Guerrilla History - Modern Bolivian History w/ Ollie Vargas

Episode Date: August 13, 2021

In this episode of Guerrilla History, we bring on Ollie Vargas to talk about the recent history of Bolivia.  This is an expansive episode that aims to provide historical grounding of Bolivia so that we can better understand current events taking place there! Ollie Vargas is a Bolivian reporter at Kawsachun News, and has covered Bolvian politics, news, and the recent coup for other outlets such as The Grayzone, teleSUR English, Morning Star, and Mintpress News.  You can follow Ollie on twitter @OVargas52. You can find Kawsachun News via twitter @KawsachunNews or on their website kawsachunnews.com. Support Kawsachun News, which provides a ton of vital reporting and analysis of Bolivia and Latin America more broadly by subscribing to their patreon at patreon.com/KawsachunNews. Guerrilla History is the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history, and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present.  If you have any questions or guest/topic suggestions, email them to us at [e-mail]. Your hosts are immunobiologist Henry Hakamaki, Professor Adnan Husain, historian and Director of the School of Religion at Queens University, and Revolutionary Left Radio's Breht O'Shea.   Follow us on social media!  Our podcast can be found on twitter @guerrilla_pod, and can be supported on patreon at https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory.  Your contributions will make the show possible to continue and succeed! To follow the hosts, Henry can be found on twitter @huck1995, and also has a patreon to help support himself through the pandemic where he breaks down science and public health research and news at https://www.patreon.com/huck1995.  Adnan can be followed on twitter @adnanahusain, and also runs The Majlis Podcast, which can be found at https://anchor.fm/the-majlis, and the Muslim Societies-Global Perspectives group at Queens University, https://www.facebook.com/MSGPQU/.   Breht is the host of Revolutionary Left Radio, which can be followed on twitter @RevLeftRadio and cohost of The Red Menace Podcast, which can be followed on twitter @Red_Menace_Pod.  Follow and support these shows on patreon, and find them at https://www.revolutionaryleftradio.com/.     Thanks to Ryan Hakamaki, who designed and created the podcast's artwork, and Kevin MacLeod, who creates royalty-free music.

You don't remember den, Ben, boo? The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello, and welcome to guerrilla history. the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present.

I'm your host, Henry Huckamacki, and unfortunately, I'm only joined by one of my usual co-hosts today. Brett O'Shea, host of Revolutionary Left Radio and co-host of the Red Menace podcast. Hello, Brett. How are you doing today? Hello, I'm doing great. And unfortunately, we're not joined by our other co-host, Professor Adnan Hussein, historian and director of the School of Religion at Queens University, as he's feeling a bit under the weather today, Adnan, hopefully, well, I'm sure that you'll be feeling much better by the time you hear this recording. But yeah, sorry to hear that you were feeling a bit down this morning

and we're, of course, wishing you the best. But today we have a very interesting conversation that's going to be more modern history than we generally talk about. And it's going to be the modern history of Bolivia, and we're going to be joined by Ali Vargas of Kasachan News. Of course, Bolivia has been in the news, at least alternative media, fairly frequently recently for some recent events, and we thought that it might have been important to lay down a little bit of the historical context, at least modern historical context of Bolivia. But Bolivia has a very long history, a very rich history, and that's not what we're really going to be focusing on overall.

we're really going to be looking at modern times. Brett, is there anything that you want to say as we open up this conversation to kind of get into the swing of things here? Yeah, I mean, I think most people, especially who have been on the left for a while, were aware in the last couple of years of this battle going on in Bolivia between the movement for socialism led by evil Morales and then the fascist coup that happened and then the re-election of Moss to sort of get out the coup, et cetera. So I think people know the general outlines, but I thought this was an important episode so that we could dive into some of the details, learn about the class dynamics on the ground, the history leading up to the formation of the movement for socialism, the battle between this sort of indigenous, rooted left-wing movement against neoliberalism and the fascist far right in Bolivia.

and you know it's it's a it is a common pattern right that we're seeing and we cover these stories and we cover the particularities of these of these countries and these histories to show how they are unique and how under the reign of global capitalism certain patterns continue to play out in these different ways all over the world and so I think this will be no different in that sense in the broader patterns but different in the particularities and hopefully fleshing out some of the details for people to have a better understanding of not only the recent years and the coup itself, but of Bolivia more broadly. Yeah, I agree entirely with all of that.

And before we knew that we were going to be doing this episode and before doing the background research into Bolivia, I think I was probably in roughly the same place as many of our comrades on the left in terms of the knowledge of the historical background of Bolivia. I understood from, you know, previous reading about the Incan Empire. Then I knew a bit about Moss. I knew a fair amount about Aval Morales just through alternative media sources, left media sources. And I had been following the coup very closely as it unfolded. So that part of the story, I was pretty well-versed. But the kind of middle history, or the relatively modern history, but prior to Aval Morales' rule, I was not particularly well-versed in.

And so I thought that this would be, as you mentioned, an important episode for understanding how these things unfold in terms of class dynamics, in terms of indigenity, a very, very important story. So I guess I'll just lay out a few of the other important things that I found. Just in brief, again, this is before the time period that we're going to be focusing on during the interview, but might be interesting for folks. So, of course, Bolivia was colonized by the Spanish. This was actually what became Bolivia was one of the richest of the colonies for the Spanish Empire in terms of what they were able to extract from there.

And we're talking about their natural resources. There was a lot of silver in Bolivia. And that silver was what made this one of the richest colonies for the Spanish Empire. And then going up through history, it still was incredibly rich in terms of mineral resources in the early 1900s. They found a lot of tin, which actually overtook silver in terms of the importance of the wealth accrued through it. This, of course, is after they had declared independence in 1809, although it took a little while for it actually really to have. autonomous governance, let's say. And then there's a very just interesting history as we go through the period of time.

There was feudalism, indigenous feudalism, where the indigenous people within the country were treated, you know, not even as second class citizens, even after independence. Up until the 1950s, actually, they were still kept on these little plots of land where they would do agricultural work. They would do mining that had none of the political rights that any of the other people in the country had. It was very reminiscent of the old feudalism that we saw in Europe, just in a Latin American context. And then we saw some similar patterns that we saw across the rest of Latin America in terms of military coups through the 60s and 70s, military dictatorships. Yeah, we saw this in a lot of Latin American countries. And I was vaguely aware that

there was a military dictatorship in Bolivia as well in the late 70s. But you know, I wasn't particularly well-versed until researching this. And then, as you mentioned, indigenity being hugely important. I knew that the indigenous population of Bolivia was a majority of the country or roughly a majority of the country. You know, demographic research in Bolivia is a little bit tricky to do, but hugely important and really underappreciated until Moss came into power in 2005. Brett, anything that you want to add into this? now that I kind of finished my rambling, catch everybody up on Bolivian history

in a very overly simplified way? No, no, that was great. I'd have nothing to add to that history. Only thing I would say is our guest, Ali, as well as his friend, Camilla, they co-founded, as we'll mention in the episode, Kasachin, which is this really important, based in Bolivia news source

that, you know, from a left-wing anti-imperialist perspective, They have a Patreon, you can go follow them on Twitter. We spell it and link to it in the show notes, so you can easily find it. I would just really urge people to go and support that, to follow them on whatever social media you have, and to support that independent left-wing journalism emanating out of Bolivia that covers Latin America and the entire world. And the linking up of left media outlets across nations I think is really important. Paying homage and plugging these other places is a really important.

really good thing to build up the sort of international ecosystem of left-wing independent media, something that I don't think we've ever really had before, is starting to emerge in the technological age, and it's a beautiful thing, and they're certainly playing their role. So go support them in whatever ways that you can. I wholly agree with that. Cassatchin News is a very important resource. It's in English, I should mention. It's the English affiliate of a Spanish language news agency radio station in Bolivia. So this is meant for people like you, anti-imperialists, people on the left that are English speakers and want to know more about Bolivia as well as they're expanding their coverage

to cover more and more of Latin America as time goes on. It's a very important resource. And since you mentioned, Camilla, I think that it would be remiss of me to not mention that I've interviewed her before on the David Feldman show. It was, I believe, briefly after Luis Arce was elected to bring Moss back into power and get rid of the coup, fascist leadership of the country. And I brought her on to the show to give us a retelling briefly of the events of the coup, which we'll talk about in this episode as well, for people who perhaps weren't following it as closely as they should have been. and then the events that had taken place shortly after the election. So if I remember to, and hopefully I do, I'll find that interview that I did with Camilla

and link to that in the show notes as well so people can hear that little bit, which will be, you know, complementary to the interview that we're having today in terms of recent history and understanding what's going on in the current context. But definitely, I wholeheartedly agree with Brett that you should be checking out Kasachian News and supporting them if you are financially able to, and even if you're not financially able to share their news stories with people who also have an anti-imperialist mindset, it's very important that we get the word out there

about what's going on in Bolivia and help these small, but hopefully rapidly growing content creators on the left, anti-imperialist perspective from around the world. Brett, is there anything else that you want to say in terms of what we're going to be looking at with Ollie in this interview before we wrap this up and get to the interview itself. Yeah, I mean, I think this is going to be somewhat less structured than previous episodes. So, you know, we'll see, we'll see where it goes.

