Bolivia has fallen

I usually write from the convictions of knowledge. I usually do it, thinking that what I say is not personal. However, I am writing this column not as a historian born in Chile, but as a historian trained in Bolivia. I write because I lived in Bolivia, and because I have a daughter from Santa Cruz. I write from the conviction of knowing that it will take time to step on camba land again. I know I’m not the only one who thinks so. I have many of my former students in exile. Forced or not, many are out of Bolivia because of the deterioration of social coexistence in the country and because the opportunities that Bolivia had in the early 2000s no longer exist.

Soul friends are in different countries, watching this hell. Fractured entire families. Allow me from this rostrum and with all due respect to tell you what seems crystal clear.

The socialism of the 21st century follows different recipes from the socialism of the 20th century. Its anchorage is not the classic. Wherever I apply the recipe, it starts pretty much the same. The installation of a Constitution full of rights for the gallery, but that are not respected. The use of indigenous peoples invoking ancestral injustices, the creation of a parliamentary majority that is proof of all possible wrongdoing and hookups, people with little civic education and manipulable. They continue, the penetration of the political power of the revolutionary party in the highest spheres of the State. That first thing.

Next comes a second phase. The deinstitutionalization of electoral control mechanisms proceeds, the custody of the state media, the installation of government spokespersons that are proof of argumentative bullets and the creation of leaderships absolutely unconditional to political power. Use of young people who, with a clear and idealistic interest in politics, immerse themselves in the ideology of change, as if they were absorbed by a mantra. There are more educated people, even with postgraduate degrees in countries of the socialist orbit, convinced that they can do everything in the conviction that the economic model and international law are or should be at the service of the poor. Poor, that in reality it is not about people without resources, but people without power.

Thus, they add to political power, which they conceive as a way to obtain what, through merit, they would not obtain in this life or in the next. Men and women who come out of nowhere and who, walking in the militancy, get wealth and power thanks to their participation in politics. People who manage to live off others, true leeches.

In the first line, and I will speak from what I have seen, vociferous leaders, in the second, leaders built from ideology, disposable, recyclable and corrupt people, not because they think differently from you, but because they charge money to be where they are. Over time, years, some wear out and the others continue.

In the countries that adopt this socialism of the 21st century, management leaderships are formed that create forms of behavior, forms of silencing, cancellation and distancing from criticism. Schools of thought, lodges of intellectuals, recalcitrant feminists, radical indigenistas, guess who is guided by…

Characters that do not debate, impose and create reality. If you are not progressive you are neoliberal, if you are not a feminist or indigenous you are with the rich, with the patriarchal culture, with the oppressors of women. Schemes where fragmentation, rupture, cancellation are honored. Nothing good obeys the achievements of the 20th century and older people. Out with them.

The first years of MAS have been this. But it’s not all. The violence that it implies, but it is normalized, is accompanied by disqualification, rupture of the elites, permanent discredit of anything that is not the control of the State and in Bolivia, in addition, of State terrorism. Then the “good” people start leaving. The capital leaves, the great riches flee and the Chinese arrive. The Chinese who take everything and negotiate with that radicalized socialism. Internationally, the establishment allows itself to be accompanied by certain friends and a hatred of the United States; source of all evil and destination of all darts. However, the ingredient that buries everything is the penetration of “those friends” in the armed forces. Did they forget about the departure of thousands of Cubans and Venezuelans when Morales fled?

This long preamble, without new issues I assume, is to tell you what is coming, because it seems that Bolivia does not realize what it is involved in and is in a street fight that will not lead to anything.

A few weeks ago, we were all shocked by what happened to President Castillo in Peru. We were shocked because his statement was from another era, from another world. It was a coup. One in which it was thought that everything was black and white and that the State institutions were at the service of a president of exacerbated populism. Causes against him, relatives involved in money troubles, ministerial confessions of bribery came to light and defined that Congress assumed its role.

Well, Peru this 2022 has shown that the crisis of the political class, as well as corruption has limits. Good for Peru, and let’s hope that the current interim president manages to stifle the masses that fight for the establishment of a 21st century socialism that has clearly succumbed in a Peru that only pretends not to lose its achievements. Did Bolivia try to do something like this in 2019? No. They all went up in smoke until they reached Jeanine Añez. Here we see the first difference, perhaps something early some will say. In Bolivia, the legislative power has not functioned since then, but the accusation of a Lidia Patty has people in jail.

Remarkable. Another proof of the absence of the rule of law.
But when the year is over, the socialism of the 21st century, which smallpox of the 14th century, has crossed the Andes in a second round. Incubated for years, today all the bodies of the State are sick with hatred in the “Plurinational State”. Abundant with cheap verbiage, with control mechanisms for political actors, today there is no separation of powers of the State, there is the word of massism, period. If you come from Cochabamba or La Paz, it doesn’t matter. It’s part of the show.

Thus, it did not matter what Camacho’s lawyer said at the hearing, as it does not matter what is done from Santa Cruz. Bolivia has ceased to exist.

It is a territory where the UN is not heard, where international law does not prevail, where the international system does not operate – just like in Venezuela, Nicaragua or Cuba-; where the rights of people are not respected or other voices are heard, such as the voice of the European Union, who, with the best intentions, try to put a stop to the courtyard.

So why be shocked by the arrest of Luis Fernando Camacho? Well, because the people from Santa Cruz were innocent. They lightly thought that the masista State would not dare to enter Santa Cruz de la Sierra.

Big mistake. The MAS has followed the recipe. The other actors are missing, but there is time. Calm down, they will go for everyone.
Innocent, the people of Santa Cruz thought that nothing more could be done in Santa Cruz. Big mistake, because they are already everywhere. In charges, in the prosecution, in the judiciary, in public services, in the police, in the armed forces. The MAS has put everyone in Santa Cruz to dance to the rhythm of 21st century socialism.

They have paralyzed the Santa Cruz model, they have attacked the core of its force. What part does not understand that they are in the middle of a revolution and that they have not generated a national political party and tools that have the strength to oppose a machinery like the MAS?

They have spent years thinking that they were not going to touch them. Well, they already reduced them. Will the application of Article 137 of the CPE on States of Exception come now? Maybe. If they apply it, they expose themselves to the Assembly. They may not declare it. But who are they going to judge with ski masks? Who is going to rat out the commando that arrested the governor of Santa Cruz? What judge will do justice? Where?

But what difference does it make? In Bolivia the rule of law has ceased. Today all the Santa Cruz leaders are under threat and in Santa Cruz, there are no embassies where they can take refuge. Tomorrow a command will arrive and kidnap the civilians, anyone, one by one.

Did you think? Of course they did not think about it, nor did Luis Fernando Camacho, who believed that they would not dare with him. In Santa Cruz they continue to believe that they are going to get out of all this peacefully, with millions in the streets and with the Cross in their hands. I am a believer. Deeply, but that will not happen. It no longer happened. Please wake up. Federalism, that they return Camacho will no longer arrive. The autonomist struggle is part of a past that will not return.

The MAS government will wait a couple of weeks and continue with the purge. Yes, purge. They will take advantage of carnivals and continue. It will be that, unless the country understands that what is at stake is much more than the Camacho trials and the brutality inflicted on Jeanine Añez. If Bolivians do not unite now with a national and non-instrumental perspective, the MAS will destroy everything. The International Community has no margin.
They are warned.

Loreto Correa is a historian