that he would have won the first round. But many people, in part from the narrative I already talked about, didn't believe that had happened. They thought that there had been fraud, and there was no way Morales could have won the election in the first round.
Gabriel Hetland:
The OAS, the Organization of American States, played a very important and controversial role in all of this, because on the morning of the 21st, so the day after the election, they came out with a statement saying that it was impossible for Morales to have gotten the change in his margin from 8% to 10.5%, that there was no way to explain that.
Gabriel Hetland:
That wasn't actually true. There was a good explanation. I'm not sure the explanation is true, but there was a good, plausible explanation that the later returns coming in came from more pro-Morales areas. So, rural areas, and more peripheral areas and cities which have lower-income voters, more predominantly indigenous voters, who are overwhelmingly Morales supporters, at least in certain areas.
Gabriel Hetland:
So there was a lot of controversy about that. That statement by the OAS, and a widespread sense on the part of urban middle-classes within Bolivia that fraud was the only way Morales could have won the election in the first round, led to weeks of protests within Bolivia.
Gabriel Hetland:
So that's a second thing to pay attention to, that there was popular protests going on. Not working class, not lower-class sectors, and it quickly became a right-wing phenomena. So it didn't originate that way, but the right within Bolivia really took over the leadership of these protests, and transformed it from something that was demanding a new election, to demanding Evo Morales's resignation.
Gabriel Hetland:
And there were some leftist and popular movements, meaning trade unions, and popular organizations that had traditionally and historically supported Morales who also had historic grievances against him for complicated reasons that we may or may not have time to get into, who supported the protests. But by and large, they were urban middle-classes, and they were led by a right which has a history of racism, a history of not really supporting democracy within Bolivia.
Gabriel Hetland:
The election itself, there's still a lot of questions about it. There's lots of claims of fraud, there's lots of claims of irregularities. I think it's not entirely clear what happened. There's just in the last day, the OAS has released its final report. I haven't had a chance to fully look at it, but it alleges a number of irregularities. It doesn't provide any smoking gun evidence of fraud. It more says that given the irregularities, we can't certify the result.
Gabriel Hetland:
But that's a little bit different than saying we have proof that there was fraud in the election. And even if one accepted, for the sake of argument, the idea that there was fraud, it's not clear how extensive it was, or whether or not it even changed the margin. So there's a lot of unanswered questions about it, and there's a lot of actions. But that led to a major conflict, which is how we got to where we are now.
Gabriel Hetland:
On the weekend three weeks after the election, so the weekend of the 9th and 10th of November, Bolivia had transitioned to a very chaotic situation. The day before, on the 8th of November, the police had mutinied against Morales. There's some evidence, which I think is compelling, suggesting this was preconceived, that there actually was indeed a coup plot, not by the military, but by elements of the police, by elements of the right wing within Bolivia. There's audio tapes which are documenting this.
Gabriel Hetland:
I haven't looked at the authenticity of them, but people I trust say that they are authentic. So they are at least worth considering as a important source of information documenting a plan to allege fraud to get the OAS involved, to actually get a police mutiny, and then to have Morales resign, which has all happened.
Gabriel Hetland:
So the police mutiny happened on the eighth and ninth. There's a lot of complicated economic grievances that the police had. There was popular protests, which they weren't repressing. And so, that's taxing, that's tiring. So there's various factors, but having a state security force rebel against the president is a very serious thing. So that was probably the trigger that led to the end of Morales's regime. But the actual final thing was on the morning of the 10th, two important things happened.
Gabriel Hetland:
First, the OAS released a preliminary report saying very clearly that they could not certify the results. So Evo Morales then said, "Okay, I accept that. I will call new elections, and I'll even bring a new electoral board in if people don't trust the old one." So that was a major concession compared to where he had been before. But it wasn't enough for protestors, and apparently it wasn't enough for the military, the head of which then called for Evo Morales to resign. So that's a significant factor, and there's been a lot of debate about the significance of that.
Gabriel Hetland:
But for many people, including myself, that's one important piece of why I think it makes sense to call this a coup. When the military gets involved and tells a democratically elected leader to leave office, even if they use a word like "suggest", that's a very powerful thing, it's a very dangerous thing, and it has a really tragic history within Latin America.
Gabriel Hetland:
And the reason I called Evo Morales democratically elected is not because I necessarily accept one side or the other of the October 20th election, but because he was democratically elected, without a doubt, in 2014 with over 60% of the popular vote, and his term wouldn't have ended until January of 2020.
