Bolivia’s Indigenous Peoples Survival from Operation Condor 2.0 (2019 Coup), Lithium, COVID, & More

On June 10th, 2022, a Bolivian court sentenced former de facto president of Bolivia, Jeanine Áñez, to 10 years in prison. Áñez assumed power during a violent and illegal coup in November 2019 that ousted the country’s popular Indigenous president, Evo Morales, sending him into exile, and killing over 37 people. During Anez’s short term as the illegal president, her government killed dozens of civilians, persecuted members of the Movimiento al Socialismo – Instrumento Político por la Soberanía de los Pueblos or the Movement for Socialism – Political Instrument for the Sovereignty of the Peoples (MP-ISP) and confronted the Covid-19 pandemic with incompetence and corruption leading to mass starvation in the country’s poorer regions.

Today on American Indian Airwaves, we speak with the director of the Andean Information Network, a human rights organization based in Cochabamba, Bolivia, and writes extensively on drug policy and human rights in the Andes. Katheryn Ledebur joins us to discuss the violent and illegal coup that forcefully ousted the first democratically elected Indigenous president in Bolivia, the United States government’s complicity in directly and indirectly supporting, along with American-based PR firms, the November 2019 coup (Operation Condor 2.0), the role of extractive industries such as the natural gas and lithium industries destabilizing the plurinational nation of Bolivia, plus more, and what it means for the plurinational state of Bolivia and the 24 Indigenous nations and communities within.

Guest:
Kathryn Ledebur, director of the Andean Information Network (http://ain-bolivia.org/), a human rights organization based in Cochabamba, Bolivia, and writes extensively on drug policy and human rights in the Andes.

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