Bottom 50% income shares across the world, 1980–2016

https://rwer.wordpress.com/2019/11/13/bottom-50-income-shares-across-the-world-1980-2016/

Bolivia’s Anti-Indigenous Backlash Is Growing

Jacquelyn Kovarik. The Nation. November 13, 2019

Nor Yungas, Bolivia—By the time President Evo Morales announced his resignation on Sunday, the country had been in turmoil for three weeks. Flanked by his vice president and the head of the Senate, who were also stepping down, Morales called for an end to the violence that followed a contested election and for Bolivia’s conservative opposition to stop “pursuing, capturing, and mistreating my ministers, union leaders, and their family members.”

By that night, at least 20 officials from Morales’s political party, Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), had sought asylum at the Mexican embassy. The political exodus was abrupt. Morales had only begrudgingly agreed on Saturday to hold new presidential elections, after mounting political pressure from the Organization of American States, the European Union, the United States, and a handful of Latin American countries.

It’s difficult to see this as anything but a coup. Mere hours before Morales stepped down, Bolivia’s Armed Forces had publicly called for his resignation. The day before, police in La Paz and Cochabamba, two of the country’s largest cities, had joined anti-government protesters and threatened not to maintain order in the event of civil war. Police mutinies and protests quickly spread across the country, and all major cities have devolved into crisis amid violent confrontations between government sympathizers and opposition supporters.

Santa Cruz, traditionally an anti-government stronghold, has been locked down by blockades for more than 20 days, while two people have died in clashes between government and opposition supporters. Riots have broken out in Cochabamba, a largely pro-opposition city, while Morales has maintained firm levels of support from the cocaleros and campesinos in the Bolivian countryside, especially in the Chapare region, where he was a union leader two decades ago.

This heightened political division between largely indigenous and campesino government supporters and white, upper-class dissenters has proven deadly: In Cochabamba, a 20-year-old student died during clashes between pro- and anti-government groups, while reports suggest that citizens of El Alto—a largely Aymara indigenous city and home to president Morales—have begun arming themselves. On Tuesday, the head of special operations for El Alto’s police force was killed in an auto accident while trying to control protests as thousands marched along the highway towards La Paz, bringing the death toll to four people, while dozens more have been injured.

Bolivia’s far right has exploited the power vacuum and stoked anti-indigenous sentiment. Since Morales’s resignation, many officials down the line of succession for the country’s presidency have resigned as well, to protect themselves and their families, leaving Jeanine Añez Chavez, a conservative opposition leader and second vice president of the Senate, poised to take over Bolivia’s presidency. (Añez is married to a leader of a Colombian conservative party with historic ties to paramilitary groups.) Luis Fernando Camacho, a right-wing evangelical lawyer from Santa Cruz who has largely led the opposition movement over the last three weeks, has spouted extremely violent and xenophobic rhetoric, to the point that he’s been dubbed the “Bolsonaro of Bolivia.” After Morales’s resignation, Camacho entered the government palace in La Paz, placed a Bible on the Bolivian flag, and said that the Pachamama (the Andean Mother Earth goddess) will “never return to Bolivia. Bolivia belongs to God.”

The potential return of a conservative government after Morales’s 14-year rule has brought with it a resurgence of a virulent strain of anti-indigenous hatred with deep roots in Bolivia, reminiscent of the country’s “gas wars,” in which discontent over the government’s exploitation of Bolivia’s natural gas grew into large-scale protests led in part by Morales. In 2003, the unrest left more than 60 Aymara indigenous citizens dead after clashes between protesters and the national army. Sanchez de Lozada, the country’s unpopular president, resigned his post, leaving his vice president, Carlos Mesa—the opposition candidate who has instigated Bolivia’s current political crisis—to step in. Mesa himself stepped down months later as protests continued, and, in 2005, Morales was elected the country’s first indigenous president.

Morales’s tenure was far from perfect. His administration allowed transnational extractive projects on indigenous lands, including a dam project in the Beni lowlands and the revival of a highway to be constructed along the Bolivian Amazon. In 2016, Morales held a constitutional referendum asking Bolivians if he could run again for a fourth term, despite the Constitution’s barring a president from serving more than 12 years in office. The referendum was narrowly voted down, but Bolivia’s Electoral Court eventually carved out a constitutional concession for Morales to run in 2019, leading to protests, blockades, and strikes across the country. “A snowball has been forming,” Miguel Reynaga, the director of a leftist theater collective in Cochabamba, said while describing the escalating violence in the city.

