USA targets Bolivia

by Theo Russell

Dr Dominguez warns about the US threat

As Bolivia prepares for presidential elections in October, the Trump administration has added Bolivia to its 'regime change' hit-list in its new drive to destroy every left or socialist government in Latin America.

A meeting last week at Unite’s London head office organised by the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign heard from Dan Carden, Labour’s Shadow International Development Secretary, that under Morales infant mortality had been halved and the numbers getting a primary education had doubled.

Carden said that the Labour Party is against “an international order based on resource extraction and military intervention by wealthy countries”, and said that “Jeremy Corbyn was right on Chile, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya”.

Dr Francisco Dominguez, Secretary of the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign, said that millions of Bolivians have benefited from improved public health, nutrition, education provision and a large public housing programme under Evo Morales.

“No other government in Bolivia's history has done more to restore the dignity to the majority indigenous population, including the recovery of land illegally appropriated by large landowners. Thirty-one indigenous languages have now been registered and there is now a TV channel in Quechua with Spanish subtitles,” he said.

Dominguez recalled the violent US-backed campaign for autonomy for Bolivia’s lowlands in 2008, in which anti-indigenous hatred was whipped up and many died, but, he said: “The right was defeated politically and eventually the lowlands were won over to the Movement for Socialism, Morales’ party.”

Now the corporate-backed warmongers in Washington have Morales in their sights and are seeking to capitalise on a 2016 referendum, later superseded by Bolivia’s supreme court, stopping Morales from standing for a new term.

Right-wing Bolivian MPs have written to president Trump asking him to activate the Inter-American Democratic Charter against Bolivia and the right-wing Cuban-US Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen has accused Morales of “consolidating his evil grip”.

A resolution adopted by the US Congress Foreign Affairs Committee says that Bolivia is “aligning itself with illegitimate and illegal regimes, including that of Maduro in Venezuela”.

All this is a familiar scenario, played out across Latin America in recent years, but follows a series of US government statements and articles in leading Washington newspapers setting the goals of restoring the Monroe Doctrine and eradicating all socialist-oriented governments in the western hemisphere.

Here in Britain we must support solidarity with all left governments in Latin America including Bolivia, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba, and demand that the UK government stops supporting the blatant interference and regime change policies of the reactionary Trump administration.