Fernando Camacho and Jeanine Añez both represent Right-wing
Christian forces at work in Latin America. Both are Roman Catholic and yet in
many ways embody the Evangelical style and appeal to its audience. With the
flight of Morales in November 2019, both figures were connected to episodes in
which Bibles were held up high accompanied by proclamations of the return of
Christianity to Bolivia.
In North America Evangelicals and Roman Catholics began to
work in concert back in the 1980's and 1990's and while the relationship in
Latin America has proven rocky, there are hints that politics and culture war
are bringing them together.
There is in Latin America a broad Evangelical movement that
like its North American counterpart seeks to crush and eliminate the separatist
mindset of Fundamentalism and its anti-Catholic sentiments. The Lausanne
Movement via figures such as Luis Palau has played a large role in this and
after a generation it's starting to bear some serious fruit.
Increasingly these groups and movements are being influenced
by American-style Dominionist theology which flows (in remarkably similar
forms) from Evangelical, Catholic and Pentecostal fonts. Intertwined within a
labyrinth of political, NGO, academic, corporate and financial institutions,
the ideas and influences of dominionist thought and its logistical support and
money are flowing south and through it and other means, Washington's agenda in
Latin America continues to score victories. The ousting of Evo Morales is just
the latest example.*
Morales started out as a pro-Indigenous Leftist but over time
fell into corruption and like all politicians betrayed the people who helped
bring him to power. Needless to say his policies combined with the length of
his tenure have earned him many enemies. From Right-wing and conservative
forces in both Latin America and the United States to Church leaders of every
stripe, Morales is hated because he sought (but failed) to undo the legacy of European
colonialism and improve the status of indigenous peoples and the severe poverty
that dominates his country. He had to take on the hierarchy which included the
political and business establishments and the power of the Roman Catholic
Church. No small feat, and while he did attain the victory he hoped, he was
able to bring sweeping changes, unlike anything Bolivia had ever seen before.
Morales was part of the so-called Pink Tide of Leftist
governments that came to power mostly during the GW Bush years. They were
reacting to globalised Capitalism and American unipolarity and seizing the post
9/11 moment, they moved against the Washington-supported Latin American Establishment.
Given America's distraction in the Middle East, they enjoyed an almost decade
long surge.
But during the Obama administration and starting with
Honduras the Empire began to strike back and has worked consistently to roll
back this impulse. The Evangelical and Conservative Catholic movements have
played an essential part in this. Bolivia is no exception.
I was struck by Camacho's reference to the Pachamama statues
which undoubtedly would have resonated strongly with Traditionalist and
Conservative Catholics. The statues were utilised during the recent Amazon
Synod and were (in a viral video no less) removed from the Vatican and pitched
into the Tiber. A powerful symbolic act followed by Pope Francis who responded
by having them retrieved and restored. Thirty and Forty years ago Evangelicals
paid little attention to Catholic 'news' and yet as the Evangelical and
Conservative Catholic movements continue to converge and parallel one another,
they are both paying attention. The Catholic controversies of the Pachamama
statues and the Amazon Synod are being watched by Evangelicals who are more and
more sympathetic to traditionalist impulse. In the past, Evangelicals would
have viewed traditionalist Catholicism as equally syncretistic and idolatrous
and thus viewed the story as a non-issue and something of an absurdity but
there's been a shift in how such questions are viewed.
Additionally the Right-wing fascistic Camacho's background in
Crusader-evoking youth movements would have (at one time) been off-putting to
Evangelicals but today is heartily embraced... especially in American circles
where the cult of the gun and militancy reign supreme.
Likewise Jeanine Añez, though a Right-wing Roman Catholic is
appealing to Evangelicals in her visual stunts with the Bible and her
proclamation of culture war.
And make no mistake. It was a coup. Morales seemingly caved
rather quickly and yet he knew his life was in danger and thus he fled to Mexico.
The aftermath of these events has only confirmed Morales' fears as there is at
present a veritable witch hunt taking place. The allies of Morales are being
hunted down by military teams and shot at by snipers and I have no doubt the
death squads are on the loose or soon will be. It's a well known pattern that
we've seen many times before.
It's also noteworthy that if what is taking place in Bolivia
were happening in Russia or Eastern Europe, Anderson Cooper and Rachel Maddow
would be screaming about it. The US media is playing its role too... in its
silence. Fake News can be actively produced or promoted through silence and in
this case all the outlets whether pro-DNC like CNN and MSNBC or Right-wing like
FOX... everyone in the US Establishment supports the coup. Everyone belongs to
what might be called the Wall Street-Pentagon consensus.
What we might describe as the Bolivian Coup Script still works because Western media is part of
the equation. This same scenario has played out more than a dozen times in
Latin America, it's virtually passé', it's old hat. Though dissident
journalists, novelists and moviemakers have attempted (through these various
means) to get the histories, stories and scenarios out to the public... so few
pay attention that the powers that be can replay these scripts over and over
again. I remember literally guffawing a couple of years ago when the media
starting pushing the Russian submarines
in Scandinavian waters narrative... a bogus replay from the 1980's, a story
that was later debunked and revealed to be a NATO false flag operation. The
media should have immediately exposed it but rather than contextualise the
claims, they spun them and amplified them to suit their paymasters.
