Showing posts with label Carlos Mesa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Carlos Mesa. Show all posts

Thursday, November 28, 2019

"It's Now or Never": Bolivian Elite Destroying the Country

By: Edu Montesanti
To the Bolivian upper classes, President Evo Morales has to resign even if forced by extreme violence, or through a civil war.
"It's now or never!", said a family in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, gathered close to Christ the Redeemer statue where thousands of demonstrators and road blockers stay seven days of the week, night and day. 

Violence, Our Daily Bread
That statement was in response to this reporter's observance, that circumstances in Bolivia were getting out of control leading to a civil war. Answering that, the family laughed and did not hesitate in declaring: "We want things to get out of control. This is the only way to overthrow this president, once and for all."
For almost 20 days, the South American country is economically stopped, as opposition groups are blocking roads and preventing trade, in the last case with exceptions some short times for markets.
However, if one walks by The Ramada, commercial center in downtown Santa Cruz de la Sierra, sees almost every trade with open doors, an act of disobedience to the rebel leaders of the national strike. This author has talked to some local merchants. 
"Nobody in this area supports the strike," said to this author a woman merchant. "In the city, generally, not everybody opposes the President, on the contrary, I could say people are divided," added the old woman, who owns a large store in The Ramada.
The owner's daughter added: "Nobody did for Bolivia what President Evo Morales has done. He has granted several rights to workers, as no president did before. This is one thing that angers the elite."
Everybody has been afraid to publicly speak, given the uncertainty and virulence in the essence of the current protests that take the nation. Recently, in this area, a woman spoke out against the strike saying people want and need to work as there is no money nor food anymore. She was beaten and obliged to kneel and ask demonstrators for forgiveness.
In regions like Cochabamba, Potosi, and La Paz, the situation is more tense, with frequent clashes between pro-government and opponent groups, and several wounded. In Cochabamba, a 20-year old man was killed last Wednesday, a victim of severe head injury, skull base fracture and brain death due to confrontations, which grow more and more. The civil war is fastly advancing in Bolivia.

Fury without Rationality

The following has been a rule in Bolivia, before the last presidential election: the opposition spills their hate against the local government, especially against President Evo Morales but when confronted with some official data, internationally recognized in favor of the first indigenous president of the nation, criticism change its direction. 
What had seen strong condemnations against the "situation of the country", quickly changed to "a future dictator if many years in power." So they start to explain their political theories about more than two or three mandates in the Presidency. And so, they create their conjectures. 
Angela Merkel has been the German Prime-Minister since 2005, as her country has a solid democracy not questioned in Bolivia nor nowhere around the world. What determines a strong democracy in a country, is the solidity of its institutions. 
Last Monday evening, the biggest demonstration against President Evo Morales since the elections on Oct. 20, took place in Santa Cruz de la Sierra. 
"We will siege every government institution including tax collectors ones, and national borders, so the government won't collect one cent. Evo is going to be a president without a State!", said in the demonstration Luis Fernando Camacho, the leader of the current national strike based out in Santa Cruz de la Sierra. 
Camacho's biography and ancestry, outlined below in this report, is another serious indication that what is advancing in Bolivia is a Color Revolution, idealized by the American Gene Sharp to overthrow governments all over the world, not aligned to the Washington regime.
President Evo Morales has challenged the opposition to give evidence of fraud to the Organization of American States (OAE), which has been auditing the Bolivia election. So far, nobody presented any piece of evidence of fraud regarding the last presidential election; the opposition claim, since OAS arrival to audit the elections, they do not want any audit nor a runoff anymore, but Morales' resignation and new elections.
This reporter has checked people lost in their observances, as emotions overflowed. One of the features of a Color Revolution. It has been this way in Syria, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Brazil, and other countries lately.
There are other features in these protests is in Bolivia, clearly pointing to a Color Revolution. 

Paying for Demonstrators 

There have been witnesses that road blockers have gotten 200 bolivianos (US$29) per day. A woman confirmed that information to this author, who says she has met a road blocker who has spoken to her about it. 
Camacho has recognized that he paid 1,200 bolivianos (US$174) to a Cruceñista Youth Union member to burn the Electoral Tribunal in Santa Cruz de la Sierra on Oct. 23.
The businessman also speaks out when telling he funds all kinds of demonstrations against the current government, "and always did [before the elections]," which included the attacks against several official party's head offices across Santa Cruz de la Sierra, on Sept.12.