I'm sure it'll be sort of an organic conversation based on all these responses. I'm really looking forward to try to get a deeper understanding of the dynamics, the class dynamics, the ideological dynamics of Bolivia. And so I'm excited to dive into that and just see where Ali takes us. Yeah, I agree entirely. I mean, I've got my notes, but as you said, I think that we're going to be going a little bit less structured for the conversation. Ali, being a reporter, will be able to give us, you know, that kind of on the ground look at what's going on recently. But also, I know that Ali has a background in history.

So he will be able to give us that historical perspective as well that we're looking for in this episode. So, yeah, we'll leave it pretty open. We'll let Ali, you know, kind of lead the conversation as he wants to with us filling in kind of, questions to try to hopefully elucidate some of these historical machinations for the audience that isn't as familiar with Bolivian history and Bolivian contemporary politics as perhaps they'd like to be. And yeah, just sorry that Adnan is not here. I know that Adnan was really looking forward to this conversation and certainly would have brought a very interesting perspective, particularly in regards to the role of religion in Bolivia,

which is a fairly important factor in terms of both Christianity and the impact of Christianity on the history of Bolivia, as well as these indigenous influences within Bolivia. And it's a shame that we're not going to get to hear Adnan's input on that part of the conversation, as well as the conversation more generally. But, yeah, just hoping you're feeling better, Adnan, and you will be by the time that you hear, this most certainly. I guess on that note, let's wrap this up and let's get right into our

conversation with Ollie. So listeners, we'll be right back with our interview with Ali Vargas of Cassatchan News. And we're back on guerrilla history and we're now joined by our guest Ali Vargas. Ali, hello, welcome to the program. Nice to have you. Hi, thanks guys. Thanks for having me on. As a history graduate, I'm very pleased to be talking about history and get to every day. So thanks a lot. Yeah, we're very happy to have you here. I know Brett and I and Adnan, who as we previously mentioned, is unfortunately not able to be here today, have been following your work for quite a while and find it very important the work that you're doing.

So for the listeners who perhaps aren't already familiar with you in the work that you do, can you just briefly introduce yourself to those listeners? Tell them basically whatever you want them to know about you. Yeah, I'm Oli Vagus. I'm a reporter at Kausatran News, which is the English language website of oblivion radio station, Radio Calatio Kauka, which was, is the official media outlet of the six federations,

the tropical, the leading union that resisted the coup in 2019, and the union that built the movement towards socialism and as a political party and whichever Morales himself is the president of currently. And yeah, check out our website,

cubsatchanus.com. What began as a project to bring information about the crew in Bolivia, I think it has now been broadened into wider coverage of Latin America.

The stories of Latin America that mainstream media weren't necessarily cover. I'm talking about, you know, the foreign correspondents of the big newspapers. So, yeah, we hope with, you know, with the limited resources we have to be able to communicate,

you know, some of those voices, social movements, unions in this region. Yeah, and as I said, we find it to be very, very important, the service that you provide through Kassachin News. So thank you for that. But today, instead of talking about the most recent events, of course, we will get there. I think that it's important for us to understand the history. And of course, this is a history podcast.

But instead of taking a look at all of Bolivian history, which is very, very long, very, interesting, we're just going to focus on the relatively modern period here. Because I think that a lot of listeners are maybe only aware of Aval Morales and the coup that occurred against him and perhaps not much else in terms of the historical background of Bolivia. So we're bringing you on today to really catch us up to speed with the modern Bolivia history, maybe from mid-80s until today. So I guess we're going to focus on that more modern period, but is there anything that you would say from the earlier period in Bolivian history that would be essential for us to

understand, to understand the more recent history before we get into that? Yeah, I mean, well, there's lots of facets, of course, that we talk about. Something I often sort of bring up every chance I get is, you know, how the movement or socialism was founded. The sort of historical experiences it drew on from the traditional left, the different strands of Marxism there was in Bolivia that grew to be quite large. but, you know, ultimately wasn't able to to build a mass party capable of taking power in the way that the mass was so. The mass is a synthesis of a lot of those historical trends

along with the struggles that are going on at the time. And, yeah, it's an interesting lens through which to look at a living history. I guess I'll follow up then with the first kind of question that bridges that divide between older Bolivian history and more modern Bolivian history. So something, and I'm asking this in the spirit of Adnan, who's our religion studies expertise, the chair of religion, the religion department at Queen's University in Ontario,

Christianity really was first brought to Bolivia, or what became Bolivia, in the mid-1500s, about 1550. And relatively quickly, it displaced the Inca religion, at least in its official form, and it fell out of usage, the official Inca religion. But a lot of symbolism from the indigenous religions were kind of incorporated into Christianity. And of course, there are still plenty of individuals who practice more traditional indigenous religions within Bolivia. And I'm just curious. how religion shapes, shaped the history of Bolivia, as well as shapes the present of Bolivia,

both in terms of Christianity as well as these indigenous influences within the religious climate of Bolivia. Yeah, I mean, of course, Christianity came to all of the Americas at that point and the history of Christianity in Bolivia. What is today, Bolivia is very similar to that, of the rest of the Americas, that is to say it came as part of the conquest, the Spanish conquest, and religion was used as, you know, a tool through which to incorporate indigenous people into the system and to get them to accept their role as a sort of submissive section of, you know,

of the new colonial society to accept the cultural, legal norms of the new world, or what, of the, you know, of Europe imposing itself upon the Americas. And of course, the role of Christianity was there throughout, throughout the colonial period, the Republican period, because, you know, it's a wider question about how Latin America won its independence is something that was led by, you know, the elites, the Latin, American-born, you know, descendants of the Spanish. And so they, you know, kept Christianity as a state religion, state ideology, as a justification, more rather a tool for incorporating people with a lot of the usual arguments, you know, that we used, they used all around the

world that, you know, the meat could inherit the earth and there's, you know, there's no need to complain now, you know, the afterlife is waiting for you. but it was also about imposing European culture and ideals, art, cultural norms and through Christianity, you know, I think that whole sort of cultural Christianity, you know, large sections of Indigenous culture were completely destroyed

or were forced to transform to incorporate Christianity into it. You know, a lot of sort of indigenous dancers have to take on, you know, religious elements for them to be not banned, you know, outlawed. So that, you know, it's, but after so many centuries, you know, to what extent can you call it still a sort of a foreign ideology,

a foreign force? It's been around for 500 years. It's something that every generation, as far back as records began, were born into. So it obviously is part now of Latin American culture, Latin American thinking, and it was up until 2005, until 2006, which when Ever Morales takes power, it was still the state religion, formerly, Catholicism, of course. Ever Morales comes in, part of the process of drawing up a new constitution, a popular constitution,

it was also about making Bolivia a secular state. So Bolivia goes from being a republic to plurian national state. And yeah, one element of that is that Bolivia becomes formally secular, separation of church and state. But that's not to say as well that religion is purely something of the elites used to sort of manipulate ordinary people. I think Latin America in particular has a really important tradition of popular working class, Christianity, Catholicism, that was part, that is part of social mobilizations, part of the socialist traditions in the region. I mean, you know, without going into all the history of liberation, theology and things that was really big in, like, Central America, you know, just on the day-to-day level, I remember in the last election campaign in 2020, which, you know, which the movement towards socialism won against the coup. we were in La Paz

and we sort of bumped into this one guy is an old man selling sweet from the road with this politician Andronica Rodriguez was now the present of the Senate And you know we were talking to him This old man and he starts saying Through God we'll win You know, through God

We'll beat the coup And we'll, you know Bring back democracy for the country And he said a phrase that's you know Often used in that in America because the voice of the people is the voice of God. And we have to just trust in God and through that, we'll win. And in the actual video, and the video I took of that,

it actually went viral within Bolivia, you know, because people found it just really touching on a personal level. It spoke to people's, you know, people's day-to-day cultures. I'm not talking about people who are super religious and joining, you know, monasteries or whatever, but just, you know, the mass of ordinary people who do grow up going to church, do grow up in a general Catholic sort of cultural setting. So here stuff like that was enormously inspiring,

even if they're not hugely religious themselves, which most people aren't. But yeah, so religion is a massive part of people's day-to-day ideology precisely because people grew up with it historically. But I think one of the threats to that, is like evangelism, right? Evangelicals, which are just like popping up like, like weeds everywhere across the region. I don't think they'll replace Catholicism any time soon, but they're coming pretty close. They certainly have a lot of funding from the United States. And that's something there's a really modern that doesn't have any kind of historical precedent in Latin America.

