The Coup That Wasn’t

Bolivia is known for having experienced frequent coups throughout most of its history, and some have been brief and/or bizarre, but last month’s may have set a new record. On Wednesday, 26 June, General Juan José Zúñiga, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Bolivian Army, drove up to Plaza Murillo in La Paz with six tanks. He smashed his way into the Palacio Quemado (the former seat of government) through a metal door, made phone calls to the political opposition and the military, and demanded the release of Jeanine Áñez and Luis Fernando Camacho, both currently imprisoned for plotting the coup of 2019.

President Luis Arce went with his cabinet to order Zúñiga to stand down immediately. When he refused, Arce called a press conference and swore in new leaders for all branches of the armed forces. The rapid response of the people of La Paz, filling the Plaza Murillo and surrounding areas to defend the constitutionally elected government, added pressure on Zúñiga and his tanks to retreat, but left fourteen people injured, some with bullet wounds.

Without backing from even the closest army garrison in Viacha, much less any leading right-wing politicians, parties or organisations, General Zúñiga left the Palacio Quemado after several hours. After being arrested, he walked it all back, claiming that he had planned the whole thing with Arce to make the president appear capable of facing down a coup attempt, and thereby boosting his poll numbers.

Arce had called former president Evo Morales – whose economy and finance minister Arce had been – to warn him about what was underway. Yet Morales, jockeying for electoral position with Arce, also declared it an autogolpe, designed to keep him from running for a fourth as president, and called for strikes and blockades to begin on Saturday, 29 June. (These did not materialise to any significant extent.) Zúñiga was sent to await sentencing in the Chonchocoro maximum security prison. Sixteen other active and retired military men, including officials from the navy and air force as well as the army, along with one civilian, were also arrested in the days following the coup.

Events leading up to the coup raise questions that as yet have no convincing answers, especially in relation to any possible US role. Arce suggested this was likely, based on the declared interest of the head of the US Southern Command, General Laura Richardson. In several key meetings in 2022-23, she defined Bolivian, Chilean, and Argentinian lithium and other precious metals as a matter of US national security, and the reason Latin America matters: it ‘has much to offer’ (to private foreign firms and investors, of course) – unless the Chinese and Russians get there first. (Guyanese oil being the other key commodity in the region.)

On 14 June, the US ambassador, Debra Hevia, denied accusations by the Bolivian economy minister, Marcelo Montenegro, to the effect that she was supporting a soft coup by encouraging trucking and transport workers to strike and blockade over a scarcity of dollars and fuel, which Bolivia now imports for domestic consumption (because of low levels of investment in plant and maintenance during Morales’s third term, according to Arce). On Monday, 24 June, the Bolivian foreign minister, Celinda Sosa Lunda, complained to Hevia about public statements that embassy staff had made, interfering with Bolivia’s internal political affairs. The same day, General Zúñiga threatened to have Morales arrested should he insist on running for president, for which he is not technically eligible, according to the Arce-friendly Constitutional Court. Fearing that Arce was about to fire him and other officials, Zúñiga staged an uprising, and, from there, tried to improvise a coup.

Arce has declared himself a victim of hybrid warfare, targeted by regular troops, paramilitary or criminal militias, media strategies (fake news, disinformation and distortion) and diplomatic action. There is clear evidence of the first but not the rest. Whatever the truth of the matter, last month’s failed coup highlights three contrasts with the successful coup of 2019 (the first since the early 1980s): first, the lack of articulation between military and political figures, or between branches of the armed forces; second, the depth of animosity and antagonism between the Arce government, which lacks a strong popular constituency, and Morales, who is still able to mobilise sectors of the highland Indigenous peasant movement and the lowland coca growers’ movement; and third, the lack of diplomatic cover or support for a coup from the US and neighbouring countries, especially Brazil, to which Bolivia exports most of its liquid natural gas.

For the US government, going forward, the main objective will be to exacerbate the fractures in what remains of the national-popular bloc in order to unify the right and centre around a single candidate in 2025. This hasn’t succeeded since the election of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada in 2002, when Morales first came within a hair’s breadth of the presidency, only to win handily in 2005, after two successful nationwide insurrections against two US-backed neoliberal governments in as many years.

The US government may wish to repeat the script from Chile in 1973, in which a failed military revolt in June was followed by General Pinochet’s coup in September, but for the time being that appears most unlikely. Yet, based on the latest coup attempt and the split between Morales and Arce, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the 2019 coup, even though it failed in the medium-term, succeeded in landing damaging blows – to Bolivian sovereignty as well as popular unity and democracy – from which the country has yet to recover. Arce’s government, whose popularity has been eroded by administrative inefficiency and economic crisis, is weaker, not stronger, as a result of the attempted coup. Should Arce and Morales fail to make amends and run a single candidate, US efforts to bring the right back to power may well succeed in 2025.