This is part two in a series in which I’m sharing the letters I wrote to publications that in my opinion are doing a disservice to democracy by misreporting what’s been happening in Bolivia since the general election held in Bolivia on October 20, 2019.

This is the letter I wrote on November 15, 2019 to the author of an opinion piece in The Guardian about the resignation of Mr. Evo Morales.

Dear Mr. Estes,

I recently read your article What the coup against Evo Morales means to indigenous people like me, published in The Guardian on November 14, 2019.

I was born in Cochabamba, Bolivia and raised in La Paz, Bolivia, where my parents still live. I consider myself a mestizo of mixed ancestry with a significant proportion of indigenous blood.

I respect your right to express an opinion regarding the resignation of Mr. Morales as President of Bolivia, but I feel a strong obligation to share with you a number of facts and context that you likely weren’t privy to when you wrote your article.

Where we agree

I agree that the story of Mr. Morales’s ascension from humble beginning to the highest office in Bolivia is inspiring and Bolivia was long overdue to have an indigenous president. I also agree that Mr. Morales deserves credit for strengthening the voice of an indigenous population that was sidelined and treated as second class citizens by many, for centuries.

You also make several statements that are factually correct. Wiphala flags — which are symbols of indigenous pride — were indeed lowered and burned by some, and at least one police unit remove the flag from their uniforms. It’s also true that the homes of two members of Mr. Morales’s party were burned. I’ve also learned that earlier today, the police and armed forces were accused of using excessive force against pro-Morales demonstrators attempting to enter the city of Cochabamba. These acts are deplorable and I join you in condemning them.

However, you may not be aware that the police units that removed the flag later apologized publicly for this act or that multiple members of opposition parties publicly denounced the desecration of the Wiphala flag and demanded apologies for these acts.

You may also be unaware that supporters of Mr. Morales burned the homes of journalist Casimira Lema, who broadcast the news on a TV station that provided coverage of the protests after the election, of public university rector Waldo Albarracín, who had publicly expressed support for new elections, and of Nelson Condori, an indigenous community leader who opposed Mr. Morales.

Mr. Morales’s resignation

Your article states that what happened in Bolivia was a coup, and “a coup against Evo… is a coup against indigenous people.” I respectfully disagree with your assessment and find it both inaccurate and fallacious.

I think it’s inaccurate because the resignation of Mr. Morales does not fit the definition of a coup, which requires a sudden, violent and illegal seizure of power. Mr. Morales resigned after three weeks of peaceful protests from hundreds of thousands of Bolivian citizens of all classes and ethnicities. Upon his resignation, the Bolivian government followed constitutional law and appointed Ms. Jeanine Añez as interim president per the established and legal line of succession protocol. Thus, I interpret Mr. Morales’s resignation as the result of an electorate fed up with abuses of power.

The fallacy in your argument is that an action against an indigenous president can only be motivated by anti-indigenous sentiment. I don’t know you Mr. Estes, but I can imagine you’d agree that one cannot rule out the possibility that an indigenous president could be guilty of committing offenses and crimes that are grave enough for an electorate to demand his or her resignation.

Being indigenous didn’t preclude Mr. Morales from abusing his power, imprisoning political rivals, breaking his promises to indigenous populations, failing to protect Bolivia’s protected national forests, being responsible for the destruction of large portions of the Bolivian Amazon, repeatedly changing the Bolivian constitution to enable himself to run for office indefinitely, or from committing electoral fraud on October 20, 2019.

You quoted Mr. Morales’s statement that his only sin was to be indigenous, leftist and anti-imperialist. I don’t fault Mr. Morales for rationalizing such a defense, but making such a statement hardly makes it true.

Interim President Jeanine Añez

A portion of your article is dedicated to deriding Bolivia’s new interim president Jeanine Añez. Without basis, you state that Ms. Añez “agrees” with Mr. Morales’s statement that the primary motivation to remove him was anti-indigenous sentiment.

