The government of the self-proclaimed “president” of Bolivia, Jeanine Añez, decreed a criminal exemption for all militaries who are  causing slaughtering in the streets of La Paz and Cochabamba. The militaries, involved in “operations of guarantee of law and order”, have been combating the protests against the military coup d’Etat with beatings and killings. 

The decree, number 4078, authorizes explicitly the use of firearms against demonstrations contrary to Añez goverment, through the criminal exemption for all militaries who are promoting massacres. 

One of the articles of the decree goes like this:” The Armed Forces will implement their actions according to the Manual of the Use of Force”, and the soldiers of the reaction could “ use all available means that are proportionate to the risk of the operations”, a subjective criteria and that will prevail over killings, tortures and other forms of repression. 

Government will provide purge in Parliament 

The Minister of Interior of the present “government”, Arturo Murillo, announced the establishment of a “ special apparatus of the Republic Attorney General Office” to arrest the legislators and other persons that, according the statement of the coup plotter minister, “are engaged in subversion and sedition”. He refers to the representatives that do not accept the coup  d’Etat.  

“There are senators, congressmen and representatives, not all of them though, that we will start naming because they are subversives”, affirmed an employee of the government. “From Monday on (18th) I will command it, I have already the list that the heads of several areas are giving me and we will start arresting them under official court order”. 

Bolivians rebel against repression 

The military coup, however, faces great mass resistance in the streets, disenchanted with the failure of the “socialism of the 21st century” and the “peaceful revolution” heralded by the opportunists. 

The Bolivians from Sacaba, the surroundings of Cochabamba, have protested on November 17th, by the second day, against the brutal military repression in the region. During the protest, peasants of the whole area have distributed food for the demonstrators, showing solidarity against the wicked massacre. 

On November 15th, a massacre perpetrated by the police caused the deaths of 12 peasants and 100 people wounded. 

“They have killed us with bullets, the militraies shot us. We want respect, we demand the resignation of the self-proclaimed pressident that we have not chosen. That is why we decided to march to Cochabamba but they did not permit us. They killed our children”, affirmed one of the women militants who was present in the demonstraton. 

Another witness of the massacre said the militaries and the police spanked them, took their mobile phones and shot with letal ammunition against the peasants. The shooting was fired from the helicopters as well. 

The director of the local Hospital of Mexico affirmed that most of the dead people had been shot and described the massacre in Sacaba as the worst violence he had seen in 30 years as a professional. 

Between the days of November 10th and 13th, the demonstrations gathered in El Alto, marched towards La Paz to repel Janine Añes’ self-proclamation, the nomination of the new ministerial office and the brutality by the coup-plotters against the indigenous people. 

Coup d’Etat and the false ‘democracy’ 

This process of repression and curtailment of the democratic rights in Bolivia, as we have analysed, is part of the military coup d’Etat  and culminated with Evo Morales’ resignation, the chief of opportunism. 

According to the analysis of the worldwide Marxist-leninist-maoist Parties and Organizations in a conjoint statement published on May 1st , 2018, named Proletarians of all countries, united: “In Latin America the bankruptcy of the opportunist governments of the big bourgeoisie with a ‘left’ façade in Argentina, Brasil, El Salvador, Ecuador, Uruguay, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Bolivia e etc., has been creating the greatest waves of people’s protests and sowing the road of the People’s War. The old States of big bourgeois and landlords, who serve the imperialism, mostly Yankee, have been living an acute and fast process of decomposition and one by one have been collapsing. They are part of the largest reactionarization of the old semicolonial and semifeudal State with the growing of the fascist movement and tendency of preventive counter-revolutionary militaries coups to the inevitable people’s insurgeny in front of the increase of exploitation and repression for saving imperialism of its deep economic crisis, and the classes of big bourgeois and landlords of their crisis of domination and to conjure the beginning of more peoples’ wars”. 

The protofascist government of Morales, prevented from governing because of the economy slowing down and the capitalism bureaucratic capitalism crisis, was shirked of his position by the movement coordinated by the Yankee imperialism and that converged the fascist extreme right-wing led by Luis Fernando Camacho, and by the civil right-wing, whose influential polititian is Carlos Messa. The movement has counted on with the colaboration of sectors of the High Military command, in special the coup-plotter Williams Kaliamn ( now retired and living in USA) and the passive colaboration of  sectors that were before strictly linked to the social-fascist project of Evo Morales. 

Añez, self-proclaimed ‘president’ – and more connected to the right-wing, first act -, changed the whole military High Command. Carlos Orellana, Army general, was appointed commander of the Armed Forces; general Ivan Patricio Rioja assumed the Army command; general Ciro Orlando Alvarez the Bolivian Air Force and the rear-Admiral, Moises Orlando Mejia Heredia, was nominated as the new Navy commander. 

As AND have previously analysed “without economic bases, for increasing and expansion of capital is not possible anymore a politics of class conciliation who maintains passive the masses. The bureaucratic capitalism requires more exploitation since the crisis is at the door. The masses must pay the bill with less rights and less ‘concessions’. It is the end of ‘reformism’ “.