Something that's really came about in the past 10, 20 years, what less, I'd say 10 years. And I think maybe the weight of history on the Catholic Church, the fact that it is, you know, it's the weight of its historical traditions, on the one hand, it's, you know, is its legacy, but also something that weighs it down. And maybe, you know, the evangelicals have a bit more energy and a bit, you know, I don't know, that's something for a separate study, I guess. Yeah, and you'd be talking about someone like Janina Anyas who famously was weapon, this Bible against indigenous people within Bolivia who are a very large proportion of the

population as a whole. But I want to zoom us forward in time now and actually get into the historical events. So Bolivia, as I said, has a very long and interesting history. There was essentially feudalism of the indigenous people until 1952. There was a military coup in 64, several military coups in 68, 69. There was a military regime under Hugo Banzer from 71 to 78. We'll probably talk about Banzer, a fair amount considering he not only was this military dictator for seven years, but he also was elected president again later on, I believe, in the 90s. And then early in the 1980s, there was this huge hyperinflation crisis. that really spawned a lot of neoliberal policies

to try to combat the crisis itself, which in effect, with regards to the hyperinflation, at least, it was successful, but caused incredible disparities and inequality within Bolivia. Is there anything that you want to talk about in terms of that early period there during the military dictatorship, and then getting us into this crisis of hyperinflation,

and the transition to very, very strict neoliberal policies in the early 80s. Yeah, Libya is, was at least the poorest country of the Americas, that changed wherever morale is, but it still is one of the poorest, because it's historically one of the least developed, partly because it doesn't have the sea, doesn't have a port, that is held a country back in a lot of ways, but also as well because the elites were just much, much worse at management

even than the rest of Latin America's elite who aren't master statesmen either but who did manage to achieve some level of capitalist development for their countries in a way that Bolivia kind of didn't so yeah throughout the 20th century

Bolivia is the poorest country of the Americas least developed in terms of a lot of sort of feudal conditions at least feudal style living condition is what the majority of the country lives in rural areas, which, yeah, which is the and yeah, the, the period of the dictatorships ended in 1980, you know, there's democracy and then another coupic place in 82 democracies finally sort of comes to stay. But that was also the period, you know, the early 80s when, you know, Latin America in the world was starting to

implement neoliberalism, free market reforms, you know, where there were price control and agricultural goods and things like this, that would disappear. And then suddenly there was, you know, this sort of hyperinflation, mass unemployment, just economic chaos, essentially. In the military dictatorship was sort of capitalist stability in some ways, with some elements of, you know, state controls and the economy on things like, um yeah on agriculture pricing and things once that was lifted there was just sort of total chaos so the democracy the period of new liberal democracy was just completely unstable and you know

people's first experiences of liberal democracy was in this period of economic collapse so it was I think that's part of a reason why real liberalism or mainstream, you know, democratic liberalism never really got a mass base of support within Bolivia, precisely because it was just so bad at managing the economy in its first period. And so throughout that period, you have strikes, you have, you know, attempts at coups. It's just total, total political instability, economic instability. You have, like, fascist uprisings as well in the east of the country, armed uprisings from the Bolivian Falange in the 80s, in the early 80s.

And that was the, yeah, that was the social setting in Bolivia at the time. And where you just had clash of all different social forces, none of which could really win. And the side that was in power was, you know, didn't really hold it. in any serious way. So Bolivia was a much more unstable democracy than the rest of the other South American countries, particularly, you know, many of its neighbours. So, yeah, that's how it goes into the 1990s

where, you know, neoliberalism gets consolidated in even bigger way, yeah, the privatization of what's left of the few things that are left. And that just uproots the whole society, really, destroys the countryside, mass poverty. You get migration to

the cities, but no way, no infrastructure to support anyone. So you have mass shanty towns. And it's, it doesn't feel like a country, you know. It doesn't feel like a country. There's not even transport within the country.

You know, in the 80s, the railways are privatized. and I think it was a Brazilian company brought up the railways and rather than operate them they just ripped them all up and melted it down for metal basically. It took it to Brazil so there wasn't even any ways to move

between different areas of the country so out of that failure to build an economy to build a country and a democracy comes the movement towards socialism well, the movements that

prefigure it, you know, with a proposal that Bolivia as it exists is not sustainable and you have to refound the country, refound the constitution on the basis of indigenous cultures, identities

and nations taking a leadership role, social movement's taking a leadership role to take power, you know, and refound the country. Yeah, and that catches us up, as you say, to the origin of the movement for socialism, the movement towards socialism. Can you talk about the makeup, the relationship between class, race, and indigenity in this period

and then sort of lead us into the rise of evil Morales as the leader? Yeah, I think before the movement towards socialism, I believe you had a really strong left, you know, big left, one of the strongest in the region. Strong unions focused around the mines. There were the sort of vanguard, you could say, of the working class. And there you had very developed ideologies. You had the Communist Party of Bolivia,

an official Communist Party, sort of Soviet-aligned. Trotskyism was actually a really big tendency as well within the miners' union. It wasn't a majority, but it was a very, very important. I think it was probably the, you know, one of the largest trachshkist movements in the world, really. One of the only places in the world where trotis movement really got a mass following. There were sort of left nationalist tendencies. So it was all based around the miners, you know, that section of the working class or factory workers as well.

It excluded really indigenous or campasino peasant farmers. they saw them as sort of backwards I mean they were illiterate at that time and you know they had quite a sort of orthodox view of you know we're the working class we have to be at the vanguard and these people can come in behind us if they want and that was how it was organised one element of this was in Bolivia

there's a sort of workers confederation called the Cobb C-O-B and that is sort of the confederate of all the different workers union, but also of the rural, you know, Campasino president union. And in that and their Congress, the indigenous, you know, rural campusinos, the majority, like physically in terms of numbers of people. But the Congress is saying that the miners have the most delegates, have the majority of delegates. Because it has to be the miners, the the proletariat who leave and that was never able to to conquer power at the end of the day and the military dictatorships the 60s and 70s could see that as well and they would use

they would exploit that division so I mean part of the reason Che Guevara was killed was because the rural communities he was passing through turned him in didn't didn't support him They'd been offered all sorts of things by the military dictatorship. That's who they're aligned to. And they turned on him. And there's numerous cases of Campesino peasants being used to break strikes or things like this. So there was this like historic division. I mean, there's elements of prejudice as well.

I mean, my dad is from mining town called Uncilla, in North Potosi. and an example of how society is structured is that there's a cinema in this town and the front few rows is the owner and the directors and things the back seats were for the miners and then right at the back standing room only

they allow the indigenous sort of the campasino peasants to stand at the back they weren't allowed seats the miners were allowed seats but at the back so that was a sort of you know stratification there was at the time and yeah that kind of

falls apart a bit with as you could say the fall the fall of the Soviet Union and things like this a lot of the sort of historic big left tendencies start to fall apart of it and also with

well no sorry I wouldn't say it's full of Soviet Union it was with the closing of the mines in the 80s because the whole of the workers movement was the miners when the large majority of mines were then closed down by the state in the 1980s

and then all those people were dispersed around the country many of them went to the city of Alta some went to the tropical cochabamba and to work in agriculture. People left of nothing and people left to starve. So the miners as a class

were kind of broken up essentially so that whole politics traditional sort of Marxist politics began to break down as a mass thing. but then what happens is that these people are going somewhere right they're not disappearing into thin there

they're taking those politics into different regions of the country and so some of them come to the region I'm talking to you from the tropical which is a tropical area coca growing area and they're suddenly going from being proletariat into being agricultural

workers peasants you could say so they fuse and it's there that people really rediscover indigenous identity and things like this and they fuse that with the sort of the socialist politics that they come from from the minds and that creates

you know the masses ideology which is a socialist ideology but with you know a strong basis in indigenous traditions and outlooks and that's represented as well in how the

Mass is organized. It's organized as a coalition of all different groups, workers, Campesinos. Yeah, it's a sort of coalition or confederation of all the different elements coming together. There's a sort of synthesis of all the different experiences. That's the victory of the mass. It was able to bring all those disparate forces together where others, you know, its predecessors weren't able to. Another part of the synthesis as well is like Marxist intellectuals in the city, middle class people. like the Vice President, Alvaro Garcia Lienera, like Luis Arce, the current president. He was in, you know, whenever Morales was here, building the union and stuff,

Luis Arse was in La Paz, and he was sort of ran these Marxist, economist, intellectual circles. Well, you know, study things, and that's how he came into the mass. But they're all united about, you know, their understanding the left that the left that before was inadequate and the left has to come now has to exist as a sort of synthesis of all the different social forces in the country. I'm going to follow up. We're talking about mass action and that really does drive to two pretty significant events, one of which being the Cochabamba protests in 2000, which were against proposed, I guess completed but temporarily. So privatization of the municipal water supply, and there was mass protests that were put together

against that privatization, which led to the rolling back of that decision. And then in 2002-2003, there was so-called Bolivian gas war, where, again, there was mass movements of people coming together to protest against exploitation of the natural gas resources in Bolivia. Can you talk about how the significance of these events, the protests in Cochabamba against the privatization of the municipal water supply, as well as the gas war in 2002, 2003-ish, which the gas war itself, just as an aside, was so significant that it actually led to basically the fall of the regime that was in power at the time and really did create the space for Aval Morales and Moss to step into, which I guess is kind of leading where I want you to go with that answer. but yeah just take it wherever you want yeah i think all of those uh struggles form the basis of um it showed the need for all these different groups social movements come together on a basis of like anti-imperialism i think the predecessor to these struggles was in 1990s the struggles led by ever morales in this region to defend the coqually from at that time

and the DEA and U.S. military bases that were trying to eradicate it. And that was done on the basis of, you know, Koka is a traditional part of, it's a sacred part of Bolivia's indigenous culture. And, you know, foreign forces, U.S. military forces coming in to eradicate it is like a physical destruction of Bolivian culture. That then goes into the privatization of water, bought up by a German company, Bechtel,

and the price has got 300%. So people can see that, you know, there's not just some sort of like cultural, you know, indignity, but people suddenly can't afford their water. Why? Because these foreign companies are coming in and then squeezing you for everything you've got. You know, the foreign companies are getting rich,

or for you, spending every last penny you have and not being able to buy food. And so that, you know, drew more links together in people's minds. Any other privatization of gas, but gas is the number one component of the believing economy, the number one export, it's, you know, what provides the revenues for the country. Selling off the most important thing in the country, foreign corporations, that's the last indignity, you know, how it's impossible to accept that. And the important thing was the mass was there.

