Common sense would indicate that a right-wing coup government never voluntarily cedes authority to a government striving toward socialism. Indigenous peoples, working-class, and even middle-class Bolivians saw no reason to accept that notion.

And on November 16, Evo Morales Ayma — the historic indigenous leader of MAS, who served as president for almost fourteen years — insisted publicly that the coup regime is not ready to retire. The oligarchy appears to have accepted the MAS victory, he said in an interview, but they do not intend to hand power over to the people.

The plans of the Right are therefore far from clear, even two months after MAS’s crushing electoral victory. Earlier this month, police warned the new government not to put them on trial for committing massacres under the orders of the coup authorities. Last week, President Luis Arce told the army generals that rumours of a coup are unacceptable. And international experts who represent the Inter-American Court system arrived recently in Bolivia to investigate responsibility for the massacres of the Áñez regime.

It is clear that the Bolivian masses are ready to mobilize if necessary. Their actions earlier this year — particularly from July 28 to August 15, in the lead-up to October elections — have already changed the tides of history.

Ordinary Bolivians in the Andes are often said to be frugal with their words, yet they never stopped blasting the coup government through eleven months of repression. “Evo did not resign, he was forced out,” a young woman said matter-of-factly in March. Elderly women in the marketplaces unleashed streams of invective at police who tried to make them go home at curfew, which fell at high noon. Older men who retained some semblance of reserve all last year expressed their fury after the elections: “Evo Morales ended racism, but the government of that señora brought it back with a vengeance. The coup regime singled out polleras” — indigenous women — “for humiliation.” They were talking about their mothers, sisters, and wives.

Within days of taking power in November 2019, coup president Jeanine Áñez ordered the killing and jailing of protesters. When the pandemic hit, she reduced to misery the majority of the population by imposing a draconian quarantine — permitting only six hours each week outside one’s home, for months, in a country where some three-quarters survive on their earnings day-to-day.

“This is so important” — the gentleman, dignified, struggles for the right words in Spanish, since his world is Aymara — “they never respected us before MAS.” He is a master technician who had told me about the workings of mines and electrical systems to while away the hours of the quarantine; that day, he was giving me directions to the MAS victory celebration.

Through the long night of the coup regime, indigenous people organized “like ants that appear alone by day and come together at night,” in the words of one campesino, “or like the bird that dives and attacks in the piedmont where coca grows. Like a mass of fleas.”

An indigenous community leader told us as the polls were opening, “We are thankful to you for being here. Before this last year, we experienced fourteen years in which we were governed by a state that was very stable.” MAS was putting in place universal health care when it was overthrown. “Now, we have no access to doctors.”

Bolivia suffers one of the highest mortality rates from COVID-19 in Latin America, 6.2 percent as of November 12, and the third-highest rate on Earth. Despite imposing severe restrictions, the government provided virtually no testing during quarantine; logically, many COVID deaths went uncounted. Quarantine was continually extended from March through July and policed by arrogant, officious security forces who practiced no social distancing themselves, often on motorcycles with long firearms, descending on stores like an occupying army at noon or racing uphill in serpentine chains to shut people down. The lockdown was more a state of siege than a sanitary measure.

The coup government drove out seven hundred Cuban medical providers in one of its first acts. (Cuba has the lowest COVID-19 contagion and death rates in the hemisphere.) Corpses of the poor overwhelmed the capacity of the cemeteries and ambulances; many were abandoned in the streets.

For months before the 2020 elections, La Razón, the country’s newspaper of record and hardly a radical rag, accused the Right of lying and blocking elections to support an openly authoritarian government. The coup government’s election authority was so divorced from the Bolivian majorities that it prepared a public service announcement encouraging people to vote where it described indigenous protesters as “violent mobs.” In the image, a woman in a pollera was seen waving the sacred symbol of the Wiphala — the multi-coloured banner of indigenous unity — that was trampled by the right wing as they consecrated their coup with violence.

Said a protester in August, “With COVID-19, we are learning how to live with it, but with this de facto government, we are destined to die.”

On October 18, MAS’s Luis Arce won by a landslide: 55 percent. The other candidates were varying shades of right-wing. The US embassy’s choice, Carlos Mesa, garnered 29 percent, while the far-right loose cannon Luis Camacho won 14 percent and still refuses to concede. Immediately, Camacho partisans set up road blockades and camped out in front of military bases, demanding that the army and police “carry out another coup.” Mesa and his followers joined them whenever the pendulum of fake news provided an opportunity. When Donald Trump charged fraud, they took heart and echoed Trump, jubilant.

On the morning of the vote, a working-class neighbourhood leader told two of us who had arrived as official electoral observers, “Certain sectors took power by committing massacres and now they are leaving office, thanks to today’s election.” He was sure of it. The anger of working-class people was palpable but contained. They were finally voting after four postponements: a deadline of three months was announced by the “interim” government when it came to power, which it then pushed back to May 3, August 2, and finally, September 6. The rural and urban masses lost much, if not most, of their daily income under a government that refused to leave office.

The same community leader said, too modestly, “What we are doing today is a very difficult task.” Hundreds of community leaders had been forced into exile or underground, and the government had done its best to liquidate MAS. Left and grassroots media outlets had been violently shuttered. Over one thousand protesters and MAS leaders filled the prisons. (A handful of high-ranking officials found refuge in the Mexican embassy.) In actions reminiscent of Bolivia’s twentieth-century dictatorships, political prisoners were subjected to torture, including electrical shock; others were denied medical treatment for serious injuries or danger of miscarriage in late-term pregnancy; many were raped by the people guarding them; and some were put in close quarters for prolonged periods with fellow prisoners suffering from COVID.

Yet MAS persistently polled the highest in surveys; even elite pollsters predicted a first-round victory for the socialists. Despite suffering the bruising blows of the Áñez government, the indigenous masses compelled the coup government to finally hold elections.

Highland indigenous likened themselves to pajabrava, the indestructible wild grasses of the high Andes. A political prisoner recounted the authorities’ failed attempt to infect her with COVID, and hearing this, a comrade commented that it failed “because we are strong.”

MAS grew out of these diverse movements: intensely anti-imperialist, fundamentally indigenous, and often taking direction from the wisdom of organized peasant women. They devised a political path and won congressional seats. Before MAS secured the presidency, Washington had advertised Bolivia as a perfect model of neo-liberalism.

And they had an ace up their sleeve: five hundred years of virulent racism. (IPA Service)