Bolivia’s Illegal Coup Government to Seek Military Aid from Israel

Bolivia’s interim government wants military Israel to help local authorities fight “terrorism” in the Latin-American country, the interior minister told Reuters on Friday, December 6, alleging plots by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and other leftists to destabilize the coup government. Without providing details, Arturo Murillo said Bolivian police “were investigating radical leftists, allegedly linked to Maduro, who had instigated deadly unrest” in the country after President Evo Morales was forced by the army to leave the country last month.

The interim interior minister of Bolivia, the far-right Senator Arturo Murillo

The interim interior minister of Bolivia, the far-right Senator Arturo Murillo (Photo: Ministerio del Interior de Bolivia)

The interim interior minister, the far-right Senator Murillo, promised to hunt down Morales’s activists and top former minister, Juan Ramón Quintana, who has gone into hiding. “We’re going to go hunting for Juan Ramón Quintana,” said Murillo, “because he is an animal.”

The illegal government of President Jeanine Áñez, a former opponent of Morales who was the highest-ranking official when he and his vice president fled to Mexico, has since swung Bolivia’s politics sharply to the right. She has strengthened the standing of the religious right, resumed strong ties with the United States and Israel, and sent hundreds of Cuban doctors and Venezuelan diplomats home. Bolivia’s interim Foreign Minister Karen Longaric announced two weeks ago that the country intends to renew its diplomatic relations with Israel, which were severed by Morales in 2009. She did not specify an exact date for the move. Bolivia broke off diplomatic relations with Israel in 2009 in protest of the Israeli deadly military “Operation Protective Edge” in Gaza.

Three weeks ago the Communist Party of Israel condemned the coup in Bolivia and the overthrow of the elected President organized by a section of the local oligarchy, with the intervention of US imperialism and the blatant use of the army and the police. Israeli communists also expressed their solidarity with the people of Bolivia.