U.S.-Backed Groups

Recent revelations point to a U.S.-backed plan of shaking the nation. The Radio Education Network of Bolivia (Erbol) has released 16 audios, which uncover talks between U.S. officials, Bolivian opponents, and former military.
In a three-part plan outlined by U.S. officials, former President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada (2002-2003) is mentioned. Lozada had Carlos Mesa (the principal opponent of Morales in the last election) as his vice-president and currently lives in the U.S.
 U.S. senators Bob Menendez, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio are some of the American officials mentioned in the audios, linked to the Bolivian opposition planning a coup against President Evo Morales.
Officials of the State Department accredited in the country, such as Mariane Scott and Rolf A. Olson, have been meeting with high level diplomatic officials from Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay, in order that they organize and plan destabilization actions against the Bolivian government, as well as delivering the U.S. funds to the Bolivian opposition.
(...) Parallel, in the month of July a private meeting between the opponents Jaime Antonio Alarcón Daza, Iván Arias and other members of the civic committees was carried out, in which it was agreed to acquire “machines for fast vote-counting” for the coming presidential elections, for the sake of manipulating public opinion on the electoral results.
"These machines would altogether have a cost of US$300,000. The U.S. Embassy and the representation of the European Union in the country would contribute to financing the purchase, which they would provide through the Jubileo Foundation and the Evangelical Church. With that specific aim, they have already managed to gather more of US$800,000, from which the payment to the people participating in the fast count of votes would also come out."
An attack against the Cuban Embassy in Bolivia has also been planned.
All the audios, which include the three-part plan to achieve a regime change in Bolivia, can be read here.
Touching Emotion through the Mainstream Media of Propaganda 
Demonstrations in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, according to the Bolivian mainstream media, have been held "at the feet of Christ" strongly touching people's emotions, especially the people's faith. In Bolivia's biggest city, demonstrators are used to gathering, as mentioned above, around Christ the Redeemer statue.
So the virulent and anti-democratic demonstrations which are shaking the South American country, leaving many people without food, have an aspect of sacrosanct manifestations by the media - who is against them, is against God and in favor of the Devil. Or something like that.
Religious leaders have used people like puppets for so long in Bolivia. Which of course requires using imagination. It has been so very strong, that this reporter had predicted exactly what is going on these days in Bolivia, months ago. 
Speaking out loud and clear, to the fundamental participation of religious leaders who have dedicated most of their time to spread lies, discrimination, and hate among the Bolivian people, with clear aims. They are mute now, before too much violence in the country.  
Such misuse of people's emotions is not only a Color Revolution feature these days, but was a pillar to the ascension of Germany's Nazism in the 1930s.
In these dark and too tense days in Bolivia, the mainstream media of propaganda is playing a fundamental role in the demonstration’s favor. It has been a bombardment by what can be denominated a war media. No investigation, no impartiality, only propaganda.

Fighting the Wrong Enemy

Oct. 31 evening, when the situation aggravated in Bolivia, this reporter checked one of the main crossroads in the highly tense Santa Cruz de la Sierra, blocked 24 hours per day by demonstrators. 
That day in the city, a policeman had been severely beaten by opponent civilians to the Morales administration. One day before, two men had been killed in Santa Cruz de la Sierra outskirts (Pravda reported).
When this investigation crossed the blocking, under the surveillance of its controllers, a so very loudly radio was saying: "We are reporting multitudinous demonstrations taking place right now in Potosi! Multitudinous demonstrations taking place right now in Cochabamba!  Multitudinous demonstrations taking place right now in Santa Cruz de la Sierra!  Multitudinous demonstrations taking place right now in La Paz!".
Suddenly, in a much more touching way, the narrator said: "In La Paz, the multitude shout, 'No more Cubans, get out Cubans! No more Russians, get out, Russians! No more Chineses, get out Chineses!". A saying started to be spread in Santa Cruz, that "Vladimir Putin has already sent his men to kill everybody in Bolivia." 
So the popular claim in Bolivia changed from recounting the votes to a runoff, no matter the results of the election; another election; Evo Morales' resignation; combating the "big enemies" of the nation, the nightmare of the Bolivian elites, Cubans, Russians, and Chinese. 
Needless to address the absurdities of these remarks. Not to mention the absence of the U.S. in the memory of that same elite given the military coups Uncle Sam has perpetrated against democracies in the region - including Bolivia -, and the plunder of the natural resources of the Bolivian nation (before Evo Morales years in the Presidency).
Luis Fernando Camacho is based-out in Santa Cruz, and most of his public appearances against the Bolivian president, are in his native city. An entrepreneur, he is the president of Committee Pro-Santa Cruz, devoted to advocating justice and progress to Santa Cruz de la Sierra. 
The billionaire has not been voted president of the Committee by the "cruceño" (original from Santa Cruz de la Sierra) people, but by the committee summit. It is widely said in the city that the tycoon won the presidency of the organization through millionaire bribes. Which coincides with the Bolivian too corrupted reality.
Camacho's committee has a long history of spreading racism, discrimination, hate, and violence in Bolivia. In 2008, the organization took part in the violent attempt of separate Santa Cruz de la Sierra from Bolivia. At the time, in response to a false denouncement by the Committee Pro-Santa Cruz against the Morales administration, International Federation for Human Rights seriously rebuked the organization now presided by Camacho, for attacking indigenous people, State institutions, and speech and acts for secessionism (read Open Letter). 
Camacho is 40 years old; he and his family are part of Grupo Empresarial de Inversiones Nacional Vida S.A., a synergy insurance company, His father, José Luis Camacho Miserendino, founded Sergas, a gas company which, in 1989, had contracts with the neoliberal state linked to insurance companies and pension funds. 
Sergas owes 20 million de bolivianos (US$2,890,173) to the Bolivian State for tax evasion, when the company supplied gas to Santa Cruz de la Sierra city. So what is at stake is possibly debt forgiveness if a neoliberal government takes again the power in the South American country. It is said and makes sense that if Carlos Mesa takes the power, substituting Evo Morales in a coup or a resignation, the once Lozada's vice-president will immediately forgive Sergas debt with the State. 
Camacho's committee acts close to Cruceñista Youth Union, widely known for fascist sayings and doings - also for having led the violent and failed project of separating Santa Cruz de la Sierra from Bolivia, in 2007. 
Last Wednesday, Jorge Fernando Quiroga Ramírez, alias Tuto Quiroga, landed in Santa Cruz de la Sierra to meet and support Camacho. Quiroga was vice-president of Hugo Banzer (1971-78, 1997-2001), a bloody dictator pro-Washington regime.
Most recently and closest to Bolivia, Brazil in the world scenario of Color Revolution overthrew President Dilma Rousseff in 2016, to give place to Michel Temer who paved the way for fascist Jair Bolsonaro. Since the coup against Dilma Rousseff, the mainstream media, the upper classes, and the political opposition has said that once the first woman president in Brazil's history was toppled, the South American country would find its way back to democracy and economic growth. 
Needless to address the Brazilian situation since then. Just worthy to mention: those Brazilian segments do not care about corruption anymore, nor have been seen in that too loud strong state of hysteria for economic growth as in 2016. 
If the planned coup succeeds in Bolivia, this country will surely have the same fate as Brazil, economically and politically saying.

