RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Government of Bolivia Thursday disclosed documentation that it claims proves Argentina was behind the revolt that ended up in the toppling of former President Evo Morales.
Bolivian Foreign Minister Rogelio Mayta explained that the Argentine government of former President Mauricio Macri (2015-2019) delivered weapons and ammunition to military officers to overthrow Morales in November 2019 and to repress the ensuing protests then.
Read also: Check out our coverage on Bolivia
Mayta produced a letter sent by the head of the Bolivian Air Force at the time of the coup, Brigadier Jorge Gonzalo Terceros Lara, to Argentine Ambassador Normando Alvarez García, confirming the receipt of ammunition and different types of weapons sent by Argentina to reinforce the armed and security forces, and thanking Macri’s government for that.
“We emphasize that Macri’s Argentina gave the military forces, which repressed the social protest in November 2019, lethal ammunition,” Mayta said during a press conference in La Paz.
The note -dated November 13, 2019- details the shipment from Buenos Aires of “40,000 cartridges and various types of tear gas.” Several civilians were killed in massacres after the reception of those weapons during the interim government of Jeanine Añez.
“Today, we are outraged because the conduct of a foreign government collaborated to carry out serious human rights violations. We are going to pass this information on to the authorities that are conducting the investigation. We consider this situation extremely serious and absolutely unacceptable,” said Mayta.
“It is a contribution to commit serious human rights violations and to violate national sovereignty and dignity. The Macri government-provided equipment and material so that social protest could be repressed to consolidate the government that broke the constitutional order,” he added.
Current Argentine President Alberto Fernández, who granted Morales political asylum after taking office in December of 2019, on Thursday sent the country’s apologies to his Bolivian colleague Luis Arce. “It was found that a consignment of material was sent from our country that cannot be interpreted except as a reinforcement of the action capacity of the seditious forces against the Bolivian population in those days,” said Fernández.
Argentina’s Security Minister Sabina Frederic ordered all four Federal Security Forces to investigate the issue.
Bolivias’s former interim president Jeanine Áñez is already jailed and under investigation for the 11 people dead and 120 injured when Morales left office.
Meanwhile, Macri is in Europe and is considering a prolonged stay thereafter, confirming he would not run for Congress in this year’s elections. His own party Juntos por el Cambio (JxC) seems to have found better candidates. “I have to leave the country,” he said Thursday in Madrid during an appearance alongside Spanish Popular Party leader Pablo Casado.
Macri also suggested that in Argentina, there is neither full democracy nor total freedom. “Coups d’état no longer exist as we knew them, with tanks in the streets. Today a character enters the system, and from within the system, he begins to dynamite every day,” he said. “A little less freedom of the press here, a judge pressured there, and when you realize it, you have reached a point of no return,” he warned.
The former president also drew the spotlight onto the increasing number of Argentines who are emigrating ”because they feel that this model of abuse, of no rules, puts their children at risk for the future.”
Macri’s personal situation in Argentina is also worsening by the minute. Earlier this week, Judge Marta Cirulli declared the bankruptcy of one of the companies he and his family used to own. Now the empire Socma, the family’s flagship company, seems to be next in line for default.