With all due respect, how can you reasonably make such a statement about Ms. Añez’s beliefs without any hard evidence? Your article quotes an alleged tweet from Ms. Añez from 2013 in which she disparaged indigenous people. Neither I nor a French news agency that searched for such a tweet have found evidence that it ever existed — which I understand isn’t conclusive evidence that it never actually existed — but if you were familiar with the geography, culture or history of Bolivia, you’d realize that the content of the purported tweet is non-sensical. Ms. Añez purportedly tweeted that “the city is not for the Indians who should stay in the highlands or the Chaco!!!” Ms. Añez is from the northern, mostly rural part of Bolivia — far from the largest cities of Santa Cruz, La Paz, El Alto, Cochabamba, Sucre, Potosí and Oruro — and the “Chaco” is a sparsely populated region in the southeast of Bolivia that is nowhere near the Andean region or highlands on the western side of Bolivia, where Mr. Morales finds most of his support.

You also wrote that Ms. Añez “declared herself interim president”, which is a loaded description that implies that Ms. Añez unconstitutionally and single-handedly seized power. If you had the benefit of researching Bolivian constitutional law, you’d be aware that the manner in which Ms. Añez was appointed president — even without a quorum in the senate as a result of a boycott on behalf of senators from Mr. Morales’s party — was in accordance with Bolivian law and per the established line of succession protocol, following resignations from the vice president, president of the senate and vice president of the senate.

The Bolivian economy

Your article credits Mr. Morales with the effective redistribution of wealth to society’s poorest sectors. While Mr. Morales did implement a number of social programs that benefited the poor, he’s also accused of misappropriation, corruption and stealing as much or more money than previous, non-indigenous administrations in a country where corruption has been a widespread problem throughout its most of its history.

Perhaps most importantly, Mr. Morales succeeded in derailing Bolivia’s economy, often splurging on lavish and unnecessary expenses or guilty pleasures, such as a new presidential palace, a Bolivian space agency, new airplanes and helicopters for his personal use, or a $7 million dollar museum near his childhood hometown to display the gifts he received as president and to tout his accomplishments. Mr. Morales also managed to turn a fiscal surplus when he assumed power in 2006 into the largest fiscal deficit in South America by the end of 2018.

Civic leaders Luis Fernando Camacho and Marco Antonio Pumari

Your article paints a picture of civic leader Luis Fernando Camacho “storming” the presidential palace in a manner akin to a Christian crusade. I’m afraid the sources you used to describe this event are inaccurate and lacking in context.

I followed the events leading up to Mr. Camacho’s visit to the presidential palace — as well as the visit itself — in real-time through streaming feeds from Bolivian television stations and newspapers. I also closely followed statements and speeches from Mr. Camacho and other civic leaders throughout the three weeks of demonstrations that preceded their visit to the palace.

Mr. Camacho arrived to the presidential palace peacefully, accompanied by thousands of supporters of all socio-economic and cultural backgrounds, and by other civic leaders including Mr. Marco Antonio Pumari. I’ve noticed that Mr. Pumari is rarely mentioned in coverage that posits that what happened in Bolivia was a coup, presumably because Mr. Pumari is an indigenous leader and mentioning him would weaken the narrative that anti-indigenous sentiment was the key driver of the protests that led Mr. Morales to resign.

On a related note, I highly encourage you to look up passionate statements from other indigenous leaders such as Ms. Gabina Condori Nina or Ms. Flora Quille, who publicly denounced Mr. Morales as a traitor to the indigenous people, and as someone drunk with power and unworthy of leading Bolivia.

You also wrote that “a pastor said on a video” derogatory comments about the indigenous Mother Earth deity (i.e. the Pachamama). I wasn’t physically present as the visit took place, so I cannot rule out the possibility that a pastor may or may not have said that, but I can share that neither I nor anyone I’ve asked heard such a remark. I can also objectively state that such a remark would have been extraordinarily out of place and far from representative of the sentiment expressed by a multi-cultural crowd who endorsed a message of tolerance, unity and a return to democracy.

