Protest held at White House against US backed coup in Bolivia

Video-Chile protest unites with the coup protest as an Indigenous speaker speaks 2 min 33 sec

On the 16th of November, the ANSWER Coalition held a protest against the US supported "soft coup" in Bolivia. A smaller group of possibly wealthy and mostly non-Indigenous Bolivians counterprotested. The right wingers claimed there was no coup, but speakers at the rally reported Evo Morales resigned in the face of "guns to his head" from the military, a week after sabotage nearly brought down his helicopter.

Partway through the protest, another protest in solidarity with hard-pressed protesters in Chile marched in and joined with the anti-coup protest. Marching with them was a contingent from El Salvador's FMLN. They arrived as an Indigenous speaker condemned the coup government's shootings of Indigenous activists in Bolivia. There have been reports elsewhere of house-to-house roundups of Indigenous residents of Brazil in some areas. Evo Morales was (and IS) the first Indigneous elected President of any western hemisphere, european-drawn bordered nation in over 400 years.

While some of the "contra" protesters displayed flags and patches associated with Bolivia's elected government, speakers at the rally reported that members of the police and military have been ripping those patches off their uniforms and burning the exact same flags. The entire coup has elements of a racist, anti-Indigenous pogrom. It is of course no surprise that a US supported coup would behave in this manner in the age of Donald Trump

During the month-long siege of the Embassy of Venezuala following the failure of a US backed coup attempt in that country earlier this year, the right wing protesters beseiging the embassy were on one occasion followed away from the protest by a discreet camera crew. They were then spotted shopping at some of the most expensive stores in all of Georgetown, confirming their identity as wealthy ex-pats who had left the country to protect their investments and their money. Certainly they seemed to have plenty to spend while others in Venezuala didn't have enough to eat thanks to US sanctions and the fracking-driven collapse of oil prices.