A Long Process Based on Misinformation and Hate

"I hate Evo Morales!" said in July last year in a talk to this reporter, a Santa Cruz de la Sierra-bases out hairdresser woman - without any political justification to that deep sentiment. A white professional at 40 years of age, only hates. She openly hates the first indigenous president in Bolivia's history.
Cochabamba's Lawmaker Norma Pierola has been prosecuted for racism for not greeting President Evo Morales in an official activity, late last year. Norma alleged that Morales does not respect women as a president, without any justification for that. On the contrary, the Morales administration is well-known including among critics for granting rights for women, the LGBT community, and indigenous people.
At that time, Santa Cruz de la Sierra Governor Ruben Costas called indigenous people "dumb and stupid," so rekindling the fire of deep racism that used to shame Bolivia in the years previous to Evo Morales.
This video shows strong acts of racism and discrimination Evo Morales is suffering since took power in 2006, and strong violence against innocent and unarmed indigenous people and peasants, "a damn race." Shocking images taped especially in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, before Evo Morales in the Presidency, who has, with the Congress mostly composed of its partisans, passed bills that severely punish acts of discrimination.
But the deep hate has been kept inside hearts, even growing in many people's sentiments through the years. It has been strongly realized by talking to people, who do not tolerate a "red skin," a peasant, or a different accent. Or even an Evo voter.
"If Camacho gets his aims, this atmosphere of discrimination, racism, hate, and deep violence will be back to Bolivia, as he is allied to Ruben Costas," said to this journalist a Bolivian from La Paz, who has been living in Santa Cruz for several years.
Among many non-sense lies spread in Bolivia, both by the opposition and religious leaders (the latter have played a fundamental role in discrimination and diffusion of slanders campaign), could be highlighted that "Evo had an airplane arrested in the U.S. years ago, loaded with cocaine." 
Personally talking to Catholic leaders of Knights Templar in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, this reporter asked them, well aware that was a lie: "So why did Evo was not arrested in the U.S., then?". The ridiculous answer was, "he has immunity as president of Bolivia [in U.S. ground!]." 
Another spread lie is that Evo Morales owns the air company Boliviana de Aviación (BoA) - a state company created in 2007 a year after Evo took power.
"I have been surprised that they [religious leaders] first pray and then they hate, what is that?" Evo asked last week. “They pray [then] kick poor people,” the president of Bolivia denounced, well-aware that such a segment is behind the dirty war of hate and lies across the country.

Social Confusion

Leaving the demonstration "at the feet of Christ" last Monday, this reporter talked to some people. A couple's reaction to some of this journalist's observations is a hallmark of the current state of mind among the opposition voters in Bolivia. 
After explaining the reasons why the young guys were requiring Evo Morales to be overthrown, this report presented some little data about Bolivia's economy in recent years, comparing to the years previous to the current president.
The couple then repeated a posture commonly seen by this author when talking to people by the streets of Santa Cruz de la Sierra: they firstly withered to later change the subject. The problem was not the economy, but a president being many years in power. Which is at least arguable, as pointed out above.
Another strong feature of these protests in Bolivia, a hallmark of Color Revolutions, is the spread of lies among people which is previous to the current mess: the scenario of social confusion based on an inversion of facts has been advancing long ago in the South American country.
Last Tuesday, this reporter got a WhatsApp message from a lawyer based out in La Paz, who works in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, too. "This is the beginning of strong social movements in Bolivia. (...) So starts a social movement, first the group manifests, later elaborate the ideology," he said. Which is an absurd, and another Color Revolution strong feature, as social movements' process is the inverse: they first have a direction, then they organize themselves, and fight for their ideals. Any movement or group without an ideal is artificial.
Fighting for something without a clear path to be pursued is ridiculous, leading nations victims of Color Revolutions, unavoidable to chaos, generally to fascist politics, a worse situation the respective nations used to live before such artificial movements. 
There is no project by the opposition. They want the justice system, controlled by the current government, it is true, to be under their control again, not to reform it. And they aim to collapse every Morales administration gains.
Uncle Sam's Sharp, Cruel Claws
In 2014, Jacob Ostreicher, a Jewish businessman funded by local drug trafficking and the CIA disguised as a diplomatic mission to destabilize Bolivia, illegally, and protected by the CIA, left the South American country not to be arrested. Who provided Ostreicher's escape was "diplomat" Larry Lamont Memmott, a CIA agent operating in Bolivia.
Who is behind protests in Bolivia are dark powers, the stingy, destructive Bolivian elite that in the two centuries before Evo Morales, used to sell local natural resources to get in return Empire's crumbs - the U.S. deep State who is, once again, using the old puppet Bolivian elite as its tool for geostrategic and economic purposes. 
All this seems impossible to be argued with many people in Bolivia right now. Their minds have been confused by the daily mainstream media's bombardment and religious leaders. 
The current chaos, with the local economy stuck for almost 20 days, has no forecast to finish. Who is destroying Bolivia is not surely Cuba, nor Russia, nor China. But in the deeply troubled Bolivia these days, Joseph Goebbels's teachings reigns:  "A lie told once remains a lie, but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth." 
Lie, something the most terrorist Empire in history is an expert in spreading. And in the destruction of nations, another thing that, for so long, Latin America disgracefully knows very well. 
It's Bolivia turn, again...

