The president of Bolivia, Luis Arce, led a march of several thousand supporters on Thursday, and said that a coup plotted by the opposition will prosper over his body.
“On our corpse a coup d’état,” said the president in a public square in La Paz in a ceremony attended by Vice President David Choquehuanca and former president Evo Morales (2006-2019).
The three led an early march of several thousand workers, miners, peasants, indigenous people and supporters of the ruling Movement Toward Socialism (MAS).
Many carried red, yellow and green, blue and white Bolivian flags belonging to the MAS and the multicolored whipala, the symbol of the indigenous population.
“We have come to defend our president, Luis Arce Catacora,” said Angélica Mamani, a 44-year-old union leader.
Laurián Clemente Quiroz, a 33-year-old member of the ruling MAS, explained that he participated in the march because “there is a conspiracy by the Bolivian opposition.”
The government assures that the opposition is plotting a coup against Arce, in power since November 2020. The opponents, it affirms, intend to stage a coup d’état, like the one that occurred against Morales in 2019.
Arce pointed out in his speech that “the right is always going to look for excuses to destabilize us”, but that “the Bolivian people do not want more blows, the people want to work, progress and industrialize the country”.
He added that Western powers “want our lithium, they want our gas, they want our iron.”
Morales said: “they only want us to guarantee the raw material and they do not want us to give added value” to Bolivian natural resources.