Under Morales, the Bolivian government also furthered economic growth, slashed poverty, reduced the country’s illiteracy rate, improved public health care, and promoted social and education policies that have radically improved the lives of native peoples in Bolivia. The country’s 2009 Constitution, passed under Morales, explicitly recognized the rights of indigenous groups and Afro-Bolivians, changing everyday political and cultural life—from the clothes worn by public officials to the languages taught in schools. Those who still support Morales continue to do so largely for these reasons.

Nearly a decade and a half later, the toppling of Morales’s government threatens a potential return to anti-indigenous violence. On Monday, Morales loyalists started burning police stations in El Alto, an act of retaliation after the police mutiny, but also in response to lowering and burning of the Whipala flag—which represents dozens of indigenous groups in Bolivia and throughout the Andes—by police forces at the Legislative Assembly in La Paz. (In 2009, Morales had instituted the Whipala as Bolivia’s second national flag.) Police personnel across other cities followed suit, ripping off and cutting a patch containing the Whipala flag out of their uniforms.

The current crisis is encroaching into previously safe cities such as El Alto. Over the past few weeks, countless families have been caught in the cross fire, in a way not unlike the bloody breakout of the gas wars in October 2003—maybe they support Evo, maybe they don’t, but beyond the questions of election fraud, OAS reports, and coup allegations that have dominated Western media, civilians are focused on the immediate matter of self-defense and finding refuge from the escalating violence. “This is a very dangerous scenario,” said Ruth Alipaz, an environmental activist from the northeastern lowlands of Bolivia. “The climate on Sunday was one in which anything could happen.” The question on many Bolivian tongues now is the same as it has been for the last three weeks: ¿Hay salida? Is there a way out?

For now, the answer seems grim. That El Alto and other Morales strongholds with a rich history of self-defense are mobilizing highlights not only the gravity of the current political situation but also the desire to defend Bolivia’s indigenous working class. That, at least, provides a glimmer of hope. Earlier this summer, I asked a taxi driver in Cochabamba his thoughts on Carlos Mesa’s potential election. “It would be a shame if Mesa were elected,” he said. “But it also is not the same Mesa from 2003. Neoliberal presidents can no longer take advantage of the people like they could before. The pueblo has awakened.”

Argentine President-Elect Slams U.S. Over Bolivia Stance

Reuters. November 12, 2019

BUENOS AIRES — Argentine President-elect Alberto Fernández on Tuesday criticized the U.S. stance on Bolivia's political upheaval, which saw long-standing leftist leader Evo Morales resign under pressure and seek asylum in Mexico.

Fernandez, a center-left Peronist, also aimed barbs at the Organization of American States (OAS), which had said in an audit of Bolivia's Oct. 20 election, won by Morales, that the result should be annulled due to "irregularities."

"In my opinion, the United States regressed decades. It returned to the bad times of the 70s," Fernandez told a local radio, adding that it was "guaranteeing military interventions against popular, democratically elected governments."

U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday hailed Morales' departure as good for democracy, a view that clashed with leftist leaders in the region, including that of Fernandez who has backed Morales and said he was the victim of a coup.

Morales, who was Bolivia's first indigenous president, insisted on seeking a fourth term in office, in defiance of term limits and a 2016 referendum in which Bolivians voted against him being allowed to do that.

He announced his resignation on Sunday after weeks of protests since the October vote, with the OAS report sparking off a dramatic day as allies deserted him and the military eventually urged him to go to help restore calm.

Fernandez is due to take over Latin American's no. 3 economy in December, taking the reins from business friendly conservative Mauricio Macri who had a close relationship with Washington and Trump.

Fernandez also claimed the OAS audit was "weak" and its results were manipulated, he told radio station Radio 10.

Military Coup in Bolivia 'Has Been Consummated,' Says Evo Morales as Right-Wing Senator Declares Herself President in Defiance of Constitution

Jake Johnson. Common Dreams. November 13, 2019

Bolivian Senator Jeanine Añez, a leader of the nation's right-wing opposition party, declared herself interim president of the country Tuesday night despite lacking the constitutionally required number of lawmakers to approve her appointment.

"I assume the presidency immediately and will do everything necessary to pacify the country," declared Añez, who has a history of racist attacks against indigenous Bolivians.

