Appalling results for the Americas from the 2003 coup d’état in Bolivia

(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) In the aftermath of the toppling of the constitutionally elected president of Bolivia on 17 October of 2003, after more than a year of conspiracy, violence, counterfeiting of the narrative, external intervention, and narcotics’ traffickers’ intervention, it was decided to accept the constitutional succession version through which the Vice President, who was closely involved in the toppling, assumed the functions of the President. This was the takeover of power to make Bolivia the dictatorship and narco-State that it is today and the start of serious geopolitical issues for its bordering countries; Chile, Peru, Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina and for the Americas in general.

In 1966, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara decided “to establish a guerrilla seat in Bolivia, a country that by being in the heart of South America, bordering with Argentina, Chile, Peru, Brazil, and Paraguay, enabled to extend with ease the guerrilla warfare throughout the subcontinent”, as is literally expressed in the “press release number 3 of Bolivia’s National Liberation Army (ELN in Spanish)”. The violence erupted on 23 March of 1967 with the first guerrilla ambush against Bolivian soldiers and ended with Che Guevara’s execution by firing squad on 9 October of the same year.

At that time, Cuba’s Castroist dictatorship expanded its violence with guerrillas, creating “national liberation armies” and rural, as well as, urban guerrilla groups with whom it blood-stained the entire region and continues sustaining these groups as Colombia’s Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC in Spanish) and ELN in Colombia. Guerrillas, terrorism, narcotics’ trafficking, conspiracy and all sorts of crime, are features of Castroism expanded throughout the Americas since 1959 until the fall of Berlin’s wall on 9 November of 1989 and the disappearance of the Soviet Union (USSR) on 26 December of 1991. The history of violence in the Americas during the Cold War is the history of crimes committed by Cuba’s dictatorship.

In 2003, Bolivia celebrated 21 years of having returned to democracy. From 1985 to 1989 with President Victor Paz Estenssoro, it ended the hyper-inflation by applying new economic policies and discontinued the narco-State with the war on drugs. President Jaime Paz continued the State’s economic policies and war on drugs preparing a constitutional reform. From 1993 to 1997, President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada created social capitalization programs; BONOSOL, educational reform, and others and achieved the constitutional reform. Elected for a mandate from 1997 to 2001, General Hugo Banzer, who because of illness was not able to serve-out his term, successfully accomplished the war on drugs through the reduction of the illicit cultivation of coca that his predecessor had started.

Democratic Bolivia had, as a minimum, three State policies worthy of mention; 1. Democracy as the system in a Republic based only in one nation, the Bolivian nation; 2. An economic policy of social liberalism, freedom to engage in enterprises to generate financial gain and the investment of their earnings in the fight against poverty; 3. The war on drugs with social prevention, the eradication of the illicit cultivation of coca, interdiction, and alternative crop development.

These aforementioned historical references show two things; the importance for 20th Century Castroism -turned into 21st Century Castrochavism- to take over and control Bolivia and the spark, in the form of the toppling of October of 2003, that ignited an agenda that later-on would become common for Latin American countries it penetrates, namely; constitutional assemblies, referendums, political persecution, imprisonment and exile, creation of a “plurinational” State, establishment of narco-States, the practice of State-terrorism, violation of human rights, impunity and the disappearance of all essential components of democracy. Nineteen years after the wrecking of democracy, the Republic of Bolivia has been supplanted by the “plurinational State”, a process attempted but failed in Chile this past 4th of September, a process that democracy’s enemies continue to persist on, a process that has been proposed for, and up-to-now rejected in Peru, a process that was temporarily imposed by Correa in Ecuador.

In 2003, Bolivia had only 7,410 acres of illegal coca cultivation that in 1993 had been 123,500 acres. Today, having expelled the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), operating as a narco-State, it has nearly 247,000 acres and as the hub of narcotics’ trafficking by the volume of cocaine it produces and traffics, it negatively impacts Chile, Brazil, Paraguay, Peru, and Argentina with drugs aimed also to United States, Europe, and Asian destinations.

In 2003, Bolivia was the Southern Cone’s natural gas superpower and today is out of gas, but with its reserves of Lithium and strategic minerals, is controlled by Russia, Iran, and China. It is the geo-political epicenter for the destabilization of its neighbors and the region as proven today by what has happened in Chile and Peru. It is the silent platform for the penetration of worldwide dictatorships.

These consequences and worse are those that are produced by the loss of democracy and the establishment of 21st Century Socialism’s dictatorships and narco-States. It all started in Bolivia with the toppling that occurred in October of 2003.

*Attorney & Political Scientist. Director of the Interamerican Institute for Democracy.

Translation from Spanish by Edgar L. Terrazas