Friday, November 15, 2019

Bolivia coup led by Christian fascist paramilitary leader and millionaire – with foreign support


By Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton

Bolivian coup leader Luis Fernando Camacho is a far-right multi-millionaire who arose from fascist movements in the Santa Cruz region, where the US has encouraged separatism. He has courted support from Colombia, Brazil, and the Venezuelan opposition.

By Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton

When Luis Fernando Camacho stormed into Bolivia’s abandoned presidential palace in the hours after President Evo Morales’s sudden November 10 resignation, he revealed to the world a side of the country that stood at stark odds with the plurinational spirit its deposed socialist and Indigenous leader had put forward.
With a Bible in one hand and a national flag in the other, Camacho bowed his head in prayer above the presidential seal, fulfilling his vow to purge his country’s Native heritage from government and “return God to the burned palace.”
“Pachamama will never return to the palace,” declared the pastor to his side, referring to the Andean Mother Earth spirit. “Bolivia belongs to Christ.”
Luis Fernando Camacho Bolivia palacio dios
Far-right Bolivian opposition leader Luis Fernando Camacho in Bolivia’s presidential palace with a Bible, after the coup
Bolivia’s extreme right-wing opposition had overthrown leftist President Evo Morales that day, following demands by the country’s military leadership that he step down. 
Virtually unknown outside his country, where he had never won a democratic election, Camacho stepped into the void. He is a powerful multi-millionaire named in the Panama Papers, and an ultra-conservative Christian fundamentalist groomed by a fascist paramilitary notorious for its racist violence, with a base in Bolivia’s wealthy separatist region of Santa Cruz.
Camacho hails from a family of corporate elites who have long profited from Bolivia’s plentiful natural gas reserves. And his family lost part of its wealth when Morales nationalized the country’s resources, in order to fund his vast social programs — which cut poverty by 42 percent and extreme poverty by 60 percent.
In the lead-up to the coup, Camacho met with leaders from right-wing governments in the region to discuss their plans to destabilize Morales. Two months before the putsch, he tweeted gratitude: “Thank you Colombia! Thank you Venezuela!” he exclaimed, tipping his hat to Juan Guaido’s coup operation. He also recognized the far-right government of Jair Bolsonaro, declaring, “Thank you Brazil!”
Camacho had spent years leading an overtly fascist separatist organization called the Unión Juvenil Cruceñista. The Grayzone edited the following clips from a promotional historical documentary that the group posted on its own social media accounts:
The rich oligarch leader of Bolivia's right-wing coup, Luis Fernando Camacho, was the leader of an explicitly fascist paramilitary group.