As CNN reported, members of former President Evo Morales' leftist party did not attend the session Tuesday, leaving "the legislative chamber short of the legal minimum number of lawmakers required to appoint her."

Morales, who resigned Sunday under threat from the Bolivian military and police forces, tweeted late Tuesday that "the most crafty and disastrous coup in history has been consummated."

"A coupist right-wing senator calls herself president of the Senate and then interim president of Bolivia without a legislative quorum, surrounded by a group of accomplices and led by the armed forces and the police that repress the people," said Morales, who accepted asylum in Mexico.

According to the New York Times, "the military high command met with Ms. Añez for more than an hour at the government palace Tuesday night in what her aides described as a planning session to keep the peace. At the end of the meeting, pictures were released of the senior officers saluting Ms. Añez."

Earlier Tuesday, thousands of Morales supporters marched in opposition to the coup:

The Guardian reported that hundreds of Morales backers rallied near the Bolivian assembly building late Tuesday to denounce Añez's assumption of the presidency as illegitimate.

"She's declared herself president without having a quorum in the parliament," Morales supporter Julio Chipana told The Guardian. "She doesn't represent us."

‘I Assume the Presidency’: Bolivia Lawmaker Declares Herself Leader

Clifford Krauss. New York Times. November 13, 2019

LA PAZ, Bolivia — Bolivia’s political crisis took a dramatic turn on Tuesday when a leading lawmaker stepped forward and claimed the presidency, even as the country’s ousted leader urged his supporters in the legislature to battle on from his exile in Mexico.

“I assume the presidency immediately and will do everything necessary to pacify the country,” the lawmaker, Senator Jeanine Añez Chavez, told members of the assembly.

But with supporters of the ousted President Evo Morales refusing to take part in the legislative session, it was not immediately clear whether Ms. Añez’s declaration would move the country away from conflict, or headlong into it.

Minutes after she spoke, Bolivia’s highest constitutional court issued a ruling that backed her assumption of power. She was the highest-ranking politician in the line of succession after Mr. Morales and other top officials stepped down.

The country had been without a leader since the resignation on Sunday of Mr. Morales, Bolivia’s first Indigenous president, who came to power more than a decade ago as part of a leftist wave that swept Latin America.

It seemed uncertain that Ms. Añez would be able to calm the tense and deeply polarized nation. Shortly after her announcement, members of Mr. Morales’s party said they would hold another legislative session on Wednesday to nullify her decision.

Mr. Morales denounced Ms. Añez’s move as illegitimate. saying on Twitter that she had acted “without legislative quorum, surrounded by a group of accomplices and supported by the armed forces and the police, which repress the people.”

A former media executive and leader of a conservative coalition, Ms. Añez said before she declared herself president that she would lead a transition focused on selecting an honest electoral commission and holding elections as soon as possible.

“This is simply a transitory moment,” she said earlier Tuesday. “There is an urgency.”

Fireworks echoed across La Paz, Bolivia’s largest city, and in other major urban centers. But at the same time, the police used tear gas to disperse furious crowds of Mr. Morales’s supporters who were gathered in downtown La Paz.

Mr. Morales’s abrupt departure had come after the armed forces sided with protesters who accused him of rigging an election to stay in power. Mr. Morales, who was granted refuge by Mexico “for humanitarian reasons,” has described his ouster as a coup.

On Wednesday morning, the streets of La Paz were quiet, as normal bus and hospital service resumed. Schools remained closed, but businesses began to reopen in most major cities and traffic thickened.

But tensions were building, with Morales supporters who still have a majority of seats in the Legislative Assembly promising an attempt to nullify Ms. Anez’s self-proclaimed presidency.

Supporters of Ms. Anez have set up barricades in recent days around the assembly’s plaza, along with the national police, and it remained uncertain whether they would even allow the Morales party lawmakers to enter the building.

Mr. Morales had called a morning news conference in Mexico City in which he was expected to repeat his biting attacks on Ms. Anez’s sudden climb to power and to signal what kind of tactics he expected his followers to take against the new government.

Some political and legal analysts said the steps taken by Ms. Añez and the assembly members present for her announcement were extraordinary but necessary, because members of Mr. Morales’s party had boycotted the scheduled session at which they were to select a new president.

“Añez, along with congressmen of both chambers, are abiding by their constitutional duties and are taking measures to secure the constitutional succession of power,” said Carlos Aramayo Raña, a Bolivian political scientist.

