House Democrats Want to Know the Truth About the Bolivian Coup

House Democrats Want to Know the Truth About the Bolivian Coup

House Democrats Want to Know the Truth About the Bolivian Coup

The OAS’s false accusations led to the expulsion of Evo Morales. Now members of Congress want the State Department to investigate.

Facebook
Twitter
Email
Flipboard
Pocket

The House of Representatives voted on Wednesday night to approve a measure directing the State Department to investigate the Washington-based Organization of American States (OAS) and its role facilitating the coup against Bolivia’s three-term President Evo Morales in 2019. The provision, which was tucked into the $67 billion State Department and foreign operations spending package, instructs the State Department to gather information regarding the OAS’s unfounded claims of election fraud. The OAS’s accusations, and the US media’s rushing in to parrot these falsehoods, led to the expulsion of Bolivia’s popular left-wing president, and put the country in the hands of an unelected military junta. Jeanine Áñez, who declared herself the “interim” president after Morales was ousted, oversaw the massacres of Indigenous protesters and other human rights violations during her year in power.

“Since the day after the 2019 Bolivian elections, the OAS has helped direct a false narrative that the incumbent president, Evo Morales, and his party ‘rigged’ the election,” Illinois Democratic Representative Jan Schakowsky told The Nation in a statement. “This narrative contributed to political polarization, a military coup, and violent political repression in Bolivia as well as uncertainty for the democracy’s future.”

“The language included in the SFOPs Appropriations bill would help us finally see accountability and transparency from OAS, and ensure that it carries out its mission independently and impartially,” Schakowsky continued. “I look forward to continuing our work to make sure this language makes it into law.”

The language tells the State Department to collect testimony from “independent, internationally recognized experts” regarding the legitimacy of the 2019 Bolivia general elections, the OAS’s role, and the investigations into the political and human rights violations that occurred at the time, and to then present it to the members of Congress who have been asking for it. Democratic Representatives Susan Wild and Schakowsky led the push to include the measure in the appropriations bill, but they were building on a broader Democratic effort to examine the organization’s destructive influence in the region.

Lawmakers, including Democratic Representatives Hank Johnson, Chuy García, and Bobby Rush, have been pushing the OAS for answers, making repeated attempts to get basic information from the organization—with little success. In November 2019, lawmakers wrote to the OAS with a list of questions about its statements and initial analysis but never heard back. “Did the [Electoral Observation Mission] consider the potential effect on political violence of stability of putting forth what appears to be a hypothesis of fraud, without any evidence?” they asked.

Mark Weisbrot, codirector of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and a frequent Nation contributor, said that the House’s passage of the language is “really important” for holding the OAS and Secretary General Luis Almagro accountable for their “major, decisive role” in bringing about the coup. “Members of the US Congress can hold them accountable because they control the majority of OAS funding,” Weisbrot told The Nation in an e-mail. “We can’t have an organization that represents a billion people in this hemisphere using its power and influence to overturn democratic election results.”

Can we count on you?

In the coming election, the fate of our democracy and fundamental civil rights are on the ballot. The conservative architects of Project 2025 are scheming to institutionalize Donald Trump’s authoritarian vision across all levels of government if he should win.

We’ve already seen events that fill us with both dread and cautious optimism—throughout it all, The Nation has been a bulwark against misinformation and an advocate for bold, principled perspectives. Our dedicated writers have sat down with Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders for interviews, unpacked the shallow right-wing populist appeals of J.D. Vance, and debated the pathway for a Democratic victory in November.

Stories like these and the one you just read are vital at this critical juncture in our country’s history. Now more than ever, we need clear-eyed and deeply reported independent journalism to make sense of the headlines and sort fact from fiction. Donate today and join our 160-year legacy of speaking truth to power and uplifting the voices of grassroots advocates.

Throughout 2024 and what is likely the defining election of our lifetimes, we need your support to continue publishing the insightful journalism you rely on.

Thank you,
The Editors of The Nation

Ad Policy
x