Haven't followed closely but these past days it's been on every local headline. There is a large bolivian community in my country.

As far as I know, Evo Morales tried to perpetuate himself in power and in the midst of the presidential election the process was interrupted while he was losing and when it restarted he magically had gained a 10 point lead.
This smelled real bad.
Next thing you know, there are riots and he has asked for asylum and fled to Mexico.

Many south american countries have been a bit over antsy lately. Starting with Venezuela's chaos, then Ecuador is all messed up, next is Chile and now Bolivia...

Argentina is/was expecting some seasonal disturbance in the Force but the popular csndidate won the election and the current government is on its way out.

What is wrong with the region? Populism and neo-capitalism are facing each other in an increasingly violent conflict. People are stuck in the middle.

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Yeah, much dissatisfaction with him for trying to ram a fourth term down everyone's throat combined with the vote manipulation. It also sounds like the military read the tea leaves and had a conversation with him about his future.

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in the midst of the presidential election the process was interrupted while he was losing and when it restarted he magically had gained a 10 point lead.
This smelled real bad.
Next thing you know, there are riots

I am pretty sure that was the exact same plot in last couple episodes of Jack Ryan season two. Reality following fiction following reality.

No international news coming from the media in and around Washington DC. If I were to trust ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and any other TV news sources - there is no news south of the equator. Everything must be just fine....

I think the last time we heard any news from Bolivia here was when Butch and Sundance robbed that bank....
seriously, our media sucks.

All I see in the news here is bullshit stories about the latest “bombshell testimony” coming against the President. Which is why I don’t waste time watching tv unless I’m in a waiting area where one of the damn things is blaring.

Local sources are reporting little more than you did; then again I'm sure no one is surprised that AMLO would give Evo haven. In one major source - Wall Street Journal, or New York Times, I can't remember which - it was subsumed into a larger story about the rise and fall of reddish regimes in Latin America over the past twenty years or so.

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What is wrong with the region? Populism and neo-capitalism are facing each other in an increasingly violent conflict. People are stuck in the middle.

This has been the case since...well, in Mexico, at least 1824. Maybe its time for a new set of problems, so to speak?

I follow Dinesh D'Souza on FB so I knew about it. Of course, Sigforum beat him by 7 hours.

Other than FB and SF, I had not heard a peep.

Several of those countries are regularly rewriting their Constitutions. Left wing to right wing with no stability. Crony capitalism and crony leftism, not a good formula for a successful and prosperous society.
Our Constitution being well written, and stable due to the process required to change it, provides a stable legal structure for both government and business.
Generally speaking, countries that were once colonies of the British had a more sound form of government. The British put more effort into setting them up for long term stability.
Countries colonized by the Spanish, Portuguese and others were mostly exploited (even by the different standards of the day) and little effort was made to set up a long term stable government.
The middle east, parts of Africa and Asia suffer from the same problem with a strong dose of religious extremism thrown in to many to really screws things up.

Majored in Political Sciences and Internationa Relations in Belgium, a lifetime ago and figured I wouldn't touch the subject if it could be avoided.

But the sudden unrest in the region has me baffled.

Would look for a serious look at it from british journalism but i have become too lazy.

As mentioned before, end of the year is a time of protests, rioting and shit throwing monkey style in my country. Our neighbors taking the streets, specially the orderly chileans is disconcerting.
Wish there was a plausible regional explanation. Guess Brazil will profit financially from all this crap.

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The Wall Street Journal had a front page article about it the other day. I recall when Morales was elected back in 2006 following on the regional heels of Chavez, like the 1960s all over again.

It’s too bad the asshole got away to Mexico. He should have been killed

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Originally posted by stickman428:
It’s too bad the asshole got away to Mexico. He should have been killed

Well, Lev Trotsky was not so safe in Mexico, was he?

Nothing until I heard of it here.

OANN (online) has had regular coverage, both on the main page and the "World" section.

Below is an editorial from this week's "The Economist". It seems to be a decent assessment of the situation. FYI, "The Economist" is no friend of right wing regimes or politics.


The end of Evo Morales
Was there a coup in Bolivia?
The armed forces spoke up for democracy and the constitution against an attempt at dictatorship


Print edition | Leaders
Nov 16th 2019



There are few more emotive words in Latin America than “coup”, and for good reason. From 1930 to the 1970s, the region suffered the frequent overthrow of civilian governments in often bloody military putsches. The victims were usually of the left. In 1954 a moderate reforming government in Guatemala was ousted in the name of anti-communism by the cia. Other coups followed, including that of General Augusto Pinochet against Salvador Allende, a radical socialist, in Chile in 1973.

Since the democratisation of the region in the 1980s, coups have been rare. But the very idea has become a potent propaganda tool, especially for leftists. Scarcely a week goes by without Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s fraudulently elected dictator, claiming that he is threatened by one. Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua says the same. Dilma Rousseff, a leftist president in Brazil who spent her way to a second term in violation of the country’s fiscal responsibility law, also claims that her impeachment in 2016 was “a coup” even though it followed strict constitutional procedures.

The latest claim involves the fall of Evo Morales, Bolivia’s leftist president since 2006. He resigned on November 10th, fleeing into exile in Mexico. This prompted a chorus of denunciations of a coup from the Latin American left and even some European social democrats. This time, at least, the critics are wrong.

True, Mr Morales’s term was not due to end until January. His fall followed violent protests and a mutiny by the police, who failed to suppress them. The final straw came when the head of the armed forces “suggested” that he quit. But that is to tell only a fraction of the story.

Mr Morales, who is of Aymara indigenous descent, long enjoyed broad popular support. He imposed a new constitution, which limited presidents to two terms. Thanks to the commodity boom and his pragmatic economic policy, poverty fell sharply. He created a more inclusive society.

But he also commandeered the courts and the electoral authority and was often ruthless with opponents. In his determination to remain in power he made the classic strongman’s mistake of losing touch with the street. In 2016 he narrowly lost a referendum to abolish presidential term limits. He got the constitutional court to say he could run for a third term anyway. He then claimed victory in a dubious election last month. That triggered the uprising. An outside audit upheld the opposition’s claims of widespread irregularities. His offer to re-run the election came too late.

Mr Morales was thus the casualty of a counter-revolution aimed at defending democracy and the constitution against electoral fraud and his own illegal candidacy. The army withdrew its support because it was not prepared to fire on people in order to sustain him in power. How these events will come to be viewed depends in part on what happens now (see article). An opposition leader has taken over as interim president and called for a fresh election to be held in a matter of weeks. There are two big risks in this. One is that ultras in the opposition try to erase the good things Mr Morales stood for as well as the bad. The other is that his supporters seek to destabilise the interim government and boycott the election. It may take outside help to ensure a fair contest.

That the army had to play a role is indeed troubling. But the issue at stake in Bolivia was what should happen, in extremis, when an elected president deploys the power of the state against the constitution. In Mr Morales’s resignation and the army’s forcing of it, Bolivia has set an example for Venezuela and Nicaragua, though it is one that is unlikely to be heeded. In the past it was right-wing strongmen who refused to leave power when legally obliged to do so. Now it is often those on the left. Their constant invocation of coups tends to be a smokescreen for their own flouting of the rules. It should be examined with care.