Here are some clips from a promotional historical documentary it published:https://thegrayzone.com/2019/11/11/bolivia-coup-fascist-foreign-support-fernando-camacho/ 
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While Camacho and his far-right forces served as the muscle behind the coup, their political allies waited to reap the benefits.
The presidential candidate Bolivia’s opposition had fielded in the October election, Carlos Mesa, is a “pro-business” privatizer with extensive ties to Washington. US government cables published by WikiLeaks reveal that he regularly corresponded with American officials in their efforts to destabilize Morales.
Mesa is currently listed as an expert at the Inter-American Dialogue, a DC-based think tank funded by the US government’s soft-power arm USAID, various oil giants, and a host of multi-national corporations active in Latin America.
Evo Morales, a former farmer who rose to prominence in social movements before becoming the leader of the powerful grassroots political party Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), was Bolivia’s first Indigenous leader. Wildly popular in the country’s substantial Native and peasant communities, he won numerous elections and democratic referenda over a 13-year period, often in landslides.
On October 20, Morales won re-election by more than 600,000 votes, giving him just above the 10 percent margin needed to defeat opposition presidential candidate Mesa in the first round.
Experts who did a statistical analysis of Bolivia’s publicly available voting data found no evidence of irregularities or fraud. But the opposition claimed otherwise, and took to the streets in weeks of protests and riots.
The events that precipitated the resignation of Morales were indisputably violent. Right-wing opposition gangs attacked numerous elected politicians from the ruling leftist MAS party. They then ransacked the home of President Morales, while burning down the houses of several other top officials. The family members of some politicians were kidnapped and held hostage until they resigned. A female socialist mayor was publicly tortured by a mob.
The squalid US-backed fanatics of the Bolivian right ransack the house of the country’s elected president, Evo Morales. And the havoc is just beginning. Let no one call them “pro-democracy.”
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Following the forced departure of Morales, coup leaders arrested the president and vice president of the government’s electoral body, and forced the organization’s other officials to resign. Camacho’s followers proceeded to burn Wiphala flags that symbolized the country’s Indigenous population and the plurinational vision of Morales.
The Organization of American States, a pro-US organization founded by Washington during the Cold War as an alliance of right-wing anti-communist countries in Latin America, helped rubber stamp the Bolivian coup. It called for new elections, claiming there were numerous irregularities in the October 20 vote, without citing any evidence. Then the OAS remained silent as Morales was overthrown by his military and his party’s officials were attacked and violently forced to resign.
The day after, the Donald Trump White House enthusiastically praised the coup, trumpeting it as a “significant moment for democracy,” and a “strong signal to the illegitimate regimes in Venezuela and Nicaragua.”

Emerging from the shadows to lead a violent far-right putsch

While Carlos Mesa timidly condemned the opposition’s violence, Camacho egged it on, ignoring calls for an international audit of the election and emphasizing his maximalist demand to purge all supporters of Morales from government. He was the true face of the opposition, concealed for months behind the moderate figure of Mesa.
A 40-year-old multi-millionaire businessman from the separatist stronghold of Santa Cruz, Camacho has never run for office. Like Venezuelan coup leader Juan Guaidó, whom more than 80 percent of Venezuelans had never heard of until the US government anointed him as supposed “president,” Camacho was an obscure figure until the coup attempt in Bolivia hit its stride.
He first created his Twitter account on May 27, 2019. For months, his tweets went ignored, generating no more than three or four retweets and likes. Before the election, Camacho did not have a Wikipedia article, and there were few media profiles on him in Spanish- or English-language media.
Camacho issued a call for a strike on July 9, posting videos on Twitter that got just over 20 views. The goal of the strike was to try to force the resignation of Bolivian government’s electoral organ the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE). In other words, Camacho was pressuring the government’s electoral authorities to step down more than three months before the presidential election.
It was not until after the election that Camacho was thrust into the limelight and transformed into a celebrity by corporate media conglomerates like the local right-wing network Unitel, Telemundo, and CNN en Español.
All of a sudden, Camacho’s tweets calling for Morales to resign were lighting up with thousands of retweets. The coup machinery had been activated.
Mainstream outlets like the New York Times and Reuters followed by anointing the unelected Camacho as the “leader” of Bolivia’s opposition. But even as he lapped up international attention, key portions of the far-right activist’s background were omitted. 
Left unmentioned were Camacho’s deep and well-established connections to Christian extremist paramilitaries notorious for racist violence and local business cartels, as well as the right-wing governments across the region.
It was in the fascist paramilitaries and separatist atmosphere of Santa Cruz where Camacho’s politics were formed, and where the ideological contours of the coup had been defined. 
UJC Union Juvenil Cruceñista Bolivia
Cadres from the Unión Juvenil Cruceñista (UJC), the Bolivian fascist youth group that Luis Fernando Camacho got his start in

Cadre of a Francoist-style fascist paramilitary

Luis Fernando Camacho was groomed by the Unión Juvenil Cruceñista, or Santa Cruz Youth Union (UJC), a fascist paramilitary organization that has been linked to assassination plots against Morales. The group is notorious for assaulting leftists, Indigenous peasants, and journalists, all while espousing a deeply racist, homophobic ideology.
Since Morales entered office in 2006, the UJC has campaigned to separate from a country its members believed had been overtaken by a Satanic Indigenous mass. 
The UJC is the Bolivian equivalent of Spain’s Falange, India’s Hindu supremacist RSS, and Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov battalion. Its symbol is a green cross that bears strong similarities to logos of fascist movements across the West.
And its members are known to launch into Nazi-style sieg heil salutes.
Here is another video posted by Bolivia's fascist opposition Santa Cruz Youth Union.

Coup leader Luis Fernando Camacho @LuisFerCamachoV previously helped lead this sieg-heiling group.