“Politically speaking, what is the alternative, Bolivians fighting each other?” Mr. Aramayo Raña asked. “Who will take responsibility for the blood that will be spilled?”

But after a month of unrest and strikes, many Bolivians expressed hope that Ms. Añez’s proclamation would bring back normality. In the city Cochabamba, in central Bolivia, the new president’s controversial proclamation was greeted with a visible sigh of relief, if not mass celebration.

Empty streets almost immediately began to slowly fill with cars and bicycles, and local residents began dissembling the barricades they had put up in protest over Mr. Morales’s re-election, diligently sweeping up the debris into garbage sacks.

About 100 opposition protesters waving flags converged on the city’s central square to celebrate. Some set off fireworks or honked from their cars and motorbikes.

Ms. Añez’s proclamation, however, has not put an end to sporadic political violence and opportunistic looting unleashed by Mr. Morales’s resignation. Local news outlets reported several chicken farms around Cochabamba were looted early on Wednesday.

Hours after the swearing-in ceremony, New York Times reporter watched about 20 motorbike-riding civilians armed with metal pipes and chains travel out of Cochabamba’s main police station, as police officers saluted them and gave thumbs up on the way out. The riders did not carry any political affiliation, but Cochabamba’s Police Headquarters had flipped to the opposition last Saturday, triggering a national wave of police mutiny that brought Ms. Añez to power.

While Ms. Añez’s supporters remained firmly in control of central Cochabamba, Bolivia’s fourth-largest city in the Andean plateau, Indigenous groups loyal to Mr. Morales camped out on the approaches to the city. Clashes between both parties’s armed bands and security forces left at least a dozen people injured here Tuesday, including three from gunshot wounds.

Earlier on Tuesday, in a rapid-fire series of tweets, Mr. Morales had urged members of his coalition to continue blocking efforts to nominate an interim leader.

He congratulated the legislators for not showing up at the session at which his resignation would have been formally accepted, and Ms. Añez recognized as the country’s interim leader. He said they were “acting with unity and dignity to reject any manipulation by the racist, coup-mongering and traitorous right wing.”

This frustrated many of the legislators who wanted to move forward.

“Today, they have to understand that the most important is Bolivia, not Evo Morales,” one opposition lawmaker, Luis Felipe Dorado, said of the president’s supporters. “Evo Morales is gone from the country, but they continue to obey him, not the will of the country.”

On Monday, as looting and violence spread across several cities, Ms. Añez at first appeared rattled, sobbing as she called for calm. But by the evening, she was projecting strength, and demanding that the army accept the national police’s call to jointly patrol the streets of La Paz to restore order.

The army quickly responded, sending troops into the streets and setting up defensive positions around vital infrastructure like electricity and waterworks.

The military high command met with Ms. Añez for more than an hour at the government palace Tuesday night in what her aides described as a planning session to keep the peace. At the end of the meeting, pictures were released of the senior officers saluting Ms. Añez.

Bolivians appear sharply divided in their views — and in their hopes for the future.

When Mr. Morales was first elected in 2006, he became the first Indigenous person to lead Bolivia, a nation in which two-thirds of the population are Indigenous. In the Plaza San Francisco in La Paz, street vendors, most of them Indigenous, overwhelmingly expressed support for him.

“Evo was the best president we ever had,” said Rosario Siñane, 39, who was selling individually wrapped candies. “Now we have no more hope.”

José Ariel Blanco, the 25-year-old owner of a stationery store two blocks from the legislature, said he was thankful for Mr. Morales’s achievements — chief among them, tackling the racism that the Indigenous had suffered for centuries.

“My grandmother couldn’t walk into a bank in her Indigenous clothes until Evo became president,” he said. “Now she can, and that won’t change.”

But he said Mr. Morales went too far in bending the rules of democracy. “The Venezuelan and Cuban models don’t work over time,” he said.

Down the street from Mr. Blanco’s store, Victor Huancollo, a 24-year-old computer science university student, stood guard at a makeshift barricade intended to keep supporters of Mr. Morales from approaching the legislature. He was hopeful that new elections would be held in a few months, he said, and that “a transparent president who is not corrupt will emerge, not like what we had over the last 14 years.”

On Tuesday morning Mr. Morales was met by Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico’s foreign minister, at the presidential hangar of Mexico City’s main airport.

