IN Bolivia, the indigenous are mobilising in defence of their vision of democracy. Their political party Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) was stolen from them in November by venal authorities. Since December the grassroots of Bolivia has been meeting by the thousand to decide on a new political plan that emerged today in the decision to join the Front for Victory (FPV).

In the face of escalating political persecution, a stunning new strategy has been put in place. Eight thousand people are standing guard for former president Evo Morales in his home, the historic region of the Cocaleros, now a national food basket. Communities elect delegates who rotate in from across the country.

The bases and leadership are in meetings from 5am to late in the evening. Their latest multi-day march started on January 10 and ended five days later with marchers who suffered bullet wounds and dozens of detentions in La Paz, the centre of government. Since July, peaceful resistance has been met with paramilitary violence, extreme forms of crowd control, and indiscriminate arrests after the protesters disperse.

The poor believe they are saving their country from a return to neoliberalism, enacted by President Luis Arce. They are organising to protect the largest lithium reserves on Earth for the people, just as the indigenous saved their natural gas reserves in “the gas war” of 2003 that ousted a president.

Arce’s government is trying to force through an agreement for lithium extraction that has not been shared with the poor. It would allow foreigners to extract from the ground, which is unconstitutional, and it denies profits to the local region and the nation.

The contract would cost Bolivia vast sums, based on the current prices of lithium. Lithium is just the tip of the iceberg of the Arce government’s corruption schemes, which include troubling evidence of government involvement in narcotrafficking.

Morales, Arce’s former boss, shares the aims of the indigenous marchers. Morales has tried to avoid blockades for fear of the state repression they elicit. Instead, he has called for huge assemblies across the last year. Then he led a seven-day march that ended on September 23.

Atlas Electoral counted millions on the last day using an instrument they call “map checking.” On that basis, Morales said the march “was the largest in [Bolivian] history. In the city of El Alto, brothers and sisters who were awaiting us [lined on either side] wept with emotion, and the marchers, too, wept with emotion as they were received.”

After the march, a wave of arrest warrants was issued for Bolivia’s senior campesino (peasant) leaders. That action triggered dozens of road blockades in the centre of the country. Paramilitary attacks, then mass arrests, and pursuit of Bolivia’s indigenous leadership, who are campesinos, ended the blockades.

Arce then launched a manhunt and 15 charges against Morales. The alleged crime of Morales — sexual abuse of a minor — has long been denied by the supposed victim.

The charges have been dismissed three times: first, for lack of evidence in 2020 during the Anez dictatorship, after Jeanine Anez violently ousted Morales and then tried to destroy his credibility. The second time, the same evidence was tried under a different charge, although the law prohibits that practice, and was thrown out for lack of cause by a Bolivian judge. Most recently, the case was dismissed for the same reasons in an Argentinian court.
 
Even the parents of the supposed victim have been accused by Arce’s government of promoting human trafficking of their daughter. As regards the ethical bounds or dictates of legality, cases in the matter of sexual crimes must be initiated by the alleged victim. No case can be tried on the same evidence more than once, according to international and Bolivian jurisprudence.

Assassination attempts against Morales are not new. The one that took place on October 27 2024 began from an army base in Morales’s home region, in a high-speed car chase. Almost every Sunday, Morales has a radio show at the union headquarters in Lauca Ene, and since October, he has not left Lauca Ene.

Police loyal to Morales report that a Colombian piloted one of the helicopters flying above the chase and the US sent its own people who were among Morales’s pursuers. They were flown out in helicopters from the same army base. The government refuses to launch an investigation, ignoring the demands of the Latin American human rights community.

Corrupt judges — who unconstitutionally prolonged their own terms in the country’s highest courts — violated the constitution to take over the MAS party, which counts more militants than all the other political parties combined.

Today, the historic bases of the MAS opened a new path with their alliance with the FPV, which will present Morales as its candidate for elections scheduled for August 17. Current polls for the presidential race give Morales 40 per cent to 45 per cent, and those polls do not reach into the countryside where support for Morales’s “process of change” is strongest; he would win the elections if they were held today.

Cindy Forster is a member of the Los Angeles Chiapas Support Committee.