It's already been built in the 90s. It could go into those struggles with that argument that, you know, Beluio has to recoup its sovereignty and we'll do it through the struggles that we were born out, you know, going into the streets, uniting different groups in the city and the countryside. And during the gas hole was the first time you had minors and indigenous campuses.

workers marching together, you know, on the same, in the, for a single course. So it was, it was a series of struggles that forced people together. And during that, you had a political party that could bill put a message, a proposal. And so that political party came the, the umbrella under which the people who participated in their struggles could then, you know, take power, conquest, you know, conquer, power. Yeah, and I think it's really interesting, and you touch on this a little bit in your last answer, the role that specifically natural resources play in the Bolivian economy and the way that Evo Morales and Moss used the realities of that to push an economic agenda. I was hoping you

could talk a little bit more about the importance of other natural resources and the way that evil Morales and the party itself approached that as an economic paradigm. Yeah, natural resources was the key part of the struggle to take back the sovereignty of the country was the struggle for control of natural resources. It's the number one key element of the struggle against neoliberalism in Bolivia. And the nationalization of natural gas and oil by ever Morales in 2006 was the number one, the most important act of the movements of socialism. The importance of that since has been crucial because, you know, I mean, a traditional social

democratic discourse would be like, well, you can improve society by taxing the rich and redistributing it to the poor, to, you know, to everyone else. And the problem with that, you know, for a start is that you have this economic model that produces this elite minority and this poor majority. And two, it's not really possible anyway in Latin America because in Latin America, state is weak. It doesn't actually have the capacity to like collect taxes. Like it's very easy to just hide your money, you know, from the state. The majority of the economy is informal,

which means that the state can't collect money anyway. So things I don't know, if a lady is selling a plate of food on the side of a road, the state doesn't even know that that's happening so that that's not taxed that's just moving the money that's going on without the participation of the state and also there's like not that many rich people the rule of the bourgeoisie is smaller

in the global south than it is in richer countries and they're not that rich of course they're the comparador bourgeoisie they're the intermediaries for the bourgeoisie in the US and Europe etc. So they're not as rich as as the Jeff Bezos and the Elon Musk of the world.

So how much tax can you even get from them? There's not that many of them and they're not that rich. So there's not, I don't think any state of the global South can get the revenues it needs purely for taxation. So what the nationalisation of natural resources allows, it means that the state

can access those profits. Those profits are turned into government revenues and those profits from the export and natural resources becomes the number one source of funds for government and that allows the government to have enough funds to invest in infrastructure poverty reduction in education health and things like this without that without that nationalization it'd be impossible the state would just exist without any of these social functions. It exists only to maintain a police force and that's just about it. So yeah, it transformed the Bolivian economy, allowed Bolivia to develop, allow Bolivia to build roads to actually be able to move about in the country. Without roads, you don't have an economy,

you can't trade, you can't do anything. So being able to do that, thanks to nationalisation, transformed people's lives and the result was extreme poverty and poverty reduced by well over 50% during everyone around of this period you know that was impossible without the nationalisation

and there's not just gas there's mining a lot of mines were reopened re-nationalised an important one going forward will be lithium but I think beyond you know a key strategy of evermore

is government now of Luisada says is not just be content with exporting natural resources, raw natural resources, but actually industrializing it, you know. So where Bolivia, before, just exported raw natural gas. Now they're looking at derived products such as fertilizer, such as refined gas. Bolivia is now refining gas. Belivia used to be, used to export natural gas and import the refined gas that you use for criminal. It's crazy. That's what Mexico does with oil. You know, they export crude oil and buy back refined oil for cars from the United

States. It's a total, you know, total waste of the country. And now Bolivia is not only producing its own refined gas, but it's exporting it as well. That means it's more expensive. The state earns more money and has more money to spend on you know, on people and development. So that's incredibly important. Same with lithium, you know.

Lithium is not going to be exported purely as salt. It's going to be industrialised to make cars, to make batteries, and all the things that lithium are and will be useful in the future. So I think that economic strategy is about challenging neoliberalism, and the neoliberalism, everyone has their power. place, right? You have the global division of labor and the place of countries that Bolivia is to send natural resources to the global north, which could then be processed. Belivia is challenging that logic, and Bolivia is challenging the free market logic. The free market failed to

provide for Bolivia for 200 years of independence. And so now, you know, state-led development, and that is what has been able to reduce poverty. There is an iron. law of neoliberalism and U.S. imperial hegemony, particularly in Latin America, but in the global South more broadly, which is that the moment that a nation decides to nationalize their national resources and not offer it up to multinational corporations, there's going to be an imperialist reaction to it, both within the Comprador bourgeoisie within the nation, as well as the international Western imperial powers themselves. We've seen it all over the world. We've and in Chile and Venezuela, et cetera.

There's always this reaction. So I was wondering if you could talk about what that reaction has and does look like, the U.S.'s involvement particularly, and maybe even the involvement of mechanisms like the IMF in trying to sort of, you know, restrain some of this nationalization. I'm going to piggyback on that very quickly, just because I want to make sure that I get this out there was a very funny anecdote that I had seen while. doing the background research for this episode, which is that, as you mentioned,

when we have individuals talking about nationalizing industries and stopping the exploitation by imperialist powers, there's always a backlash. And, of course, Aval Morales isn't a beautiful example of somebody who was planning on doing these things, did these things, and got the very obvious reaction that we've seen in the last couple of years by the U.S.,

But actually, there was a warning by the U.S. before Aval Morales was even elected. When he was running in 2002, the U.S. ambassador to Bolivia went out and started talking to the Bolivian people and said, if you elect Aval Morales, we're going to cut off all foreign aid to Bolivia and et cetera, et cetera. We're the big bad U.S. we can do whatever we want. And if you elect this guy that's saying is going to nationalize the industries, we're going to make life hell for you. Well, it turned out that it ended up biting the U.S. ambassador in the rear end because that statement alone actually drove a lot of the enthusiasm for Avo in that election. And even though he didn't end up winning it, there was, it's just interesting to see these backlash. As you have Avo saying that he's going to nationalize things.

There's a backlash from the United States. But the backlash from the United States actually led to a backlash from the Bolivian people who came out and droves for him. in that election, which he was very close to winning. And then the next time that there were elections, he was successful. Anyway, just an anecdote to throw in there. Ali? Yeah, no, absolutely. The US involvement has been permanent, you know,

throughout Eiffon Morales' this period in power. I would say the primary mechanism through that was through the millions and millions of dollars they follow every year to opposition groups, entire media outlets, some of the biggest mainstream media outlets in Bolivia, which is the Fides, Agencia and Noticia

Fides, is funded by the National Endowment of Democracy. Ervol, another big mainstream media outlet here funded by the NED. They support this ecosystem of opposition media directly from Washington,

numerous sort of shady so-called youth groups and things like this. And then I think WikiLeaks revealed as well how they funneled money to the really extreme violent sections of the opposition in 2008-2009 but in the east of the country

they're essentially a right-wing uprising calling for the secession of the Department of Centre Cruz from the rest of Bolivia and during that time we had leaked showed how the US State Department funneled around $2 million to those groups that led those movements

So there's been a permanent sort of harm of destabilization from the United States. You know, the United States Embassy is, you know, coordinates with political leaders within the country. The former president of the Senate revealed how in the run-up to the coup before the election, whichever morale is won in 2019, the State Department official came to Bolivia, held a meeting. at the U.S. Embassy with the ambassadors of Argentina and Brazil, Argentina and the Macri at that time, he told them that if ever Morales wins, you need to start boycotting their gas, stop buying their gas. And Argentina and Brazil were the number one clients of oblivion gas. So it would have been essentially a form of economic sanctions, an economic boycott on the country.