These are the people who overthrew elected President Evo Morales. https://thegrayzone.com/2019/11/11/bolivia-coup-fascist-foreign-support-fernando-camacho/ 
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Even the US embassy in Bolivia has described UJC members as “racist” and “militant,” noting that they “have frequently attacked pro-MAS/government people and installations.”
After journalist Benjamin Dangl visited with UJC members in 2007, he described them as the “brass knuckles” of the Santa Cruz separatist movement. “The Unión Juvenil has been known to beat and whip campesinos marching for gas nationalization, throw rocks at students organizing against autonomy, toss molotov cocktails at the state television station, and brutally assault members of the landless movement struggling against land monopolies,” Dangl wrote.
“When we have to defend our culture by force, we will,” a UJC leader told Dangl. “The defense of liberty is more important than life.”
Armed members of the Unión Juvenil Cruceñista
Armed members of the Unión Juvenil Cruceñista
Camacho was elected as vice president of the UJC in 2002, when he was just 23 years old. He left the organization two years later to build his family’s business empire and rise through the ranks of the Pro-Santa Cruz Committee. It was in that organization that he was taken under the wing of one of the separatist movement’s most powerful figures, a Bolivian-Croatian oligarch named Branko Marinkovic.
In August, Camacho tweeted a photo with his “great friend,” Marinkovic. This friendship was crucial to establishing the rightist activist’s credentials and forging the basis of the coup that would take form three months later.
Hoy cumple años un gran líder cruceño y expresidente del Comité pro Santa Cruz pero todo un gran amigo, Branko Marinkovic, quien entregó todo, su libertad y su vida, por su pueblo.
View image on Twitter
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Camacho’s Croatian godfather and separatist powerbroker

Branko Marinkovic is a major landowner who ramped up his support for the right-wing opposition after some of his land was nationalized by the Evo Morales government. As chairman of the Pro-Santa Cruz Committee, he oversaw the operations of the main engine of separatism in Bolivia. 
In a 2008 letter to Marinkovic, the International Federation for Human Rights denounced the committee as an “actor and promoter of racism and violence in Bolivia.” 
The human rights group added that it “condemn[ed] the attitude and secessionist, unionist and racist discourses as well as the calls for military disobedience of which the Pro-Santa Cruz Civic Committee for is one of the main promoters.” 
In 2013, journalist Matt Kennard reported that the US government was working closely with the Pro-Santa Cruz Committee to encourage the balkanization of Bolivia and to undermine Morales. “What they [the US] put across was how they could strengthen channels of communication,” the vice president of the committee told Kennard. “The embassy said that they would help us in our communication work and they have a series of publications where they were putting forward their ideas.”
In a 2008 profile on Marinkovic, the New York Times acknowledged the extremist undercurrents of the Santa Cruz separatist movement the oligarch presided over. It described the area as “a bastion of openly xenophobic groups like the Bolivian Socialist Falange, whose hand-in-air salute draws inspiration from the fascist Falange of the former Spanish dictator Franco.”
The Bolivian Socialist Falange was a fascist group that provided safe haven to Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie during the Cold War. A former Gestapo torture expert, Barbie was repurposed by the CIA through its Operation Condor program to help exterminate communism across the continent. (Despite its antiquated name, like the German National Socialists, this far-right extremist group was violently anti-leftist, committed to killing socialists.)
The Bolivian Falange came into power in 1971 when its leader, Gen. Hugo Banzer Suarez, ousted the leftist government of Gen. Juan Jose Torres Gonzales. The government of Gonzales had infuriated business leaders by nationalizing industries and antagonized Washington by ousting the Peace Corps, which it viewed as an instrument of CIA penetration. The Nixon administration immediately welcomed Banzer with open arms and courted him as a key bulwark against the spread of socialism in the region. (An especially ironic 1973 dispatch appears on Wikileaks showing Secretary of State Henry Kissinger thanking Banzer for congratulating him on his Nobel Peace Prize).
The movement’s putschist legacy persevered during the Morales era through organizations like the UJC and figures such as Marinkovic and Camacho. 
The Times noted that Marinkovic also supported the activities of the UJC, describing the fascist group as “a quasi-independent arm of the committee led by Mr. Marinkovic.” A member of the UJC board told the US newspaper of record in an interview, “We will protect Branko with our own lives.”
Marinkovic has espoused the kind of Christian nationalist rhetoric familiar to the far-right organizations of Santa Cruz, calling, for instance, for a “crusade for the truth” and insisting that God is on his side.
The oligarch’s family hails from Croatia, where he has dual citizenship. Marinkovic has long been dogged by rumors that his family members were involved in the country’s powerful fascist Ustashe movement.
The Ustashe collaborated openly with Nazi German occupiers during World War Two. Their successors returned to power after Croatia declared independence from the former Yugoslavia – a former socialist country that was intentionally balkanized in a NATO war, much in the same way that Marinkovic hoped Bolivia would be.
German Fuhrer Adolph Hitler meets Ustashe founder Ante Pavelić in 1941
Marinkovic denies that his family was part of the Ustashe. He claimed in an interview with the New York Times that his father fought against the Nazis.
But even some of his sympathizers are skeptical. A Balkan analyst from the private intelligence firm Stratfor, which works closely with the US government and is popularly known as the “shadow CIA,” produced a rough background profile on Marinkovic, speculating, “Still don’t know his full story, but I would bet a lot of $$$ that this dude’s parents are 1st gen (his name is too Slavic) and that they were Ustashe (read: Nazi) sympathizers fleeing Tito’s Communists after WWI.”
The Stratfor analyst excerpted a 2006 article by journalist Christian Parenti, who had visited Marinkovic at his ranch in Santa Cruz. Evo Morales’ “land reform could lead to civil war,” Marinkovic warned Parenti in the Texas-accented English he picked up while studying at the University of Texas. 
Today, Marinkovic is an ardent supporter of Brazil’s far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro, whose only complaint about Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was that he “didn’t kill enough.”
Marinkovic is also a public admirer of Venezuela’s far-right opposition. “Todos somos Leopoldo” — “we are all Leopoldo,” he tweeted in support of Leopoldo López, who has been involved in numerous coup attempts against Venezuela’s elected leftist government.
While Marinkovic denied any role in armed militant activity in his interview with Parenti, he was accused in 2008 of playing a central role in an attempt to assassinate Morales and his Movement Toward Socialism party allies. 
He told the New York Times less than two years before the plot developed, “If there is no legitimate international mediation in our crisis, there is going to be confrontation. And unfortunately, it is going to be bloody and painful for all Bolivians.” 

