We are going through particularly turbulent days and in the future it will be difficult to understand that this increasingly uncontrollable turbulence began with the inability of the central government to transparently define a viable date for carrying out a Population and Housing Census that should have already been carried out in 2021 and serving the entire country.
Although it is true that in each conflict at least the interests of two poles are at stake, in this case the actions of the central government reach such levels of irrationality and incapacity that one may fall into the temptation of explaining this situation from the world of conspiracy theories so in vogue in radical sectors.
Let’s see, for now, two. One, that the President and those around him, like good ascending middle-class people, have decided to take off the democratic mask with which they came to power and openly install the current Cuban-Nicaraguan model in the country: no space for the opposition. In that model they begin to include the former fugitive president and his most intimate environment; they make increasingly onerous concessions to corporate groups that support it; they open a frontal fight with the Catholic Church; They increase the pressure and repression on journalists and media outlets that do not align with the model and charge bills to those aligned, men and women, who began to believe that they could, casually, criticize some government measures; they increasingly shamelessly use the judicial system, the Public Ministry, the Police and, now, the Armed Forces in their favor; and they create vigilante and paramilitary groups to repress citizen movements.
A second conspiracy theory realizes that what is happening is the application of the return to power operation of the escaped former president, this time, forever. To support this theory, it must be remembered that in 2019 Morales instructed his collaborators to surround the cities to reduce them due to hunger, so that there is chaos and his immediate return to the country is requested. That did not happen because, first, it was possible to organize a transfer of the constitutional Presidency due to the abandonment of the MAS authorities from the succession positions established by the Constitution and, later, to constitute a government that managed to pacify the country.
Once the 2020 elections had been called and seeing that Evo Morales could not be a candidate, he proposed one of his most loyal ministers, Luis Arce, as the MAS candidate, against the position of a large majority of his party, especially from the West, who were running to David Choquehuanca and, to make matters worse, being that in the closest environment of the former president, Arce was considered a good teller… and nothing more. But he imposed it because Arce guaranteed a safe return to the presidential skyscraper.
As history shows, there is no safe dolphin… First, some of the fugitive’s requests, accompanied by friendly gestures, were not answered by the dolphin’s collaborators. Then, as he moved away from his sponsor, those gestures turned into rude gestures and demands that opened the way to disagreement. Now, the way in which the central government is handling the issue of carrying out the Census seems to be taken advantage of by his predecessor to expel him if more from the skyscraper…
I reiterate, they are conspiracy theories emerging from the incompetence shown by the current administrators of central power to manage this matter, as well as their clear adherence to authoritarian bullying to impose their sectarian will.
But, Moors and Christians must be reminded, on the one hand, that when violence breaks out, anything can happen; on the other, that regional wounds take time to heal, if they ever do…