That was the sorts of things that the United States was coordinating at the time. Obviously, their role in the hour yes, was very well. known the role that the OAS had, enforcing Washington's interest in Bolivia, producing a report that was completely debunked about electoral fraud under Evers. So yeah, I think the U.S. Embassy has been present throughout Bolivian history, you know, during the period of the military dictatorships, training those military dictatorships, coordinating intelligence operations, military operations with those dictatorships, you know, supporting propping up those dictatorships, following that, the war on drugs, you know, supporting the neoliberal governments of the 90s and nearly

2000s, and then leading a permanent campaign, millions and millions of dollars funnel to, you know, far out opposition groups within the country. So, yeah, I think it's, it's something that remains with us today, you know, I think it's stronger action. should be taken, identifying and dismantling sort of networks through which this money is funneled to the Bolivian opposition. The IMF as well was something that's been present throughout, you know, the neoliberal period. And before ever moralistic power, the IMF had their offices on, they had an entire floor

within the building of Bolivia's central bank. And when, just before ever moralistic power, the president before that comes mess. who's still the main opposition leader he said nationalization of gas is impossible I've been told this by the World Bank and the IMF is impossible to do Evan Morales knows this

why is he proposing it so that was the IMF would just dictate economic policy during that period and once they were kicked out of the country and Evan Marales when Bolivia finally had the room to achieve some economic growth for the first time in its history

So I guess now I'm going to turn to probably what's going to be the easiest and hardest question to answer at the same time because there's so much to say. But on the other hand, there's so much to say. Ava Morales has been an ever-present talking point of this discussion. And we would be remiss to do an episode on the modern history of Bolivia without devoting a section to Ava Morales and the coup. So for listeners who perhaps are vaguely aware of Abel Morales, but haven't really looked into him, his background, his policies, the effects he had on Bolivia, as well as the coup, you know, maybe they heard that it happened, but they don't really know the mechanisms that this took and the effects of it, as well as the aftermath of it, because it really hasn't been covered in mainstream media very much. That's why we're trying to use our platform here, such as it is, to get folks to understand what was happening. here. So can you just take us through, again, there's so much to say, but in a relatively condensed form, who Evo Morales is, of what he did for Bolivia in his time in office, and then

the coup. Can you just take us through that? Yeah, Evo Morales is, you know, he grew up in poor indigenous, you know, Campesino family in Ouro, which is an Andean region, sort of herding Lama's extreme poverty, you know, the house he grew up in, we visited the house he grew up in when he returned to Bolivia last year. There's a house made of mud, you know, yeah, just real extreme poverty. Due to that poverty, his family migrated, some number of different places. For a short while, they went to Argentina and back to Bolivia. They settled here in this region, Tropico, Cottrabamba. It's a much richer sort of the region.

But at that time, it was essentially uninhabited. It was forests and jungle. And out of that jungle, people made, you know, their lives because they had nowhere else to go. People grew, start growing coca, fruits, rice, things like this. And it was here that Evermorel is starting becoming a union leader. Because you could see the presence of the DA, oblivion military

that was trying to eradicate their crops and he said you're never a political person but he could see the abuse that's going on that's where they formed unions and during

as they form the unions you know you have all these different people you know as I said people are ex-miners and things like this bringing different sorts socialist ideas

you know anti-imperialist ideas and through that struggle against the DEA, they, you know, they become quite ideologically formed in a lot of ways. And in the course of that, you know, they become, they're getting contact with different social movements in different parts of the country, with some Marxist intellectuals, like Alvaro Garcia-Linera and stuff.

And that's where it's that union, the six federations, that creates the mass, it's they who create the mass. They call it the political instrument to be the political wing of their movement, not a political party, because the political parties exist as part of the political class, the neoliberal political class in Bolivia. This is to be the political instrument of their union. And then they take that to the rest of the country, to the national workers' confederations, and it's debated and more people affiliate to it.

And then it grows in, by the end of the 90s, it's a coalition, a big coalition of different movements. And they contest the 2002 election, and they come second by whisker, you know, and that sets a station to win in 2005. But yeah, everyone Morales was the key person that put the argument for the need for this political instrument. Not enough for us to just constantly defend our community. We have to actually move beyond that and take political power. Because if we don't take political, how we'll always be victims? We'll always just be defending in a defensive position. We have to take power and actually provide solutions on a deeper level.

And that is the guiding idea behind the mass. And that's what they took to social movements in the rest of the country, convinced them of the need to do that. And that was how the political instrument was born. And that's how it took power. You know, that we're not going to just condemn ourselves to be victims forever. And I think that's in stark contrast with, you know, the NGOs of, like, indigenous rights and things like this. And they say that our political parties contaminate these communities, you know, these communities should just, you know, we should be promoting these struggles that the communities have over, I don't know, this river that they have or this.

bit of land, this identity, but the political parties, the politicisation of this ruins it all, you know, and that's because they want, they want to maintain, you know, the status quo, but with, you know, more rights, a bit more rights, a bit more, you know, improves the living standards of people a little bit, but still maintaining the structures. Everyone Morales are saying, no, we need a political party. If we don't have a political party, we'll always be governed by others. Yeah, and that leads well into the fascist coup that we've heard a lot about. And I was wondering if you could get into that,

but specifically get into who the right wing in Bolivia is, like what its factions are, maybe the role that race plays, because I think there's interesting similarities between the far-right fascists in Bolivia and the far-right fascists in the U.S. in Brazil and Venezuela because these patterns of class and reaction continue to repeat under capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, et cetera. So who is the right wing in Bolivia and how did they manage to employ the coup?

The right wing at the time of the coup, and still today, is a completely divided force, divided in a number of ways, particularly on regional and cultural lines. But they're able to achieve a certain level of unity purely on the basis of their hatred. or ever moralist, you know. So one hand you had the sort of a really far right traditionally fascist elements in the east of the country, Santa Cruz with people, Fernando Camacho, various sort of fascist youth groups there. In La Paz, in the Andean regions, more of a, the tradition of the right is more of sort of liberal

neoliberal traditions but all of them came together during the coup to overthrow from Iran after the coup they all began fighting each other once again and I think the key divide in Bolivia is in the west of the country you have a much more

a right wing that's focused that's more tolerant that's slightly more progressive that understands a need for some level of social rights and recognition of the majority of people and the east of the country landowners,

big business owners who have an ideology of open fascism essentially subjugate the rest of the country impose that through force and those two forces haven't been able to unite the two main parties in Bolivia

Carlos Mesa who's from the way that's liberal tradition in the west of the country and now there's Fernando Camacho Kremos who's of that fascist east of the country. But those two, despite the different ideologies, were able to come together to carry out the coup and to appoint Hennina Agnes as the president in November 2019. So we saw that unity between liberal and fascist elements of the Bolivian opposition, that they were able to come together at key critical moments. So that, I think that is the main map of who the

right-wing are. But the right-wing have always been a minority because they're partly with the Bolivian bourgeoisie isn't particularly developed. They've never been able to match the mass in being able to present, you know, positive vision for the country. The mass present a vision of economic sovereignty, of pluri nationalism, which is recognizing all the wealth of Bolivia's indigenous nations and bringing them together, you know, unity and diversity, that as a national identity. What was the national identity of the Bolivian right? It was a patrician, you know, a view of them from the minority.

That's not a vision that's capable of uniting the country. Their economic proposals are weak because their whole period in power, both last year during the coup and during the neoliberal period, the results of their economic management, of their free market. reforms was collapsed, there's economic chaos, mass unemployment, poverty on a mass level. So they haven't been able to present a positive economic vision for the country. So that means that they haven't been able to build up a genuine mass base of support. That is a bit different in other Latin American countries, like I say Chile, which, whose bourgeoisie

have been able to generate along growth, development of the country, in capitalist terms, but still, you know, impressive economic growth, which, you know, lifts some sections of people out of poverty, but of course mostly benefits the elite. But that better, more prudent economic management means, you know, there is a section of that country that supports the right, that on an ideological level, of their own principles. Whereas in Bolivia, there's no proposal. They just have no proposal.

So it's an incredibly weak ideology. They're not able, they haven't been able to win elections since the 90s, really. And they're not going to be able to win either. There's no possibility for any of the current party to be able to present themselves at the next elections. And you only hope for the Bolivian opposition

to get rid of the mass and power is it to divide the mass because the mass as it currently stands, incorporates the majority of society under that vision that I outlined. And that leads us very well to the last question that I have. I know that you're almost out of time, so I'll let you talk as long as you want on this question and then when you feel like you need to, if you need to go, tell the listeners how they can find you

and I'll read us out. But you mentioned at the very end here that Moss is back in power. Luis Arce is the current president of Bolivia, very much the candidate of Aval Morales. But we've been talking about the modern history of Bolivia, and history is made every single day. And as you said, the fascists are going to continue to try to figure out how to get themselves in power. So this last question is a little bit of prognostication from you. again, keeping in mind that we're recording this about a month in advance in terms of when it's going to be coming out, but what do you see coming down the pipeline now in Bolivia?

What do you see being the next big things that people should be watching out for, and that'll lead us into, you know, telling the listeners how to find you because they can certainly keep up with all of these developments by following you? Well, I think something really exciting going on in Bolivia at the moment, now that the mass has returned to power, is the economic reconcernment. destruction of the country. So last year was characterized under the coups, characterized not only by the repression and persecution that there was. I think the number one issue for most voters last year was the economic collapse that was triggered by the Aeneas government

by the fact that she essentially closed down the big state development projects, state industries that had been built up under Morales. That triggered, you know, mass unemployment, a collapsing sort of national production output. And what's happening now is that Luis Arsson, who was the economy, he's an expert economist, he's studied economics, he's got a master's degree in economics from Warwick University in the UK. And then he was the one who built the economic model with Ever Morales. It's around the 14th.

He was there the whole time in Evermorenus's government. He's a key architect of everything that ever built. So what Luce House is doing now is re-opening the state industries. So that is to say, I mean, just near here, about an hour away from here, there's a giant factory plant that produces fertilizer, ammonia fertilizer. That's something that's used everywhere in the country. And Bolivia was a net importer of this. And now, Bolivia, well, under Evo Morales,

Bolivia built a plant to be able to produce this within the country and for export. Anya's regime closed it down. They just closed the factory gates by everyone who worked there. Part of their ideology of shrinking the size of the state. And Bolivia went back to being an importer of fertiliser. Now that plant is being reopened. About a month or two is going to be fully operational. So that's another, I think right by that plant is another factory.