Gabriel Hetland:
So no matter what one thinks of the election, he was Bolivia's elected president. He was forced by the police mutiny, by some degree of popular protest, but then most of all at the end by the military to resign. It's very clear looking at the evidence that Morales and many leaders within his party, which is called the Movement to Socialism, or MAS party, were afraid for their lives, or at least fearful for their physical safety during the day that he resigned.
Gabriel Hetland:
And during that entire weekend there was physical attacks that happened on MAS members' houses. So MAS, again, is a political party. Morales's house, after he resigned, was ransacked. There's film showing it on television. The next day he went into exile in Mexico. And there's compelling evidence showing that it was very difficult for Mexico to actually land a plane within Bolivia. Peru denied them airspace the next day.
Gabriel Hetland:
So even getting Morales out of the country was a challenge, and that lends substance to the idea that he had good reason to fear for his physical well-being. So his resignation led to a series of other resignations, again in this climate of fear and violence, which was going on at the time. There was some violence from MAS supporters, but very quickly it became predominantly against indigenous people, and against MAS supporters, as well.
Gabriel Hetland:
So a series of people resigned, and that paved the way for a coup government to take hold, which happened on the day of November 12th. So two days after Morales resigned. And a far right, little-known senator, Jeanine Áñez, from the lowlands within Bolivia. She's from a department called Beni. And her party got 4% of the vote in this recent election, so she has no popular mandate whatsoever.
Gabriel Hetland:
She assumed the presidency, basically self-declared herself with an almost empty legislative chamber because the MAS senators were boycotting the session out of principle, or out of fear. And there's some clear statements that some of them were really afraid. So that's the background to the current regime. And then, I'm happy to talk about the really frightening and atrocious things that have happened now. But if there's any questions you want to clarify, we can do that, too.
Sarah O'Carroll:
Yeah, that's really interesting. And is meddling with elections part of Bolivia's political history, as well? And that informs why there was this anxiety towards the October 20th election with Morales?
Gabriel Hetland:
Yeah, I think that there's not... In the last 13, 14 years since Morales has been in office, there has not been any widespread sense of a lack of electoral integrity. I think elections have been accepted as legitimate by all serious analysts. There has been no history of widespread fraud. There's not a history of significant documented fraud in recent times. Certainly in Bolivia's larger history, there are reasons to suspect electoral fraud in the past. But in the last decade plus, that has not been part of it.
Gabriel Hetland:
So I think the explanation for the initial impulse lies with the discontent about Evo Morales even running. So there was a widespread sense on, again, mostly middle-class folks that he just shouldn't have been running. That the constitution prohibited it, and that the court decision allowing him to do it was illegitimate. And so, a lot of people said the coup was him running, period. Which is an argument people are making, but from a legal point of view, he did have the right to run, however controversial that decision was.
Gabriel Hetland:
The election itself, also, I will say that looking at the evidence, there are many questions that were raised. And so I think that the way the election was handled, and questions about where the physical votes were placed at different points, a chain of custody, those are not entirely clear. For some of the votes, not for all of the votes. And so those do raise some legitimate questions which people have been asking.
Gabriel Hetland:
But I think that the 2016, 2017 history largely explains it. And then there's another important factor, which is that Morales was never fully accepted as a legitimate president by the white supremacists in the Eastern lowlands. They made their peace with Morales for a number of years. From roughly 2010 to 2016, there was an informal alliance between Morales and the agrarian elite, but they were never happy having a quote unquote "Indian" as president. And there's a huge, very long, and very horrible history of racism within Bolivia, which has resurfaced today, as well, under the current coup regime.
Gabriel Hetland:
So that resentment, that racism fueled some of the backlash against Morales. And then the final factor to keep in mind is the middle class has an ambiguous relationship with Morales, that he actually expanded the ranks of the middle class. There was very significant economic growth averaging 5% during most of his period in office, when a lot of Latin America was falling apart. So he was very successful, he expanded the ranks of the middle class.
Gabriel Hetland:
But he changed the relationship between the middle class and positions within the state, because he opened those positions up to primarily indigenous social movement leaders, people from the working class, from the lower classes, or what in Latin America is often called the popular classes. Meaning informal workers, rural, small holding farmers, peasants, had access to positions within the state.
Gabriel Hetland:
And that lack of a monopoly by the more white, middle class, urban middle class within Bolivia, rankled. And I think that was one of the other factors. So there's a lot of complicated factors behind what's happening, but I think it's important to... Some of them we can pinpoint as the really strong ones, but the other ones we have to keep in mind, also.