An assassination plot links Bolivia’s right to international fascists

In April 2009, a special unit of the Bolivian security services barged into a luxury hotel room and cut down three men who were said to be involved in a plot to kill Evo Morales. Two others remained on the loose. Four of the alleged conspirators had Hungarian or Croatian roots and ties to rightist politics in eastern Europe, while another was a right-wing Irishman, Michael Dwyer, who had only arrived in Santa Cruz six months before. 
Alleged assassination plotter Michael Dwyer with his weapons
The ringleader of the group was said to be a former leftist journalist named Eduardo Rosza-Flores who had turned to fascism and belonged to Opus Dei, the traditionalist Catholic cult that emerged under the dictatorship of Spain’s Francisco Franco. In fact, the codename Rosza-Flores assumed in the assassination plot was “Franco,” after the late Generalissimo. 
During the 1990s, Rosza fought on behalf of the Croatian First International Platoon, or the PIV, in the war to separate from Yugoslavia. A Croatian journalist told Time that the “PIV was a notorious group: 95% of them had criminal histories, many were part of Nazi and fascist groups, from Germany to Ireland.” 
By 2009, Rosza returned home to Bolivia to crusade on behalf of another separatist movement in Santa Cruz. And it was there that he was killed in a luxury hotel with no apparent source of income and a massive stockpile of guns. 
The government later released photos of Rosza and a co-conspirator posing with their weapons. Publication of emails between the ringleader and Istvan Belovai, a former Hungarian military intelligence officer who served as a double agent for the CIA, cemented the perception that Washington had a hand in the operation.
Rosza and Dwyer with their arms cache in Bolivia
Marinkovic was subsequently charged with providing $200,000 to the plotters. The Bolivian-Croatian oligarch initially fled to the United States, where he was given asylum, then relocated to Brazil, where he lives today. He denied any involvement in the plan to kill Morales.
As journalist Matt Kennard reported, there was another thread that tied the plot to the US: the alleged participation of an NGO leader named Hugo Achá Melgar.
“Rozsa didn’t come here by himself, they brought him,” the Bolivian government’s lead investigator told Kennard. “Hugo Achá Melgar brought him.”

The Human Rights Foundation destabilizes Bolivia

Achá was not just the head of any run-of-the-mill NGO. He had founded the Bolivian subsidiary of the Human Rights Foundation (HRF), an international right-wing outfit that is known for hosting a “school for revolution” for activists seeking regime change in states targeted by the US government.  
HRF is run by Thor Halvorssen Jr., the son of the late Venezuelan oligarch and CIA asset Thor Halvorssen Hellum. The first cousin of the veteran Venezuelan coup plotter Leopoldo Lopez, Halvorssen was a former college Republican activist who crusaded against political correctness and other familiar right-wing hobgoblins.
After a brief career as a firebrand right-wing film producer, in which he oversaw a scandalous “anti-environmentalist” documentary financed by a mining corporation, Halvorssen rebranded as a promoter of liberalism and the enemy of global authoritarianism. He launched the HRF with grants from right-wing billionaires like Peter Thiel, conservative foundations, and NGOs including Amnesty International. The group has since been at the forefront of training activists for insurrectionary activity from Hong Kong to the Middle East to Latin America.
Though Achá was granted asylum in the US, the HRF has continued pushing regime change in Bolivia. As Wyatt Reed reported for The Grayzone, HRF “freedom fellow” Jhanisse Vaca Daza helped trigger the initial stage of the coup by blaming Morales for the Amazon fires that consumed parts of Bolivia in August, mobilizing international protests against him. 
At the time, Daza posed as an “environmental activist” and student of non-violence who articulated her concerns in moderate-seeming calls for more international aid to Bolivia. Through her NGO, Rios de Pie, she helped launch the #SOSBolivia hashtag, which signaled the imminent foreign-backed regime-change operation. 