There's a juice factory. It buys fruits from local producers. and create sort of juices, pulses that can be sold abroad. That's state-owned. That was closed by Anyas, opened again by loose outer. And factories like this exist in every single part of the country, in every region, every province.

And all of these state industries are being reopened. Every week there's a new one being reopened. So that's a really interesting political project, which is already producing results, I think. And I think we're at Kalsachi News, Kausatian News.com, we're going to be reporting on that. And we're putting on the results. Excellent. Again, our guest was Ali Vargas, reporter at Kassach News.

I'll spell that for the listeners who, you know, maybe aren't looking in the show notes to see how to find that. It's K-A-W-S-A-C-H-U-N news. Ali, you want to tell the listeners how they can find you on Twitter, for example? Yeah, I'm on Twitter. at Ovagos 52, at Calcetia News as well. And yeah, we have a patron as well. Every contribution welcome to help us, you know, keep sustaining the work, you know,

in, you know, without the sorts of resources that NED funded outlets have. So, yeah, thank you guys for having me on. I do have to nip off. I've got to go on the radio now in a few minutes. But, yeah, it's great to discuss this. I love talking about history. I studied history and I love Bolivian history.

So I hope I get a lot more opportunities like this one. Absolutely. It was a pleasure talking with you. And as we said at the top, Brett and I are big fans of the work that you're doing. So keep it up. Solidarity. Thanks, guys. Solidarity.

Listeners will be right back with the wrap up. And listeners, we're back with the wrap-up. We just had our conversation with Ali Vargas of Kastachan News, a very interesting conversation that hopefully, and I know it did for me, but hopefully for listeners as well, will help use history to understand the current events of what's been going on in Bolivia and what, hopefully, to look forward to going forward from the present. As I mentioned, history is made every day. And Bolivia, it seems to be.

at a more rapid pace than you would typically expect. There seems to be quite a bit of history being made there all the time. So, yeah, I think that hopefully this conversation helped ground that understanding for the listeners a little bit. Brett, I know that you have a lot that you want to say about the conversation that we just had. So why don't I just unleash you and let you get that underway? Sure, yeah. A couple of big points I want to make. Don't want to drag the outro out too long.

but one point I wanted to make is this idea around election fraud. So, you know, Ali mentioned this happens in Bolivia. The rhetorical thrust behind the fascist coup in Bolivia was this fake notion of election fraud on the part of Moss and Evo Morales. So that was sort of the justification used to be like, well, you know, we're taking back the country because this was a stolen election. You know, and I think it's very important to understand this is a crucial pillar of right-wing reaction and U.S.-backed imperialism the world over. We see it in every country that the U.S. doesn't like. There's always this shadow casting, you know, with the help of the U.S. and international corporate media to suggest that these elections were stolen by these left-wing formations, and therefore anything after that is more or less justified because the left stole it, right? We saw it in Venezuela.

We see it in Bolivia right now. And this is what I think is really crucial and really made me think of. Think and keep this in mind. It's going to be tried in Brazil. There was recent conversation between the intelligence agencies of the U.S. and Bolsonaro. And out of that meeting, Bolsonaro came out and said, we're going to be highly on the lookout for election fraud. Right now, Lula, for example, has huge support in Brazil. there's really little to no doubt that if a fair and open free election is taking place,

Bolsonaro, we're more than likely lose, but they're already setting up the game. They're already offering the playing field on which an attempted right-wing coup can take place if they lose these elections. So watch Brazil very closely and keep in mind the history of how the accusations of election fraud are used. And, you know, I'm just saying, mark my word, when it happens, there's going to be this attempt. And it's so sick and the consequences of U.S. imperialism are so sort of weakening to the entire system and structure of the pseudo-democracies that we have under capitalism, that that election fraud has now come home.

The last election between Donald Trump and a right-wing Democrat Joe Biden, you know, 75% of Republicans to this day still think that the election was stolen from them. And I'm willing to almost say that Republicans will never lose a national election again in which there's at least not a large component of their base and their media outlets who suggest it was stolen. That's the new game for the right here in the U.S. Now, usually this has been foisted on other countries. You know, those countries, they're the ones that have these election frauds and all this tampering and et cetera, et cetera. That's come home. And so now that's going to be a hallmark of American politics. going forward as the

minoritarian rule of the Republicans gets more and more desperate to maintain power at all costs, even with the enormous advantages they have with the electoral college, the reactionary Senate, etc. So be on the lookout for election fraud accusations in Brazil

and watch how it continues to play out here in the U.S. Anything, Henry? Yeah, I'm going to butt in here for a second. So just listeners, since I don't think that we've mentioned it yet, in fact, I'm pretty sure that we haven't. We're recording this on July 9th. So this episode is not going to be coming out for just a little bit more than a month from now. We're actually ahead of the game right now. But just in case we see these things

developing in Brazil, like Brett is saying, just be aware that we're recording this on July 9th. And also, you mentioned potential election fraud calls in Brazil, which, as you laid out, is looking like it very well could be something that is trotted out in the eventuality that Lula is successful in the presidential election. This is actually going on right now in Peru, where Pedro Castillo recently won the election, this relatively far-left candidate, although his cabinet as things stand, again, recording on July 9th, is a little bit underwhelming for my liking. He's putting a lot of moderates into pretty key roles within the cabinet, particularly

within economic roles, whereas he was viewed as a pretty far-left candidate. So that part, you know, I'm not super. excited about those decisions. But nonetheless, Pedro Castillo absolutely is a candidate that we should be happy won the election, particularly given the fact that he was running against Keiko Fihimori, who is a relatively neo-fascist candidate, whose father is a neo-fascist former president of Peru, who's currently imprisoned for crimes against humanity and massacring large numbers of people during his time as president. This is who the alternative was.

And the election was very close. And in the lead up to the election, Keiko Fihimori said, all of the systems are in place. Everything's going to go fine. This election is going to go real smooth. And if Castillo says that there's election fraud, he's lying.

He's just a sore loser. The shoe's on the other foot. Keiko Fihomori actually ended up losing in this election. Again, it was a relative. close election, but she lost by all, all reasonable accounts. However, before the results were even finalized, she came out and said, we see election fraud all across the country. These people that are saying that they're for Castillo are packing the ballot boxes and all kinds of stuff. And this has been going on for like a month now at this point. And she's still saying that there's

mass election fraud in the country and she's going to fight tooth and nail to take her place, the rightful place is president of the country. And of course, the U.S. hasn't weighed in on this yet. It's been going for more than a month. And again, all sources indicate that Pedro Castillo, this left-wing candidate, one, fair and square in this election, but because the right-winger, this neo-fascist candidate, whose father was very friendly with the United States during his time in office,

it's very fair to say. Because she's the one that's claiming election fraud, there's, you know, even though there's no evidence for it, the U.S. is maintaining quiet about it, whereas if the shoe was on the other foot, Pedro Castillo would have been called this, you know, anti-democratic, an anti-democratic despot who is trying to instill, you know,

strong man rule in the country undemocratically, et cetera, et cetera. So this is something that we're seeing right now, and hopefully this will be resolved by the time this episode comes out and Pedro Castile will be in office, But as things stand currently, this is exactly what we're seeing in Peru. I've done a few interviews with a comrade, a Peruvian comrade, Kayla Poppichette, to talk about Peru. And hopefully by the time this comes out, I'll have another interview out with her as well from the David Feldman show.

And if I do, I'll have a link to that interview in the description as well, since it's germane to this. But anyway, sorry for budding in Brett. continue with your thoughts on the interview. That was a great point. And we saw the same thing with Juan Guaido and Venezuela. They went so far as to literally just have America and its closest allies declare that Guido won because, you know, Maduro winning must mean the election was rigged and fraud, even though in many ways, it's just as if not more so open and free elections in Venezuela as there are in the U.S. So there's, they will go to great lengths. And Guido wasn't even running for

that office. It's just funny to mention. I mean, it wasn't like the guy that took second place said that they stuffed the ballot boxes and therefore he should have won Guaido wasn't even running for president of Venezuela and they just kind of installed him into there and I believe again this this will be a little bit dated at this point because again we're recording July 9th just going to keep saying that to preface things that we're saying I believe that there was just a letter sent from Joe Biden to Juan Guaido within the last three or four days telling him you know congratulations on the independent Independence Day of Venezuela or something like that. I remember seeing it a few days ago. I could be wrong on the context of that letter, but nonetheless, Joe Biden recently, within just the last few days, is still sending letters to Juan Guaido as the leader of Venezuela.

