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A famous person (was it Karl Marx?) once remarked that when history repeats itself, the first time it is a tragedy, the second time a farce. Many of Marx's important predictions may not have come to fruition exactly as he wanted, but on this one he was spot on.
The recent commotion in the South American country of Bolivia may be regarded as an illustration. The potential tragedy part of the drama was the 2019 coup, executed professionally according to the regime change rulebook in order to seize
Bolivia's valuable lithium deposits and incidentally despoil it's long-suffering and impoverished citizens of all their mineral wealth. In that coup, President Evo Morales, the indisputable champion of the bulk of Bolivia's majority indigenous population, was ruthlessly deposed. The farce is the amateurishly attempted replay of that episode on 26 June, which in spite of best laid plans unexpectedly went awry. The farce took all of three hours to collapse.
On both occasions, in 2019 and on 26 June 2024, the principal points of contention were Bolivia's vast lithium deposits, estimated at 21 million tonnes, and for whose benefit they would be exploited. A related but equally fundamental issue was (and still very much is) Bolivia's orientation in the geopolitical arena, whether it would side with the BRICS block or the collective West. In everything but the operation's outcome in the farcical stage, the symmetry between the two coups was evident.
In 2019
the intended rapine of Bolivia's natural resources, with lithium deposits at the top of the plunder list, initially was successful but ultimately it failed. To be sure, the regime change manual was followed faithfully. After shameless electoral interference with abundant cash and a flood of corrupt media disinformation, Evo Morales' commanding lead in the 2019 elections was whittled down to a manageable level so that his electoral victory could be plausibly portrayed as stolen. In standard fashion, rented mobs demanded his withdrawal and commissions were set up by vassal entities such as the Organisation of American States to declare that the election process was fraudulent. At the appropriate moment, army officers who almost to a man were graduates of the notorious subversion academy, the School of the Americas (since innocuously renamed Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation to cover up its criminal tracks) were activated to administer the
coup de grace to Morales' presidency, or so it was expected. The legally re-elected, however narrowly, President Morales was compelled to flee for his life into exile. A dumb and as it turned out also venal, but extremely cooperative, Aryan blonde without a drop of Inca blood,
Jeanine Áñez, was invested with the presidential sash and illegally installed to replace him.
The multinational lithium cartel could now rub their hands and gloat over the succulent Bolivian pickings that had fallen into their lap, a booty Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid could only have dreamt of.
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