By Sunday night, the ululations across the Euro-American “left,” as the largely moribund phenomenon persists in calling itself, had already become deafening. After nearly 14 years in power, Bolivia’s embattled president Evo Morales, beloved of gringo progressives from Los Angeles to Berlin, had just announced his resignation.
Nearly three weeks had passed since the official vote tally had inexplicably frozen in Morales’ constitutionally dubious fourth run for the presidency in an election that would end up conclusively shown to have been rigged. There had been mounting chaos in the streets of La Paz, Santa Cruz de la Sierra, El Alto, Cochabamba, Sucre, Potosí — the whole country, in other words. Bolivia was writhing in rumour-fuelled leaderless pandemonium and riot.
By Tuesday morning, Morales had fled the country to Mexico, where he immediately resumed the loud enumeration of the alibis he’d contrived to explain away the ignominious misfortune he’d brought upon himself. In sum, he’d been done in, Morales explained, by “racist, coup-plotting, right-wing sellouts.” Amplified by the Venezuelan propaganda channel Telesur, the storyline is now locked in.
Slight variations are permitted. It was a CIA operation. Or it was a cunning plot by the Organization of American States to overthrow an anti-imperialist indigenous folk hero. Or it was a neoliberal conspiracy to enforce capitalism’s hegemony by capturing Bolivia’s vast lithium resources to turn them over to the wicked multinational corporations. Canadians are to be particularly ashamed, because by publicly noticing Bolivia’s corrupted elections, Chrystia Freeland, our foreign affairs minister, is once again serving as the hemispheric lickspittle and criminal accomplice of U.S. President Donald Trump.
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