by Theo Russell
 |
| Dr Dominguez warns about the US threat |
As
Bolivia prepares for presidential elections in October, the Trump
administration has added Bolivia to its 'regime change' hit-list in its new
drive to destroy every left or socialist government in Latin America.
A meeting last week at Unite’s London head
office organised by the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign heard from Dan Carden,
Labour’s Shadow International Development Secretary, that under Morales infant
mortality had been halved and the numbers getting a primary education had
doubled.
Carden said that the Labour Party is
against “an international order based on resource extraction and military
intervention by wealthy countries”, and said that “Jeremy Corbyn was right on Chile,
Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya”.
Dr Francisco Dominguez, Secretary of the
Venezuela Solidarity Campaign, said that millions of Bolivians have benefited
from improved public health, nutrition, education provision and a large public
housing programme under Evo Morales.
“No other government in Bolivia's history
has done more to restore the dignity to the majority indigenous population,
including the recovery of land illegally appropriated by large landowners.
Thirty-one indigenous languages have now been registered and there is now a TV
channel in Quechua with Spanish subtitles,” he said.
Dominguez recalled the violent US-backed
campaign for autonomy for Bolivia’s lowlands in 2008, in which anti-indigenous
hatred was whipped up and many died, but, he said: “The right was defeated
politically and eventually the lowlands were won over to the Movement for
Socialism, Morales’ party.”
Now the corporate-backed warmongers in
Washington have Morales in their sights and are seeking to capitalise on a 2016
referendum, later superseded by Bolivia’s supreme court, stopping Morales from
standing for a new term.
Right-wing Bolivian MPs have written to
president Trump asking him to activate the Inter-American Democratic Charter
against Bolivia and the right-wing Cuban-US Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen
has accused Morales of “consolidating his evil grip”.
A resolution adopted by the US Congress
Foreign Affairs Committee says that Bolivia is “aligning itself with
illegitimate and illegal regimes, including that of Maduro in Venezuela”.
All this is a familiar scenario, played
out across Latin America in recent years, but follows a series of US government
statements and articles in leading Washington newspapers setting the goals of
restoring the Monroe Doctrine and eradicating all socialist-oriented
governments in the western hemisphere.
Here in Britain we must support solidarity
with all left governments in Latin America including Bolivia, Venezuela,
Nicaragua and Cuba, and demand that the UK government stops supporting the blatant
interference and regime change policies of the reactionary Trump
administration.
