by Greg Mayer
Jerry has mentioned in his posts that the civil disturbances in Chile have had some effects on his travels there, including curfews and demonstrations in Valparaiso. These protests are continuing, as are protests in a number of Latin American nations. (The president of Bolivia, after apparently trying to rig an election, was just driven from office by protests after the police, and then the military, sided with the demonstrators.) A striking protest was captured on video in Santiago, where a talented soprano sang El derecho de vivir en paz (The right to live in peace), a song written by a victim of Chile’s Pinochet regime, from her balcony during the curfew. (There is video from two angles in this clip).
People in the street (apparently defying the curfew) and in nearby buildings erupt in cheers and applause as she finishes. CNN has more on the story, including a clip of an earlier protest rendition on the cello.
h/t: Tom Czarny
Well I didn’t expect THAT – how elegant, how civilized, how strong!
Arab Spring…Latin American Autumn?
Remarkable and moving. Thanks for posting this beautiful act of defiance.
Victor Jara’s El Derecho de Vivir en Paz. So beautifully sung!
Correction: After being acused of rigging an election.
Even more, he offered to call for new elections with a new electoral authority, but differente sectors, some former supporters, went for asking his resignation.
Even more, he has been ousted by biblicar trumpers. Very sad. The forces behind the coup are the evangelical white middle-ipper classes of santa cruz. He still has overwhelming support by indigenous people and farmers. In the economic side, Evo has just good numbers in his years on governement.
The situation in Chile is just the oposite. after years of economic neoliberalism impossed after Pinochet, people finally won’t have it anymore.
In other words, people protesting in Chile would be the ones supporting Evo in Bolivia, and vice versa, people protesting in Bolivia would be supporting Piñeira in Chile.
Evo’s popularity numbers before all of this were between 30 and 40%. He barely got through the election with a little over 30% of the vote. He abolished term limits after allowing his people to vote on whether he could, and did it even though his people rejected the idea. They wanted a new leader, but he didn’t want to leave.
This is no longer just an issue of the indigenous people versus the moneyed elites. Most people in the country no longer support him, but he and his stacked court circumvented their will, abolished term limits, and then barely eaked out a win in a hinky election.
Correction: I meant to write over 40% of the vote, 47%. According to Bolivia’s election rules, he still won because he was ten points ahead of the next candidate, who got 36.5%. In Bolivia, you have to either get 50% + of the vote, or 10% more than the next closest opponent. The weirdest part of the election was that, as the ballot counting went on, he slowly climbed up and up from a place where he and his opponent were about equal at a little above 30% until he just barely made the mark of over 10%. Of course, that was far from the only strange thing that happened during the election.
FAIR is (meta)reporting that the US (and Canadian) media is totally mispresenting the situation in Bolivia; I encourage everyone who cares about this topic to check it out. (I would summarize, but that’s not easy here.)
Impressive. Crises like this bring out the best in people.
“The president of Bolivia, after apparently trying to rig an election, was just driven from office by protests after the police, and then the military, sided with the demonstrators.” Jose is right, what’s happening in Bolivia is the opposite of what’s going on in Chile. In Bolivia the privileged class have taken by force what they can’t take with votes. If you need a clear indication, Trump and Bolsonaro approve of it.
From Wikipedia: “There are approximately three dozen native groups totaling approximately half of the Bolivian population – the largest proportion of indigenous people in Latin America. Exact numbers vary based on the wording of the ethnicity question and the available response choices. For example, the 2001 census did not provide the racial category “mestizo” as a response choice, resulting in a much higher proportion of respondents identifying themselves as belonging to one of the available indigenous ethnicity choices. Mestizos are distributed throughout the entire country and make up 26% of the Bolivian population. Most people assume their mestizo identity while at the same time identifying themselves with one or more indigenous cultures. A 2018 estimate of racial classification put mestizo (mixed white and Amerindian) at 68%, indigenous at 20%, white at 5%, cholo at 2%, black at 1%, other at 4%, while 2% were unspecified…”
So, about 86% of the country considers itself part of the indigenous population. If it was only the elites who wanted Evo out, he would have (1) won the vote to abolish term limits, which he didn’t, but then used the Supreme Court he created and stacked to overturn them anyway, and (2) would have won the recent election by a landslide.
Still, Evo won. And the elections result were endorsed by the OAS, in any way suspect of having a leftist leaning. Even son, he offered to repeat the election with a new electoral authority. But the opostition wouldn’t have, maybe in case he would won again and they would lose the opportunity to seize power bible in hand. So, in the end, brought about by the “sugestion” of the military, he had to leave, I can only imagine fering for his life, while he was still the lawful president elected in 2014.–
So are you supporting a military coup?
There are authoritarians (and tyrants) of both the left and the right. They both want the same form of government, and it isn’t liberal democracy.
GCM
Well, no. I mean, thats not saying much.You asume somehow that any government that isn’t liberal democracy is just one type, that of “tyrany” it seems.
I basically agree with hazur and Jose. When the military “sides with demonstrators” after a legitimate election and before the next one is due, that’s called a coup.