Sarah O'Carroll:
And why does it matter so much in the way that we talk about whether this was a coup or not? And what are the implications for how we're viewing this in terms of the state of democracy and the strength of democratic ideals in Bolivia?
Gabriel Hetland:
Yeah. I think it matters in part just for the basic question of legitimacy of the new government. So, if it's seen as a popular uprising to kick Morales out, then it's seen as much more legitimate. If it's seen as a military coup, or a civic coup, or a right-wing coup, it's seen as much more illegitimate. And that has implications not only for how we characterize his departure from office, but also the current regime.
Gabriel Hetland:
And I think, frankly, the question of whether or not it's a coup, regardless of one's stance on how Morales resigned, the character of the new regime I think has clarified that it is indeed a far-right coup government, because the new regime has governed in an incredibly repressive way. They have killed over 30 people, primarily, overwhelmingly in fact, peaceful protesters who have rejected the very virulent racism of leaders of the new government.
Gabriel Hetland:
The interim president, who is widely viewed as illegitimate by many people because of the manner in which she took office, and the manner in which Morales left office, she has made statements which I think it's impossible to say are not racist in the past. She is very close to a far-right businessman, Luis Camacho, who is also clearly racist, and has made very disturbing statements. Both of them are, I would describe them as fervently Christian in the sense of wanting to impose Christianity on the state within Bolivia, which is supposed to be secular.
Gabriel Hetland:
When Morales left, and in the days after, there was episodes of violence against indigenous people throughout Bolivia. There was the Wiphala flag, which is a symbol of indigenous identity, which is held and honored by people throughout Bolivia. It was burned publicly. There was police officers who ripped it off of their uniform in the Eastern city of Santa Cruz. And so there was popular resentment against the government, and the government responded to that with brutal violence, with repression, killing protestors, injuring many hundreds, close to a thousand was the last report that I've heard. Hundreds were detained.
Gabriel Hetland:
There was an attack on freedom of the press. There were statements by the new government that if people were seditious, or engaging in subversion, they would not be allowed to be journalists. There was statements against MAS leaders calling them animals, saying that they would be hunted down, and that they would be stripped of their office. That they would be detained. Morales has been heard on a supposed audio tape, which may or may not be real, telling his supporters to engage in resistance, and that there would be conflict, which you can interpret in social terms.
Gabriel Hetland: So there's political and social conflict going on. But because of that, he's been labeled a terrorist. And there's a whole discourse, or demonization and criminalization of protest, criminalization of indigeneity within Bolivia right now. There was a decree that has since been rescinded, but it was around for several days, even a week I think, exempting state security officers of any accountability for repression against forces within Bolivia.
Gabriel Hetland:
So, regardless of how one characterizes the departure of Morales, regardless of whether or not you say it's a coup, the subsequent actions utterly lacked legitimacy, they utterly lacked accountability, and they've been really terrifying. So I think that justifies calling it a coup government right now.
Sarah O'Carroll:
And it certainly looks like the conditions are very unstable at the moment, and that a lot of different types of scenarios could play out. But based off what you have been seeing, can you speak to what some more likely scenarios, what they might look like?
Gabriel Hetland:
Yeah, absolutely. And I've left out that there was some somewhat more hopeful things, but they're ambiguous in the sense that there was an agreement after more than a week of violence, and repression, and several massacres. After these truly horrifying decrees, and statements against the media, against MAS leaders, there was an agreement that was brokered between the MAS-controlled legislature, and the interim government of Áñez, which was calling for new elections in which Morales and his vice president, Álvaro García Linera, will not be participating. So there'll be new candidates.
Gabriel Hetland:
As far as I know, they haven't been named yet, but Morales has agreed to this. He wasn't a player to officially agree, but he supported it from Mexico, where he is in exile now. Social movements have ended their blockades, by and large. So there's peasant movements, there's indigenous lowland movements, there's highland indigenous movements. There's street vendors, street federation, neighborhood associations in El Alto, a large, primarily indigenous city near La Paz, the capitol, which were engaged in very fierce and effective blockades for over a week.
Gabriel Hetland:
Those blockades were ended for the time being. Largely, at least. And there's been some dialogue between the Áñez government and the MAS-controlled legislature calling for these new elections. So, that's a hopeful development. There hasn't been nearly as much violence as there was in the past. I don't know of any recent episodes of killings, which is a good thing, for sure. I think the repression has diminished significantly.
