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The last 2 weeks of road blockades and other protests in #Bolivia are basically over. While Felipe Quispe, the Mallku, says that his people will continue blockading, everyone else has gone home. 99% of blockades are supposedly removed. Thoughts (thread): https://www.opinion.com.bo/articulo/pais/reportan-99-carreteras-pais-encuentran-expeditas/20200816121728782605.html
A huge amount of damage has been done:
- >40 excess deaths due to lack of oxygen
- Economy even more wrecked than before
- Country even more angry & polarised than before
- Who knows how many more COVID cases due to agglomerations of people at blockades?
- >40 excess deaths due to lack of oxygen
- Economy even more wrecked than before
- Country even more angry & polarised than before
- Who knows how many more COVID cases due to agglomerations of people at blockades?
Also, Evo Morales’ sister died of COVID19 this morning. In a bitter twist of irony (if true), reports have claimed she wasn’t able to get treated in time due to lack of oxygen in Oruro. (Evo, as ever, managed to make it all about him being the victim on his twitter account.)
The MAS has also lost, very very badly. I’d call calling these blockades the first major blunder they have made this year. (They claimed it wasn’t them who called them, but everyone on all sides knows perfectly well that it was at the beginning.)
The blockades didn’t move the election date forward, they didn’t get rid of Añez, they didn’t even provoke a brutal military response (so they could play the victim), & all that happened is that Congress passed a law making Oct 18 election day (it could have done that anyway).
MAS propagandists, from Evo downwards, have been claiming they "won" by getting the election date placed into law. That's, frankly, an insult to the intelligence of everyone (including the blockaders) and a blatant rewriting of history.
I can't believe that this won’t be hugely damaging for the MAS’s electoral prospects in October with floating voters. Indeed, journalists and personalities on social media have already been referring to the blockades as the “Oxygen Massacre” and suchlike.
Fractures within the MAS are now also gaping wounds. Their “social movements” are clearly deeply angry about being manipulated by the politicians. Other leaders in El Alto recognise they got nothing for their efforts:
https://urgente.bo/noticia/segundina-flores-arremete-contra-la-clase-media-que-lidera-el-mas
http://www.elalteno.com.bo/ciudad/20200814/luchadores-de-octubre-afirman-que-el-mas-sufre-autoderrota
https://urgente.bo/noticia/segundina-flores-arremete-contra-la-clase-media-que-lidera-el-mas
http://www.elalteno.com.bo/ciudad/20200814/luchadores-de-octubre-afirman-que-el-mas-sufre-autoderrota
This won't persuade the MAS’s core vote not to vote for it, but I doubt they will be voting with much enthusiasm for Luis Arce Catacora…
Añez also comes out of it badly (not that I care). She couldn’t win - either she let the blockades go on smashing up the country, or send in the army and kill people - but even so, her main selling point was always that she’d be tough on the MAS (unlike, say, Carlos Mesa).
When she was given the choice, though, she didn’t actually do that, and there were plenty of people who wanted a military response and martial law…
Electorally speaking, Carlos Mesa is probably doing quite nicely, thank you, through his usual technique of hiding and then popping up to (rightly) snipe at the MAS at appropriate points while letting Añez flounder: https://www.paginasiete.bo/nacional/2020/8/11/ven-una-anez-debilitada-un-mesa-agazapado-para-capitalizar-el-voto-util-264120.html
Most importantly though (and the good news): things didn’t degenerate into a civil war and neither did the security forces kill any blockaders. On to elections on 18th October…
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#Bolivia
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#Bolivia