Again, a guy who never even ran for president. But I digress. Feel free to continue. Yeah, I forgot about that part of it. That's utterly absurd. But another thing that I wanted to mention about the interview, view itself. This, you know, this is something that we stress on on Grill History, on Red Menace, and on Rev. Left, you know, in Bolivia, he talks about the history of U.S. involvement

and how even during the coup, before the coup, leading up to the coup, that these media outlets, these astro-turfed organizations were directly funded by the U.S. Fascism, the world over, we can go to the contras, we can go to the right-wing in Venezuela, just anywhere you want to point in the world where this same battle. that basic thing has happened. Fascism, the world over is funded, armed, supported, and inspired by the U.S. government. This is our tax dollars, right? If you're an American citizen, you go to work, you pay taxes. Those taxes do not go to making sure you and your family have health care, have child care, have affordable higher education, have infrastructure that's not

crumbling everywhere you look, buildings that aren't collapsing. Nothing is reinvested in the people, but this money does get funneled. You go to work every day so that money can get funneled to right-wing psychopaths the world over to overturn democratic elections and majoritarian movements and leaders. So like you, not only are we in the belly of the beast and our government's doing this terrible stuff,

we're funding it. Now we know that big corporations and rich people don't pay taxes, little to no taxes, right? That recent report from ProPublica come out and shows just how little the richest people in the world, in human history, pay back into the public coffers. I personally, this is a little insight into my personal finances, if you will, 50K last year for my entire family, right? My wife's not working. We have two kids, a third one on the way. That's a decent income for sure, but nothing

that you're living luxurious lawn. I pay 10K of that 50K in taxes. That tax rate is insanely higher than a Jeff Bezos or a Warren Buffett has to pay relative to their overall wealth. And where does that money go? Again, not to make sure that me and my family have health care, child care, any of the things that we need. It mostly goes into defense, into, you know, all these, this warmaking the world over. And part of that war making is funding these far-right fascist organizations and groups to overthrow elections and democracy and freedom. So we need a big military to spread democracy and freedom, it's Orwellian and that it's the exact opposite of that. It's the destruction of freedom and the destruction of democracy and the destruction of self-determination and liberty for

people the world over. So I think that is really important. And if we're going to change the world, if we're going to meaningfully address climate change, we're going to have to let people self-determine. We're going to have to let people control their own resources and land. And that's going to mean anti-imperialism and the utter destruction of the U.S. Empire and U.S. imperial hegemony. It is a prerequisite to a building a better world globally because the U.S. is the sort of core power behind fascist reaction the world over and corporate destruction of the planet. So I also wanted to make that point. I have one more to make, but Henry, anything you want to, you want to? No, I just, I agree with every word that you've just said, particularly the pernicious role of the United States within these fascist movements,

in particularly in the global south where these things tend to just kind of slide by with very little attention paid to them, both within those countries themselves, there's not generally the infrastructure to kind of report on how the U.S. is aiding in these fascist movements, but also within the Imperial Corps itself, you're never going to hear about these things. Think of, and again, we're dating ourselves here, but two days ago, the U.S.-backed dictator of Haiti was assassinated. Dovin el-Mois was assassinated. Did you hear on any of the mainstream media

that there was protests of upwards 100,000 people out in the streets of Haiti for well over a year, two years, because this individual, again, a U.S.-backed dictator with very brutal policies, refused to leave office and postponed elections and just decided that he was going to stay? Did you hear about any of this in the Imperial Corps?

via our mainstream media. Of course not. This man was a puppet of the United States. But since it was a world leader that was assassinated, they had to cover him. And how was he portrayed then in the media? Well, this guy, you know, he was not such a good guy. Well, it's easy for them to say that when he's dead, but when he was alive, the U.S. was absolutely not going to say anything about him because he was a brutal ruler that was absolutely explicitly backed by the United States. And to highlight his regime in any way while he was alive would have only underscored the fact that the united states is backing these dictatorial regimes in the global south and we can't have that and that's why you heard nothing about what was going on in haiti these hundred thousand person protests that were going on for

years against his brutal uh rule you don't hear any of that while he's alive but when he's dead then they're willing to come out and say yeah you know not really a great guy yeah that's all i wanted to to add on that point. But feel free to continue to your final point. And when they cover the Haitian situation in the U.S. It's never mentioned that the U.S. history has never mentioned. The role of the U.S. has never mentioned. None of that is mentioned. It is presented implicitly as if these failures are the failures of Haitian culture and political dysfunction. That this is a result of like these crazy global South countries with these strong men dictators and oh, here we go. You know, Haitian society is collapsing once again because the Haitians can't govern themselves, et cetera.

So that's the implicit argument that underlies these sort of pseudo presented as objective coverage of these places. That's the implicit argument there because if you omit all that history, the U.S. support, the ideology of the Haitian leader, how he got to power, by omitting that, you are advancing an implicit claim itself and that really is it. and to a white supremacist society that is inculturated to see black people and the poverty of black people broadly as a dysfunction of black culture well that's that that fits right into their worldview already so it's a very easy pitch to make last point i want to make about the argument i'm going to butt in one second sorry because since you brought up Haiti a bit more understanding the history is essential and again you're not going to get it from the mainstream in the United States.

From the beginning of Haitian independence, the Haitian independence movement was a successful slave uprising. What happened then? Haiti was independent from France, but they had a $20 billion endemnity that they had to pay to France for lost income to the plantation owners,

these slave owners from France. France said, you know what, our poor slave owners, they really had to suffer a lot because of your independence. you're going to owe us $20 billion. And Haiti's been having to pay that ever since then. That crippled the Haitian economy and Haitian development for over a century.

And then even in more recent times, look at what's happened as a result of these natural disasters. And I'm putting natural disasters in quotes because the things like, for example, the earthquake, it happened naturally. But the absolute calamity that happened afterwards was nothing. about it. It was a lack of care and a lack of support from these countries that have the resources to be able to assist Haiti in their response to these, again, quote-unquote, natural disasters. And we've just had an incredible NGOification of Haiti ever since then, which again has done nothing to actually aid the people of Haiti. It's only managed to put the control of Haiti and the resources within Haiti and the hands of people outside of the country.

But again, you're never going to hear this. We heard very glowing things about how the Clinton Foundation was going into Haiti to help out the Haitian people after these natural disasters. Where did the money go? All of these people were donating money to aid the people in Haiti. None of the money ever got there. The Clinton Foundation looked really good in the media, though. And then we, heck, we kidnapped the leader of Haiti.

We literally put him on a plane and flew him to the Central African Republic. And this is another leader at John Bertrand Aristide, who was relatively pro-U.S. in his ideology. But when he stepped out of bounds, just a little bit too much for the U.S.'s liking, despite his overall alignment with the U.S., as soon as that happened, the U.S. kidnapped a foreign leader and transported him to a different continent so that they could install different leaders within the country that were even more friends. to the United States, and that's eventually after a few changes of regime since then, how we ended up with Jovan el-Moyis, this U.S.-backed dictator

in power. But again, you never heard any of that in the mainstream news. And anyway, I'm ranting now. So, Brett, feel free to go to your final point. I get very angry when I hear about Haiti because of the absolute dereliction of duty of anybody in the media in the United States to do

any appropriate coverage of why Haiti is what it's like. It's all because of the legacy of colonialism by the French and imperialism and neil colonialism by the United States since then. Right. Anyway. But the moment Russia makes a fake Facebook page during a U.S. election,

we have three years of coverage about how it is ungodly to interfere in the election of other countries in this. We cannot stand for it. Absurd, absurd. And often... And never mind that the U.S. has a long history of interfering elections abroad... Including Russia. Yeah, the whole history.

We were the ones that ensured that Yelps. and got reelected but again never talked about anyway sorry absolutely amazing yes um and okay so yeah that's all amazing for sure but the last point i wanted to make about the interview itself with ollie is this idea of of moss right the movement towards socialism party um being a synthesis of social forces you know the unionists the marxist intellectuals the indigenous people etc taking these forces that in the past have been disparate and have sort of their own origin stories that overlap but are sort of particular and taking them, synthesizing them into a political party that can then articulate the goals of those social forces and then pursue political power to implement the goals

of those social forces. The U.S. needs something very similar to that. We can talk about a vanguard party in the style of the Bolsheviks or the early CPUSA, the Black Panther Party, or Moss movement towards socialism, which is, I think, even more likely as a mass movement to be able for us to do is to create that. Now, there is huge parts of the so-called American left that are still convinced that they can do this more or less by breaking into the Democratic Party and taking it over. But we know as good class analysis, as good historical materialist, as good anti-imperialist, that the function the Democratic Party serves in the donor class that they bow down to

will never allow a taking over, not only not allow a taking over the Democratic Party, they won't allow a left wing to really emerge and take power in the Democratic Party even as a small section within a broader coalition. That's unacceptable. And the Democratic Party itself, like Obama making sure Bernie doesn't win the primaries, I mean, that's too much for them to accept in the same way that, step if you're a foreign leader and you're more or less aligned with everything the u.s does stepping out of bounds just a little bit is enough to implement a fascist military dictatorship to

kidnap you to overthrow your entire government and slaughter countless people um so we have to take seriously this idea that we're never going to be able to infiltrate the democratic party we shouldn't even try we need to build powers and synthesize social forces that are outside of the democratic Party and willing to confront it. You know, we do not need to wrap ourselves up in the dog shit Democratic Party brand. We need to treat them as an enemy just as much as the Republicans are an enemy of working people, of black people, of indigenous people, et cetera. So I think the U.S. really, I think can move in that direction.