Gabriel Hetland:
But there hasn't been any accountability for the Áñez regime for the very brutal repression, which is some of the worst that Bolivia's seen in at least 15 years, going back to 2003, and has echoes of the military dictatorships of the past, the levels of repression we've seen over the last few weeks. So, there does need to be accountability for that, and that hasn't happened.
Gabriel Hetland:
And it's not entirely clear if the new elections that are called will truly be free and fair. They can only be free and fair if MAS is guaranteed the right to participate, if there's a climate entirely free of violence, which would involve some accountability for people who've committed acts of violence in the past. And if there's freedom of the military, freedom of political organizing.
Gabriel Hetland:
So it's not clear if those freedoms will exist, and so there's real questions. But I think it's at least heartening to see that there's some progress. We're not at the low point we were at roughly a week ago.
Sarah O'Carroll:
Which seems to show just how quickly everything can... how fast this can go in different directions. But that's good to hear.
Sarah O'Carroll:
You study social movements, and this must have been very interesting to be watching this play out. Have any social movements seemed remarkably strong in how they've been able to either grow in number, and in their messaging? And if we look back on this in the future, how might we point out which ones were more successful? Or is it too soon to say?
Gabriel Hetland:
Yeah, I think that... So Bolivia, over the last 20 years, especially from 2000 to 2005, so the five years before Morales got elected, had probably the strongest social movements in the world. They toppled two presidents. They forced some major state reforms about gas nationalization, putting an idea about a constitutional assembly on the national agenda. They were very significant in getting Evo Morales elected in 2005.
Gabriel Hetland:
But after he got elected, those movements inevitably demobilized to some extent. Some of them were absorbed within the Morales government. In the last four or five years of Morales's time, he did divide some of the popular movements. So there was questions about their ability to mobilize. I think those questions have been answered affirmatively that Bolivia's social movements, movements of peasant farmers, movements of urban indigenous residents, movements of cocaleros, which is Evo Morales's base.
Gabriel Hetland:
So predominantly, but not exclusively, indigenous movements, or people who identify as indigenous as an important part of who they are, have shown very strong ability to continue mobilizing. I think it's important to recognize that these are not blanket MAS supporters. Some of them certainly are, some of them are not. But they're capable of mobilizing in defense of democracy, in defense of basic freedoms, in defense of legitimacy, and in defense of their dignity as indigenous people within Bolivia.
Gabriel Hetland:
So many of those things were moving in the direction before Morales, but there was a real strengthening of a sense of indigenous identity under Morales. And it's at least positive to see that that still exists today despite the violence, despite the racism that we're seeing. So I think the lesson we've seen is that Bolivia's social movements remain fierce, they remain strong, they remain a force to be reckoned with.
Gabriel Hetland:
I think it's impossible to imagine that we would have had elections called as quickly as we have without the major mobilization which happened. At one point, there was at least 70 at one... I think I might've heard over a hundred blockades around the country. There was dozens or hundreds of marches that were happening. Some of them were fairly spontaneous things that people just came out and organized. A lot of them had local-level leaders involved. And so, I think that is something that's not going to go away, and that will be a very important factor in the future of Bolivia.
Sarah O'Carroll:
Well, I appreciate you helping us make sense of the situation. Is there anything else you'd like to add?
Gabriel Hetland:
I think the last thing, since we're in the United States, it's important to recognize that the US government has had a bad role in all of this. The US government very quickly recognized the Áñez administration, the Áñez regime. The Trump administration has made statements demonizing MAS, demonizing Morales, celebrating this new government.
Sarah O'Carroll: And saying it's not a coup.
Gabriel Hetland: Saying it's not a coup, saying that it's a return of democracy. And I think just frankly, the 30-some people who've died, the hundreds of people who've been injured, the incredible racism that Bolivia's majority has faced suggests that this is not a return to democracy. This is not something that our government should be celebrating. There's political leaders on the opposite side, typical people. Bernie Sanders stands out for very clearly calling it a coup.
Gabriel Hetland:
And so I think there's some leaders. But the stance of the government here has not been positive. And I think that means that US citizens have a role to speak out and really say, "This was not okay, and our government shouldn't be supporting this."
Sarah O'Carroll: Well, Gabriel, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
Gabriel Hetland: Sure. Thanks for the opportunity to speak.
Sarah O'Carroll: Thank you for listening to the UAlbany News Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah O'Carroll, and that was Gabriel Hetland. You can let me know what you thought of the episode by emailing us. We're at mediarelations@albany.edu, or you can find us on Twitter @UAlbanyNews...