"Bolivian Coup and Indian Wars on Thanksgiving" by Finian Cunningham
November 28/29, 2019
Apt it is, in a heinous way,
that as the United States celebrates its annual Thanksgiving Day this week, the
indigenous people of Bolivia are being slaughtered by a US-backed coup
unfolding in the Andean nation.
When former President
Evo Morales was threatened out of office on November 10 by orchestrated,
massive street violence, US President Donald Trump hailed it “a great day for
democracy”. What Trump meant was “a great day for plutocracy”. The new regime
in Laz Paz is the colonial-descendant, ruling class back in power, rolling back
the gains made after 14 years of progressive socialism and democracy for the
indigenous majority of Bolivians.
The coup was carried off
by Washington’s smearing of Morales’ re-election on October 20 and by fascist
paramilitaries directed by Bolivian oligarchs who are well connected in
Washington, as documented by Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton.
The Bolivian oligarchs
and their supporters espouse a rightwing Christian fundamentalism which
disparages the indigenous culture as pagan. The violent racism towards the
indigenous majority was expressed by the self-declared “interim president”,
Jeannie Anez, who, like other oligarchic figures, denounced the native and
largely poor population as “satanic”.
The takeover in Bolivia
is as much about taking control of the country’s wealth – natural gas and
minerals – as it about a racist revenge on the native Indian population who
dared to rule the country under Morales’ leadership for the benefit of the poor
majority.
Morales has been warned
that if he returns from exile in Mexico he will be jailed for terrorism. The
new regime has instructed state forces to “hunt down” members of Morales’
Movement to Socialism (MAS) party. It has given impunity for the police and
army to shoot dead protesters who are holding strikes and other demonstrations
against the new regime. The latter made earlier promises to hold new elections
– without MAS being allowed to participate despite the party having a majority
of lawmakers in the country’s Congress. It looks like even those hollow
promises are now being scrapped.
Since Morales was
ousted, over 30 people have been killed and hundreds injured as state forces
fire live rounds at unarmed protesters. Reporting from on the ground, Medea Benjamin says the
indigenous communities are living in fear of increasing atrocities and the
return to the old days of military dictatorship.
In one incident in El
Alto on November 19, army and police, reinforced with helicopters, killed eight
people, including children, who were among MAS supporters holding an unarmed
strike against the new regime.
“I saw the doctors and
nurses desperately trying to save lives, carrying out emergency surgeries in difficult
conditions with a shortage of medical equipment,” reported Benjamin. “I saw
five dead bodies and dozens of people with bullet wounds… A grieving mother
whose son was shot cried out between sobs: ‘They’re killing us like dogs’.”
The coup in Bolivia is
consistent with the wider historical perspective of Indian Wars waged for
centuries across the entire American continent. From the Spanish and Portuguese
conquistadors in the 15th century who wiped out the Mayan and smaller Andean
civilizations in the central and southern continent, to the later British and
other European colonialists who dispossessed and destroyed the native tribes in
the north in what became the United States and Canada.
It may sound cliched,
but nevertheless should never be forgotten that the United States and other
modern American states were built on genocide of the native populations. That
genocide has never been properly atoned for. Existing American-Indians live in
predominantly marginalized, impoverished conditions. Their bountiful lands
stolen and poisoned by industrial capitalism.
Official celebrations
like Thanksgiving and Columbus Day stick in the craw because they sanitize the
real and brutal history of the US being founded on barbaric crimes against
humanity.
If there is no official
acknowledgment – let alone atonement – for the exterminatory foundations of the
US, and its economic and military power, then no wonder that the state permits
itself to continue waging wars and subversions against other nations. It is
above the law because it always has been above the law from its very
inception.
The Hollywood-like
depiction of Thanksgiving tells us that English settlers arriving on the
northeast coast in the early 1600s were befriended by the indigenous people who
shared their food and showed the foreigners how to survive harsh winters. What
gets lopped out from this rosy narrative is the subsequent centuries when the
European colonizers expanded their rapacious land-grabbing and pushed the
natives to extinction, often by slaughtering them in their camps.
Native American elder
Leonard Peltier (now 75), who has been in jail for nearly 40 years on a
trumped-up conviction for killing two FBI officers, wrote the following reflection for this year’s Thanksgiving: “As I let my mind
wander beyond the steel bars and concrete walls, I try to imagine what the
people who live outside the prison gates are doing, and what they are thinking.
Do they ever think of the indigenous people who were forced from their
homelands? Do they understand that with every step they take, no matter the
direction, that they are walking on stolen land? Can they imagine, even for one
minute, what it was like to watch the suffering of the women, the children and
babies and yes, the sick and elderly, as they were made to keep pushing west in
freezing temperatures, with little or no food? These were my people and this
was our land.”
In his reflection,
Leonard Peltier makes a direction connection with the coup in Bolivia to past
crimes against the indigenous people of all America.
“We also remember our
brothers and sisters of Bolivia, who are rioting, in support of the first
indigenous President, Evo Morales. His commitment to the people, the land,
their resources and protection against corruption is commendable. We recognize
and identify with that struggle so well,” he writes.
The crime against
Bolivia is allowed to happen because the US by and large is held in a condition
of historical amnesia by its plutocratic system and its obedient corporate mass
media. Thanksgiving Day is followed by a day of consumerist frenzy, known as
Black Friday, when crowds queue up for shops to open their doors for sales.
People fill up their empty lives with cheap gadgets and techno-fetichism. And
so plutocrats like Trump and his evangelical Christian cabinet can espouse the
crass nonsense that what is happening in Bolivia is “a great day for
democracy”.
As Canadian
singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn put it beautifully: “You thought it was over but it’s
just like before. Will there never be an end to the Indian Wars?”
Finian Cunningham has written extensively on international
affairs, with articles published in several languages. He is a Master’s
graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the
Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in
newspaper journalism. He is also a musician and songwriter. For nearly 20
years, he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organisations,
including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent.
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