Protests against electoral fraud vs. protests demanding the return of Mr. Morales

Your article states that “the same social movements that ushered Evo and MAS into power have taken to the streets to defend the gains of their indigenous revolution.” This statement fails to mention the degree of violence, looting, fear and intimidation that have characterized many of these protests.

In a nutshell, the vast majority of people who demonstrated to protest electoral fraud did so peacefuly while advocating a message of unity and tolerance, while many of the protesters who demanded that Mr. Morales return to power were armed, violent and some chanted “ahora sí, guerra civil” (“now’s the time for a civil war”) as they marched toward La Paz.

Many of the social movements that took to the streets to demand the return of Mr. Morales were violent and included the senseless destruction of public and private property, as well as small businesses, art galleries and 64 public transportation buses.

My own parents — both of whom are in their 70’s — hid in their apartment building with the lights out, gripping broomsticks as makeshift weapons for self-defense — as they witnessed hordes of armed men storm past their building, breaking windows, damaging cars and detonating sticks of dynamite for good measure. Mind you, all this occurred after Mr. Morales had resigned and the opposition was celebrating his resignation.

Your article also mentioned chaos and anti-indigenous race-hatred that gripped the country since the election. It’s true that circumstances were often chaotic, most often as groups of people who supported Mr. Morales violently attempted to break up peaceful protests armed with sticks, rocks, slingshots and dynamite.

You may not now that Morales’s supporters ambushed and destroyed a group of buses carrying a delegation from Potosí to La Paz to join the protests against Mr. Morales. The caravan made a subsequent attempt to reach La Paz—escorted by miners running next to the buses to protect them—only to be fired upon by snipers.

I’m aware that Mr. Morales’s government attributed the violence to their opposition, but any reasonably objective assessment of news coverage, images and videos of these outbursts of violence clearly demonstrates who was attacking whom.

I’m also confident that if you’d had the opportunity to witness firsthand the nature and spirit of the pro-democracy demonstrations that led up to Mr. Morales’s resignation, you’d know that anti-indigenous race-hate was the exact opposite of the message endorsed by the Bolivian citizens who were protesting electoral fraud, demanding a new election and touting the importance of racial and cultural tolerance and inclusion.

Electoral fraud

Your article cites a single study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, which indicates that their “statistical analysis” did not find any irregularities or fraud.

I think you’d agree that this third-party entity had at best limited access to the data that would be essential to conduct a credible and comprehensive assessment of whether fraud did or didn’t occur.

I in turn could cite multiple reports from multiple entities — within and without Bolivia — that conducted exhaustive analysis of the election results, the manner in which these results were reported, the chain of custody, absentee ballots, adulterated ballots and many other variables — that clearly indicate irregularities.

I’m also curious if you’re aware that the system that was reporting real-time election results mysteriously went down on election day — at which point the partial results clearly indicated that Mr. Morales wouldn’t have a large enough lead to avoid a second electoral round — and came back online 24 hours later, showing an inexplicable, massive jump in Mr. Morales’s lead that coincidentally had him winning the election in the first round.

Mr. Morales’s supporters would explain this unexpected surge in his lead as a result of a sudden and dramatic arrival of mass quantities of votes from rural regions in which Mr. Morales had won by a landslide. Indigenous leaders such as Ms. Condori Nina have publicly argued that Mr. Morales did not hold such a lead in rural areas, and election results indicate that a significant portion of the rural vote had already been counted by the time the reporting system went down.

Lastly, the election results reported by Mr. Morales’s administration were a far cry from pre-election polling that indicated that Mr. Morales’s chances at re-election were much weaker than in prior elections.

In conclusion, I sincerely hope that the information I shared in this letter at least plants the seed of doubt regarding the characterizations in your article. I’m writing this as a good faith effort to encourage all of us to remain open-minded, to condemn intolerance and violence from anyone and to purposefully deter prejudice.

Respectfully yours,

Marko Garafulic