Live data from Hacker News

Coup Attempt in Bolivia

bloomberg.com

11–20 of 111 posts

Re: Coup Attempt in Bolivia

#11
post #4

I wouldn't be surprised if a large part of the population support the coup. South America has a history of military dictatorship but after the pendulum swings enough to the other side people seem to lose their memory a bit.

Most of them funded by the US. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor

    Democratic governments and political parties, unions, student organizations, journalists, artists, teachers, intellectuals, opponents to the military juntas and left-wing sympathizers (including socialists, peronists, anarchists and communists)
Crazy they just green lighted the whole segment of the population who were fighting for their own destiny.

Re: Coup Attempt in Bolivia

#12
From the article

"Bolivia is among the world’s most politically turbulent nations, having had nearly 200 coups and revolutions since it won independence from Spain two centuries ago. Morales was ousted by the army as recently as 2019 after a disputed election."

Re: Coup Attempt in Bolivia

#13
post #4

I wouldn't be surprised if a large part of the population support the coup. South America has a history of military dictatorship but after the pendulum swings enough to the other side people seem to lose their memory a bit.

Doesn’t look like it

The unions declared an indefinite general strike

https://x.com/redstreamnet/status/1806068831984783583

And as I write this it seems like they’re outnumbered in the plaza

https://x.com/KawsachunNews/status/1806083169726198113

Re: Coup Attempt in Bolivia

#14
Apparently a general, Juan José Zúñiga was removed as commander of the Bolivian army yesterday, and he responded with this. Makes it a bit understandable why they would want to get rid of him.

Re: Coup Attempt in Bolivia

#15
post #10

it sounds like the kirchners' allies in bolivia are going through the kind of crisis we were headed for here in argentina before they lost power here in the election in november. not that we aren't still in a crisis, but we have two things going for us: 1. recognizing the wrongheadedness of the kirchners' policies, we elected an opposition leader who favors capitalism. unfortunately, he's a total nutbag, and his advo…

Peronism is weird and incomparable with other non-right wing movements. Argentina's modern history is largely defined by left-wing Peronists vs. right-wing Peronists.

Hence, you can't evaluate other countries governments based on whether they're aligned with the Kirchners or not, it says almost nothing other than they're not on the extreme right. You have to judge them on their own terms.

Re: Coup Attempt in Bolivia

#16
I’ve been trying to get a sense of how much of the military is actually behind this. Current reporting seems a bit confused. For example, I’ve seen multiple articles say that “2 tanks” are outside the government palace, but I’ve yet to see any photos or videos demonstrating that. All I’ve seen so far are a handful of images like in the article showing uniformed troops, and one video showing an armored vehicle ramming a building (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c288eewr1wko.amp ). Best I can tell that is a Tiger armored vehicle. I’m wondering if this is a case of reporters calling any military vehicle a “tank” or if there are actual tanks (which for Bolivia would mean the https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SK-105_Kürassier or possibly https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EE-9_Cascavel depending on you definition of “tank”).

At some point hopefully someone with knowledge of Bolivian Army insignia will chime in and identify which units are participating in this coup.

Re: Coup Attempt in Bolivia

#17
post #4

I wouldn't be surprised if a large part of the population support the coup. South America has a history of military dictatorship but after the pendulum swings enough to the other side people seem to lose their memory a bit.

I wouldn't be surprised either, seeing as Arce has gone off-script as if he's been bought and paid for. He wasn't really elected himself, he was elected as a proxy for Morales who had been overthrown and exiled by a coup. He's followed that up with a complete break with Morales.

What wouldn't surprise me even more is if this coup were staged to allow Arce the excuse to put the country into martial law before being voted out.

-----

Evo Morales’ party expels President Luis Arce and deepens political war in Bolivia

https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-10-05/evo-mora...

In Bolivia, an “Intense” Battle Between Arce and Morales

https://www.americasquarterly.org/article/in-bolivia-an-inte...

Re: Coup Attempt in Bolivia

#18
post #4

I wouldn't be surprised if a large part of the population support the coup. South America has a history of military dictatorship but after the pendulum swings enough to the other side people seem to lose their memory a bit.

Most of them funded by the US. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor

Democracy doesn't work in a US-dominant world. My country is nowhere near Africa yet there have been 7 coup attemps, 4 successful, most backed by US in her 100 year history[2]. The last one didn't succeed and the US is currently protecting the leader of the attempt, refusing to give him us back.

Arab leaders are likewise domestically widely regarded as sockpuppets of the USA. On the rare occasion a democratic election happens, the president suddenly dies, gets assasinated, or a coup d'état happens and gets hanged. Off the top of my head see [2] for an example.

This is not to say democracy would work in a Russia- or China- dominant world. It seems democracy only works for the nations who can sufficiently defend against infiltration by the NSA/foreign intelligence agency of the dominant power. And I don't think that's easy, or feasible at all. You can't expect an African nation of 10M population who gained independence 2 decades ago to have the skilled people to be able to conduct this sort of intelligence operations.

And of course, the US is the peacekeeper of the world, only bringing democracy and welfare to the poor nations held back by their authoritarian leaders and backward ideologies and religions. Long live Imperium Americana!

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Egyptian_coup_d%27%C3%A9t...

Post reply on HN