August 15, 2022, 4:05 AM
August 15, 2022, 4:05 AM
The brotherhood of the brave masistas who fled in November 2019, like the boss of them all, or got under the skirts of an ambassador, have recovered their speech and have returned to their old ways.
Still shivering with fear, one of them, a former Army officer, from whom he was expelled for shameful reasons, says that Bolivian journalism, the one that was not bought with drug money, wants to end the MAS. They say that journalism wants to annihilate the “Indian”, referring to the mestizo Morales who does not speak the Aymara language, but who sells his appearance abroad very well. Perhaps they intend that journalism look the other way when the wars that Morales encourages in La Paz and Santa Cruz are waged to impose the predominance of drug trafficking.
The intention to create a parallel market for Yungas coca and thus facilitate the sale of the leaf that is grown in unauthorized areas has caused upheaval in La Paz.
And the idea of advancing with hordes of masistas in Santa Cruz, to complete the corridor that connects Chapare with border regions with Brazil and facilitate the sale of drugs, is what the coca grower wants, but he does not accept talk of the fierce battles of this war.
Perhaps he dreams of imposing a dictatorship in Bolivia like that of Cuba, or that of Venezuela and Nicaragua, but he knows that at this moment an election with clear rules would show that the MAS has ceased to exist.
They know that in the streets of La Paz or in the lands of Santa Cruz the masistas do not exist. In La Paz it is the public employees who must show themselves, if they want to keep their drawbacks. And in Santa Cruz it is the hordes of coca growers who are out in force, facing the locals.
These escapists would like a media monopoly to exist in Bolivia, as is the case in Cuba, Venezuela or Nicaragua.
They have brought in a businessman from the drug sector to put pressure on the owners of a prestigious newspaper in Cochabamba. They intend to do the same thing they did in La Paz with the purchase of a morning paper that they have turned into a pamphlet.
They put pressure on the morning newspaper through the SIN, while ‘the mafias’ make offers, and the would-be buyer prepares his team that will turn him into another masista pasquí. The confidence of the people is that when the factors of fraud that remain intact in the electoral system have been ruled out, the MAS will only be the memory of a nightmare.