I think there is a mass support over the last several years being built up in the U.S. for socialism, even as confused as people have in their head. what socialism means, there's still this general broadening, especially among young people, millennials and Gen Z, recognition that our entire futures are on the line. This capitalist system has utterly failed us, and people are looking for alternatives. And the movement towards socialism is one sort of paradigm, one example that U.S. leftists can follow to make our political program not just a bunch of disorganized social forces that rise up here and there whenever they're particularly put upon.

but can synthesize those into a sharp-edge party that can politically fight for what we believe in and synthesize these different forces in a positive direction. And I think we should and can learn from that. Now, the big difference here is the strength, as Ali mentions, of the local bourgeoisie. So because of the relative weakness of the Bolivian bourgeoisie, it's easier to do, right? Living in this not to give us an out, but living in the belly of the beast, we have the strongest, most violent, most entrenched bourgeoisie the world over. And so that comes with a certain set of obstacles that are very hard to overcome.

But the only way we're going to overcome it is by high levels of militant political organization. The more decentralized our movements are, it might be good for some things like fighting fascist or pushing back against the state in various ways. But if we want to not play defense but play offense, we need organized political movement. and the mass party is something that gestures towards that solution, gestures towards that possibility. Yeah, and that calls back. So I've got a few things to just kind of tie some threads together here. In our last episode, which Brett, you were unfortunately not able to make it to.

It seems like somebody misses every episode for one reason or the day. It's me next. I said, although the last time that we recorded, the crossover episode, which we recently released with Red Menace, I had a fever of 102 during recording, and I ended up passing out and splitting my face open the day after that recording. So I probably should have missed that recording, but, you know, I'll still, I'll probably miss the next one. In any case, during that, the last episode that you were not able to make it with,

an organizing insurgency with Emmanuel Ness, one of the big points of the book is that you need to have movements on the ground within communities. you need to have strong union movements that are backed by political organizations, revolutionary political organizations, and only through the confluence of these things, community organizing, unions that are backed by revolutionary parties, and unions that are fighting for revolutionary goals themselves,

only through those methods are you really going to see lasting change? Because if you have autonomous unions, for example, something that he talks about in his book, a lot of times they fight for the right things, and a lot of times they actually get concessions from the ruling elite of that country. But without that backing of a revolutionary political party that they can coalesce around, those changes are always then beaten back over time by the ruling elite once the union has new leadership that isn't as aggressive or there's a new leader of the country in charge

who's going to do something dramatic to reduce the power capacity of unions, and something akin to, you know, Reagan getting rid of all of the flight controllers and replacing them with the National Guard, something like that. So if you haven't already listened to that episode with Emmanuel Ness, be sure to do so. It's a super interesting episode. And the conversation that we had with Manny after the recording was done was just as fantastic. And I'm sorry that listeners aren't going to get to hear that part because it was really, really interesting.

But that's that part of it. The other part is that our next full episode, at least, that we have planned. And this, again, goes in with electoralism. We're planning an episode with August Nymphs on his book, The Ballot Streets are both Marx and Lenin's electoral strategy and the electoral strategy of the Bolsheviks from 1905 to 1917. Very interesting book for those of us who want to know what the revolutionary theory

via electoralism of folks like Lenin were in the lead-up to the October Revolution. Very interesting, very useful for us. And again, that's the next full episode that we have planned. You know, never know what ends up shaking out. But hopefully that'll be coming out in about a month after this. So be sure to look out for that. But Brett, I agree with you entirely. We have to organize outside of the Democratic Party. I operate outside of the Democratic Party. I operate outside of, you know, the major social Democratic Party here in Germany. I'm all for alternative political organizing with smaller parties and trying to push those parties to grow in size, revolutionary parties. But we also have to not completely denigrate

every person who is trying to operate inside the Democratic Party. There are some genuinely good candidates who are trying to break into the Democratic Party. And I'm just going to give a shout out to one because I know she'll hear it because she's a guerrilla history listener. Rebecca The Parson, who I just interviewed yesterday, but the interview hasn't come out yet, although it will by the time this episode comes out, is running for U.S. Representative in the Washington's 6th Congressional District as a Democrat. Now, again, she's running as a Democrat, which I have some issues with, and we'll talk about some of those issues with August when we talk about Lenin and Marx's electoral strategy. But we're talking about somebody who is explicitly an anti-imperialist, somebody who is, you know, an anti-capitalist, who is very strong in terms of supporting a Green New Deal, in terms of housing rights for all people living in the United States. And somebody who listens to guerrilla history, you know, it would be nice to get some guerrilla history listeners in Congress. Just imagine that.

So, you know, just shout out to Rebecca. I know that you'll be listening to this. Good luck with the campaign. Listeners, if you're looking for a campaign in the Democratic Party to support, there's one for you to look into. But, I mean, I agree entirely with your point, though, in terms of organizing outside of these mainstream parties that really are organized in a way to uphold imperialism

and uphold the capitalist order. And we don't see a whole lot of movement in terms of changing that overall ideology of the policy of the party, despite some, you know, representatives who might be more progressive than other representatives. We don't see that change in overall ideology. And, yeah, and, you know, that's in lieu of another option, right? If there was another option, something similar or analogous to Moss in the U.S., I'm sure she would run under that umbrella. And so, you know, the nature of the playing field in the U.S. is consciously created so that the two-party system has a complete hegemonic

control over the electoral system. If we had another, party that could confront these two parties, the electoral realm, the electoral playing field is one that we should operate on. And Lenin said as much, you know, plenty of thinkers like Marxists said as much. The confusion comes when you think that that party is the Democratic party. But if we have another option, the electoral realm is one realm, one front on which we fight. We also fight the ideological and media narrative wars. We fight the union at the workplace floor floors. We fight on the level of like, you know, black liberation and indigenous liberation against police and state violence and the devastation of indigenous lands, etc. So all of these

multi-fronts, the electoral realm would firmly be on that. And in lieu of anything like that, we have these two options. And if you can make a difference in people's lives by running within the Democratic Party to get a position of power where you can have influence, that's as good as we can do in this moment. And that's still a worthwhile goal while these other social fronts. are being fought on and while the social organization is being built up. So yeah, no qualms with that whatsoever. So the answer, this is just a spoiler for that upcoming episode in terms of the ballots, the streets are both.

The answer is both. But we also have to look at in terms of when we're looking at the electoral realm, building a party that is truly revolutionary and truly representative of this anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist worldview that we all believe in all people that are listening to this show, I'm assuming at least. We have to build a part. Except our FBI agent that tunes in every episode. Yeah, we have one FBI agent and a couple NSA agents.

They probably, we're trying to change their mind. And, you know, when they do change their mind, we have some suggestions for where to leak your documents to. That's neither here nor there. But we do have to work towards building an alternative party in the way as you laid out, Bret. And I think that this will bring us pretty much to the conclusion in the way that Moss was brought up through the communities, highly involved with the indigenous community, which, yes, the indigenous community in the United States is very different than the indigenous

community in Bolivia, where there are a majority of the population. Here in the United States, they're not due to, you know, genocide. Let's just be frank about it. But we do have to incorporate these other movements into our anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist movement, and coales. less around one another, around this ideology to build a party. And, you know, I'm not going to come out and say what, you know, party. I, I am trying to do that through. I know plenty of listeners already know what party I attempt to, you know, support in that mission, but find a party that's representative of your ideological worldview and do

what you can to, again, foster this interaction between community, movements, the party and workers movements, unions, et cetera, because that's how we're going to make change. That's how they made change in Bolivia. And this is the way forward for us. Brett, any last words as we as we close out this episode? Nope. Just another plug for Kasachin, the news media out of Bolivia. A shout out to Camilla and Ali for doing great work. And we stand in eternal solidarity with the Bolivian working class and indigenous movement. Absolutely. I just echo that sentiment. do support Cassachian, whether financially, if you have the ability or just by, again, sharing their news articles with people who have a worldview that would be receptive to,

anti-imperialist news from Latin America with a focus on Bolivia. But again, they're expanding. The support that you can give them is really important. So on that note, Brett, how can our listeners find you in all of the excellent work that you continue to pump out all the time that I am perpetually behind on catching up on, but I do get to all of that. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Everything I do is at Revolutionary LeftRadio.com. Rev. Left Radio on Twitter. Google us. You'll find us. The three shows that I help work on is obviously Rev. Left Radio, Red Menace, and this wonderful show, Gorilla History. And I'm proud to be a part of all three.

Yeah. And I couldn't be happier to work with you on this show. I'll do Adnan's pitch for him since he's not able to make it here. But you can listen to Adnan's other podcast, the M-A-J-L-I-S, which looks at the Islamic world, Middle East, North Africa, as well as the Muslim diaspora and issues involving them. You can find that basically anywhere that you find your podcasts and also a very informative podcast. I listen to it all the time. You can also find Adnan on Twitter. His handle is Adnan A-Husain, that's A-D-N-A-N-N-N-A-N. A-H-U-S-A-N. Be sure to give him a follow.

You can find me on Twitter at H-K-N-N-N-N-N-E-C-K-1-995. You can find me on Patreon where I write about public health and science. Patreon.com forward slash Huck-1995 would be very appreciated. Living expenses are high, but nonetheless, you can find this show, Gorilla History. On Twitter and Instagram, Twitter, where Gorilla underscore Pod, Instagram, Gorilla underscore History, and you can support the show by going to patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history, with Gorilla being spelled G-E-R-R-I-L-A. On that note, we're going to close this out.

Thanks a lot, Brett. I'll see you again very soon as we'd make another recording of guerrilla history. And until next time, listeners, solidarity. You know, I'm going to be able to do. Thank you.