#AndeanSpring? (Oct. 22, 2019)

Protests in Bolivia amid electoral uncertainty

Violent protests erupted in nine Bolivian cities yesterday, with demonstrators questioning the legitimacy of Sunday's electoral process. Electoral authority offices were set on fire in Potosí and Sucre, and protesters set fire to ballots in Tarija. Official results appear to give President Evo Morales a large enough margin of victory to win reelection outright, but interruptions in the vote count and a reversal of earlier trends has opponents shouting foul. (Associated Press, BBC, Nodal)

The count is not yet complete, and Morales is hovering near the 10 point lead he need to avoid a run-off election against his closes opponent, Carlos Mesa. (Official results) On Sunday evening Bolivia's electoral board abruptly halted a preliminary vote count that showed a closer result. After the 24-hour gap, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) updated its count to show Morales with a wider lead, which pushed protesters onto the streets, reports AFP.

In a statement the Organization of American States (OAS) expressed its “deep concern and surprise at the drastic and hard-to-explain change in the trend of the preliminary results revealed after the closing of the polls” and urged for calm, reports the Guardian. The U.S and Brazil also expressed concern. (New York Times)

An outright win by Morales will stoke accusations of illegitimacy say analysts.

Protesters in Santa Cruz yesterday called for a strike in protest 

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Chile clashes continue

Chilean capital Santiago was virtually shut down yesterday, in the fourth day of protests that have left at least 13 dead. (See yesterday's post.) Throughout the day protesters clashed with security forces. Though violent actions continued, other citizens defied the state of emergency peacefully, dancing, playing music and organizing football games. Thousands of demonstrators defied a military enforced curfew yesterday evening, and were dispersed by soldiers with tear gas and water cannon. Armed men in masks fired at protesters last night, reports the Guardian.

The National Institute for Human Rights said on Monday that 88 people had been shot, reports the New York Times. The institute has filed 12 legal cases accusing the police and the army accusing them of torture and excessive use of force. The police were also accused of forcing women they arrested to strip naked in police stations.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet, called for independent investigations into death sand injuries. "There are disturbing allegations of excessive use of force by security and armed forces, and I am also alarmed by reports that some detainees have been denied access to lawyers, which is their right, and that others have been mistreated while in detention." She called on authorities to avoid "inflammatory rhetoric" and "to work with all sectors of society to find solutions that can help calm the situation and address the grievances of the population."

President Sebastián Piñera sought to calm waters last night, and said he would meet today with political leaders, including members of the opposition. He promised a “new social contract” to alleviate inequality, reports Reuters.

The protests lend themselves to different takes: those on the left argue they are rejection of decades of neoliberal economic policies in Chile. Those on the right are pointing to shadowy international conspiracies emanating from Venezuela, Cuba, and bogeymen farther abroad. 

Though both of those explanations likely hold some truth, at heart, the Chilean protests appear to be about inequality and distribution of the country's economic success. Or as Patricio Navia writes in an wonderfully comprehensive piece for Americas Quarterly, "the frustration of a population that was promised access to the promised land of middle-class status, but that has been denied such access at the gate due to an unlevel playing field characterized by an abusive elite, an unresponsive government and an unkept promise of meritocracy and equal opportunity." 

The protests also demonstrate a disconnect between Chile's political elite and the rest of the country. There are no political parties that represent the discontent protesters are expressing, writes Patricio Fernández in the Post Opinión.

A bit more clarity on how a call to doge subway fares morphed into broader unrest: As more people jumped turnstiles last week, the most conflictive stations were shut down on Thursday. By Friday, the fare-dodging mob rallies had grown so strong that the subway system shut down the entire operations before the afternoon rush hour. Millions were caught for hours in traffic jams and many others chose to walk home. Radical groups started setting fires, while more peaceful protesters brought out the traditional weapon of Latin American discontent -- pots to bang.

Critics also fault Piñera's management of the unrest -- over the weekend he took a hardline stance against protesters, a tone that delegitimized their claims, reports the Guardian. On Sunday he claimed the country was “at war” with “evil” delinquents who were bent on causing chaos and destruction. The president’s remarks were widely viewed as incendiary, to the point where Gen. Javier Iturriaga, the national defense chief, who is also in charge of security around the Santiago metropolitan area, distanced himself from them. “I’m not at war with anybody,’’ General Iturriaga said.

Piñera's reaction mirrors that of his administration in previous crises, "with the student movement and the Mapuche conflict over indigenous lands in the south: treating what are indeed political issues and social discontent as a security threat," write Irina Domurath and Stefano Palestini Céspedes at the AULA blog.

Perhaps the most uniform reaction in analyses of Chile is surprise: "The scenes of mob violence were striking in a country that has long been regarded as an exemplar of economic and political stability in a turbulent region," writes Ernesto Londoño in the New York Times. And the message appears to have broader regional (global?) implications, according to Bloomberg: "If it can happen in Santiago, it could happen anywhere."

News Briefs

Venezuela

• Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó asked China and Russia to help end his country's protracted crisis, as part of "exploratory" diplomatic talks with President Nicolás Maduro's international allies, reports AFP.

• The U.S. Treasury renewed a license allowing Chevron to continue drilling in Venezuela for three more months. (Reuters)

Mexico

• Mexico sent special forces troops to patrol Culiacán after government forces lost a gunbattle with cartel gunmen there last week. A national poll yesterday showed two thirds of respondents now believe drug lords and mobsters are more powerful than the government, reports Reuters. Mexican authorities say the U.S. has agreed to cooperate on stemming the illegal flow of weapons across the two country's shared border.

• The Mexican government's decision to release suspected cartel leader Ovidio Guzmán López in the midst of the fighting has valid points -- President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said he made the call in order to avoid further bloodshed. "But the decision sends a message that cartels will be allowed to use violence to get their way," writes Ioan Grillo in a New York Times op-ed. "And President López Obrador needs to forge a coherent strategy that provides a basic protection for citizens while tackling the deeper problems behind the violence." (See yesterday's briefs.)

• The Cucupá tribe in Mexico has been rent by the loss of the Colorado river, dammed at the U.S. border and governed by a 1944 binational river treaty, reports the Guardian.

Brazil

• The mystery oil spill that has blighted a 2,200km stretch of Brazilian beaches is the latest environmental scandal to hit President Jair Bolsonaro's government, which critics say has reacted too slowly. Instead local governments and volunteers have been at the forefront of cleanup efforts, reports the Guardian.

• Lawmaker Eduardo Bolsonaro, the president's son, took over the leadership of the PSL party in the lower house of Congress -- a victory in what has been a bruising battle for control of the ruling part, according to Reuters.

Argentina

• The UK is planning to invest in Argentina’s controversial oil shale industry using a £1bn export finance deal intended to support green energy, according to government documents seen by the Guardian.

Mining

• An ongoing conflict over the Escobal Mine in Guatemala raises questions over how to define community consultation that is required by international treaty -- Nacla.

• Mining giant BHP will shift two of its Chile mines -- including La Escondida, which is the biggest copper mine in the world -- fully to renewable energy by the middle of next year, reports the Guardian.

Did I miss something, get something wrong, or do you have a different take? Let me know ...  

Latin America Daily Briefing