Courting the regional right, prepping the coup 

While HRF’s Daza rallied protests outside Bolivian embassies in Europe and the US, Fernando Camacho remained behind the scenes, lobbying right-wing governments in the region to bless the coming coup.
In May, Camacho met with Colombia’s far-right President Ivan Duque. Camacho was helping to spearhead regional efforts at undermining the legitimacy of Evo Morales’ presidency at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, seeking to block his candidacy in the October election.
Camacho with Colombian President Ivan Duque in May
That same month, the rightist Bolivian agitator also met with Ernesto Araújo, the chancellor of Jair Bolsonaro’s ultra-conservative administration in Brazil. Through the meeting, Camacho successfully secured Bolsonaro’s backing for regime change in Bolivia.
This November 10, Araújo enthusiastically endorsed the ouster of Morales, declaring that “Brazil will support the democratic and constitutional transition” in the country.
Then in August, two months before Bolivia’s presidential election, Camacho held court with officials from Venezuela’s US-appointed coup regime. These included Gustavo Tarre, Guaido’s faux Venezuelan OAS ambassador, who formerly worked at the right-wing Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank in Washington.
After the meeting, Camacho tweeted gratitude to the Venezuelan coup-mongers, as well as to Colombia and Brazil.
No vamos a parar hasta tener una democracia real! Seguimos avanzando!

Vamos sumando apoyo... ahora lo hace Venezuela...Gracias a Dios.. hay esperanza!

Gracias Colombia!
Gracias Venezuela!
Gracias Brasil!
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Mesa and Camacho: a marriage of capitalist convenience

Back in Bolivia, Carlos Mesa occupied the spotlight as the opposition’s presidential candidate. 
His erudite image and centrist policy proposals put him in a seemingly alternate political universe from fire-breathing rightists like Camacho and Marinkovic. For them, he was a convenient front man and acceptable candidate who promised to defend their economic interests.
“It might be that he is not my favorite, but I’m going to vote for him, because I don’t want Evo,” Marinkovic told a right-wing Argentine newspaper five days before the election.
Indeed, it was Camacho’s practical financial interests that appeared to have necessitated his support for Mesa. 
The Camacho family has formed a natural gas cartel in Santa Cruz. As the Bolivian outlet Primera Linea reported, Luis Fernando Camacho’s father, Jose Luis, was the owner of a company called Sergas that distributed gas in the city; his uncle, Enrique, controlled Socre, the company that ran the local gas production facilities; and his cousin, Cristian, controls another local gas distributor called Controgas. 
According to Primera Linea, the Camacho family was using the Pro-Santa Cruz Committee as a political weapon to install Carlos Mesa into power and ensure the restoration of their business empire. 
Mesa has a well-documented history of advancing the goals of transnational companies at the expense of his own country’s population. The neoliberal politician and media personality served as vice president when the US-backed President Gonzalo “Goni” Sanchez de Lozada provoked mass protests with his 2003 plan to allow a consortium of multinational corporations to export the country’s natural gas to the US through a Chilean port. 
Bolivia’s US-trained security forces met the ferocious protests with brutal repression. After presiding over the killing of 70 unarmed protesters, Sanchez de Lozada fled to Miami and was succeeded by Mesa. 
By 2005, Mesa was also ousted by huge demonstrations spurred by his protection of privatized natural gas companies. With his demise, the election of Morales and the rise of the socialist and rural Indigenous movements behind him were just beyond the horizon.
US government cables released by WikiLeaks show that, after his ouster, Mesa continued regular correspondence with American officials. A 2008 memo from the US embassy in Bolivia revealed that Washington was conspiring with opposition politicians in the lead-up to the 2009 presidential election, hoping to undermine and ultimately unseat Morales.
The memo noted that Mesa had met with the chargé d’affaires of the US embassy, and had privately told them he planned to run for president. The cable recalled: “Mesa told us his party will be ideologically similar to a social democratic party and that he hoped to strengthen ties with the Democratic party. ‘We have nothing against the Republican party, and have in fact gotten support from IRI (International Republican Institute) in the past, but we think we share more ideology with the Democrats,’ he added.”
wikileaks bolivia carlos mesa
Today, Mesa serves as an in-house “expert” at the Inter-American Dialogue, a neoliberal Washington-based think tank focused on Latin America. One of the Dialogue’s top donors is the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the State Department subsidiary that was exposed in classified diplomatic cables published on Wikileaks for strategically directing millions of dollars to opposition groups including those “opposed to Evo Morales’ vision for indigenous communities.” 
Other top funders of the Dialogue include oil titans like Chevron and ExxonMobil; Bechtel, which inspired the initial protests against the administration in which Mesa served; the Inter-American Development Bank, which has forcefully opposed Morales’ socialist-oriented policies; and the Organization of American States (OAS), which helped delegitimize the Morales’s re-election victory with dubious claims of irregular vote counts.

Finishing the job

When Carlos Mesa touched off nationwide protests in October by accusing the Evo Morales government of committing electoral fraud, the right-wing firebrand hailed by his followers as “Macho Camacho” emerged from the shadows. Behind him was the hardcore separatist shock force that he led in Santa Cruz.  
Mesa faded into the distance as Camacho emerged as the authentic face of the coup, rallying his forces with the uncompromising rhetoric and fascist symbology that defined the Unión Juvenil Cruceñista paramilitary. 
As he declared victory over Morales, Camacho exhorted his followers to “finish the job, let’s get the elections going, let’s start judging the government criminals, let’s put them in jail.”
Back in Washington, meanwhile, the Trump administration released an official statement celebrating Bolivia’s coup, declaring that “Morales’s departure preserves democracy.”

Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and author, and the founder and editor of The Grayzone.

Ben Norton is a journalist, writer, and filmmaker, and the assistant editor of The Grayzone.