On November 13, Democracy Now! interviewed Pablo Solon (former ambassador to the United Nations under President Evo Morales until 2011 and former chief negotiator on climate change for Bolivia), and Kevin Young (Assistant Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst). Democracy Now! is a daily, global, independent news hour.
During the second part of the 2-part interview, Pablo Solon discussed why he broke ties with President Evo Morales: “Well, I was very close to Evo Morales, and we were friends. And the reason why I broke with him was because there was this repression to the indigenous march of TIPNIS, an indigenous territory and a national park, that happened in 2011. Five hundred policemen went and beat 1,000 indigenous people. And the government said, “Oh, we didn’t order that.” But nobody has been punished. The minister of government at that time was — went now to the — went at that time to the U.N. So, for me, that was terrible, because you can make mistakes, but there are principles. An indigenous government cannot use repression against another indigenous group or anyone.”
Pablo Solon also stated: “Second, Evo Morales began to change when he was in the government…once we were able to have the new Constitution, once Evo Morales won the second election, and he got two-thirds in the Parliament, he began to control all the other institutions — the Supreme Court, the Electoral Court, the Constitutional Court — all the institutions….began to do alliances with right-wing forces, the same right-wing forces that now are against him. For example, all the laws that benefit the big agribusiness in Santa Cruz were approved by the government and by the opposition. That is why, when we had these forest fires in Bolivia this year of 5 million hectares and we began to see what laws allowed the situation, it was clear that the laws had been approved by both the government and the opposition. He tried to give them some concessions in order to have their support.”
Solon concluded that: “we expected Evo Morales to change, really, the economic structures of Bolivia, not to be dependent only on gas export, not to have big agribusiness that exists because we, as the state, give them subsidies. We wanted a real respect to indigenous rights, to the environment. But that was not the case. We went back to GMOs. We went back to biofuels. Evo Morales had plans of building new big megadams. So, you you had these problems. And that is why Evo Morales began to be very much criticized. And you had also cases of corruption, that didn’t involve him directly, but involved very high-level persons in the government, and also in indigenous and social organizations.”
Although Pablo Solon disagreed with Kevin Young regarding whether the events leading to President Morales’ resignation qualified as a coup, Kevin Young agreed with Pablo Solon that “the government of Evo Morales was mixed in terms of its record.”
You can view the interview and read the transcript here.