CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Bolivia: Paz Government Using Lawfare Against Protesters, “Terrorists” and “Drug Traffickers”

In Bolivia, after weeks of protests against the proposed privatization of indigenous lands, the Rodrigo Paz government is setting the stage for mass repression against political opponents. The president, who calls himself a democratic centrist, has unleashed a systematic campaign of criminalization and stigmatization against Bolivia’s indigenous and popular movements.

What we are witnessing is the deliberate rhetorical construction of an enemy within, designed to legally and politically justify the dismantling of democracy, the Plurinational State, and the rights of indigenous peoples along with them.

From the highest levels of government, there has been a highly coordinated narrative that the protesters are not legitimate, organic, peaceful citizens exercising their constitutional rights, but rather, in rather Orwellian terms, threats to the democratic order and progress.

In an interview at the Casa del Pueblo, Vice Minister of Indigenous Justice and Coordination with Social Movements, Jorge García, laid out the administration’s line with striking candor. He accused the blockade leaders of being “completely radicalized, identified with the movement of Evo Morales,” and claimed they are subsidized by the former president’s political machinery.

García suggested using the State’s legal apparatus to pursue these social movements, which he linked directly to “narcotrafficking.” He accused the MAS of having “kidnapped Bolivia, isolated us from the world so we couldn’t know the truth of what was happening here; they have destroyed Bolivia.”

President Paz himself has dismissed the protesters with contempt. “Under ideological arguments, they want to generate tribune arguments because they have neither sociological nor philosophical density.”

Minister of Public Works Mauricio Zamora has accused the movements of being financed by Evo Morales, who is tied to drug trafficking, saying “the blockades have always brought death and been used for social convulsion.” The Minister of the Presidency, Jose Luis Lupo, has said the protests are used to destabilize Bolivia, faced with a “Black May.”

The Ministry of Productive Development issued statements blaming blockades for price hikes, referring........

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