In comments to the news media, Mr. Morales remained defiant, vowing to continue his involvement in politics and his fight for social justice, Bolivia’s Indigenous populations and the poor.

“Our sin is that we are ideologically anti-imperialist, but this coup won’t make me change ideologically,” he said.

Mr. Morales, who was flanked by Bolivia’s former vice president, Álvaro García Linera, also thanked his hosts, the Mexican government.

“We are very grateful to the president of Mexico, because he saved my life,” he said.

Mr. Morales left office after weeks of growing unrest over a disputed presidential election and after the military indicated it would support the people in the streets who were calling for him to step down.

In his audio message, which was released by the Mexican news media and broadcast in Bolivia, Mr. Morales called on the military to “stop the massacre.” Photographed draped in a Mexican flag aboard a Mexican Air Force plane, Mr. Morales also told his supporters, “We’ll work together for Bolivia.”

At a news conference on Tuesday morning, Mr. Ebrard, the Mexican foreign minister, said his government had encountered numerous difficulties in securing permission to land its plane in Bolivia to retrieve Mr. Morales, and in getting cooperation from other countries in the region to facilitate the plane’s return to Mexico with the former Bolivian president aboard.

Among the obstacles, he said, the government of Peru had forbidden the plane to land on Peruvian territory to refuel during its return trip, and Ecuador had blocked passage over its territory, forcing the plane to take a path over the Pacific Ocean.

That further delayed Mr. Morales’s arrival in Mexico City.

Spain police say ex-Venezuelan spy chief Hugo Carvajal is missing

Al Jazeera. November 12, 2019

Venezuela's former military intelligence chief Hugo Carvajal has gone missing in Spain days after local media reported a Spanish court had agreed to extradite him to the United States on drug trafficking charges.

"They are currently looking for him," said a spokeswoman for Spain's national police on Wednesday, referring to Carvajal, also known as El Pollo (the chicken).

Judicial sources said police had gone to his house in Madrid after Friday's court decision but could not locate him.

Carvajal's lawyer Maria Dolores de Arguelles told AFP news agency she had "not been informed" they were going to rearrest him, adding that she did not know his whereabouts.

In mid-September, Spain's National Court had rejected a US extradition request, instead, ordering the release of Carvajal, who served as intelligence chief under the late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez.

His release followed five months in provisional detention after being arrested in Madrid in April.

But the court reversed that decision on Friday after accepting an appeal from the public prosecutor's office, although full details of the ruling have not been made public.

On Monday, Carvajal denied the reports, saying that he was never "notified of any official resolution".

"In light of the rumours in the press, my lawyers went to the National High Court on Friday and on Saturday and they are also checking the official notification system constantly. As of now, neither my lawyers nor myself have been officially notified of any official resolution on my case," Carvajal said in a Twitter post.

Carvajal was stripped of his rank by the administration of President Nicolas Maduro after coming out in support of Juan Guaido as Venezuela's acting president in February, and calling on the military forces to break ranks and to allow a shipment of humanitarian aid to Venezuela.

He then fled by boat, in a 16-hour journey, to the Dominican Republic in March, before relocating to Spain in April.

Carvajal has long been sought by US Treasury officials who suspect him of providing support to drug trafficking activities of the FARC group in Colombia.

In an indictment filed in New York in 2011, Carvajal was accused of coordinating the transport of more than 5.6 tonnes of cocaine from Venezuela to Mexico in 2006 that was ultimately destined for the US.

The US also said Carvajal formed part of a drug cartel known as Los Soles, which not only wanted to enrich its members "but used cocaine as a weapon against the United States due to the adverse effects of the drug on individual users".

If convicted, Carvajal could face between 10 years and life in prison, the US Justice Department said in April following his arrest.

Venezuela embassy in Brazil occupied by Guaidó supporters

AP. November 13, 2019

BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) — A group of people backing Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó have occupied the nation's embassy in Brazil's capital, Brasilia.

An official from President Nicolás Maduro's government says a group of some 20 people forcibly invaded the embassy early Wednesday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity for lack of authorization to speak publicly.

The Venezuelan representative to Brazil named by Guaidó says that embassy employees opened the gates to let sympathizers in.

Brazil and more than 50 other nations recognize Guaido as Venezuela's legitimate president.

Some 20 Brazilian military police officers are outside the embassy, and others are within. Wednesday is the first day of the Brazil-hosted summit for BRICS nations, which also include Russia, India, China and South Africa.