The new Bolivian regime is following the American Right's
script in labeling all dissidents, anyone who even dares to question the
narrative as being Marxists and Communists. It's sound-clip heaven for the
Right-wing and Evangelical media world in North America. I'm waiting to see how
Voice of the Martyrs, Door of Hope and some of the other pro-Washington outlets
spin and manipulate the story.
In addition to the political repression and threats of
violence, Bolivia is in the process of erecting a wall of censorship and many
believe it is well on the road to a period of military dictatorship. A stunning
victory by the Right to be sure, everyone had assumed Venezuela's Maduro was in
a precarious position and ready to fall and yet the Guaido project has all but
failed. Morales on the contrary was viewed as deeply entrenched and yet the
US-connected military was able (when the time was right) to oust him in short
order. Morales over-reached and they used his manipulation of electoral law as
a wedge to get people on the street and it worked. The seeds of chaos were
sown, the army stepped in and Morales was gone.
This is clearly part of a unified campaign, an alliance
between forces at work in Venezuela, Honduras, Colombia and Brazil... some are
referring to it as Operation Condor 2.0.
Again the script is well known. The actors are revealed in business
ties, the School of the Americas, Ecclesiastical organisations such as Opus Dei,
USAID and other NGO's, gas and oil companies and of course Wall Street. There's
even the Croatian businessman Branko Marinkovic and his anti-Morales
machinations I wrote about back in 2017. The Santa Cruz region in the east of
the country has been the 'dissident' region that has resisted Morales and has
been a home to Christian Right and Fascist groups dating back to the post-war
years, including connections to WWII era fascist regimes. To talk about
Camacho, Marinkovic and the fascist movements in Santa Cruz necessarily means
talking about figures like Banzer, Klaus Barbie, Franco and organisations such
as the Ustaše. Some have falsely believed that Fascism is a movement that died,
something from history that is no longer relevant to today. The truth is
fascism lived on long after the fall of Hitler and Mussolini. Surviving in
Spain until the 1970's it thrived in Latin America throughout the Cold War and
in the 1990's began to reappear in Europe where it had had never been
eradicated but had instead lived on in the underground and in the background of
mainstream politics. And it would seem that after a thirty year hiatus in South
America, the ideology is set for a comeback.
This thrust by the Right in Bolivia along with Duque's
attempts to push Colombia even farther to the Right has led to backlash. From
Ecuador to Chile to Colombia, Venezuela and Bolivia the Latin American street
is in a state of unrest. Fueled by economic and social stress, there are voices
of protest erupting from many quarters.
And yet the Right isn't backing down and if anything the
clampdown is providing justification for Right-wing authoritarian measures...
all strongly backed by Washington. The Trump administration has stood by Duque
and has overtly and openly backed the Bolivian coup and the attempted coup in
Venezuela... while of course avoiding the verbiage as that would lead to legal
problems when operating through official channels.
Bernie Sanders the faux socialist is to be commended for at
least tepidly calling attention to the Bolivian coup but his compatriot
pseudo-leftists, candidates Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden and the sodomite
Buttigieg have remained silent, providing tacit support to the operation.
Unlike the fascistic military dictatorships which dominated
Latin America during the Cold War, the authoritarian governments of Cold War
2.0 will remain friendly to Evangelicals and even embrace them. Capitalist Western Civilisation is their
religion (with America holding a position of honour) and provides a matrix for
a common set of metaphysical concepts and ethics that transcend the traditional
Roman Catholic-Protestant divide. While it's sometimes posited that the present
moment is a war between Christianity and the new religion of Scientific
Materialism, the truth is the Christianity being posited is not the
Christianity of Scripture, it's not even in line with historic Christianity. It
is in particular a manifestation of post-Enlightenment Christianity and deeply
affected by its epistemological assumptions. This model has infiltrated both
conservative Protestantism and Traditionalist Catholicism and continues to
spread affecting the Pentecostal and Charismatic spheres. There are even those
working within Mainline Ecclesiastical bodies, attempting reform not so much on
the basis of Scripture but with an appeal to civilisation and culture.
But for the people on the street, it means a growth in
authoritarian regimes that will pay lip service to democracy and the humanistic
ideals of the Enlightenment but in reality use these forms as window dressing
for raw power and the kind of capitalism that every day looks more and more
like neo-feudalism.
Morales was no friend to the Church but given his context, I
can hardly blame him. I doubt he has ever encountered genuine Christianity and
the pseudo-Christianity he hates... for some of the same reasons and certainly others,
I also hate.
I do not lament his fall but I do not celebrate it either. In
fact I lament the movements which have wed the Church (broadly speaking) to
wealth, power and thus violence. Their heresies continue to spread, their evils
are celebrated and are quickly becoming the mainstream. The Cold War was a dark
time for the Church... heresy, apostasy and corruption in the West and
persecution behind the Iron and Bamboo Curtains. After a brief respite, a false
one (truth be told) we are seemingly returning to the realities of the Cold War
and its forced polarity and hostility to neutral entities and non-aligned
commitments.
The Church, the faithful Church finds itself once more in its
old role... the dissident on all fronts. Our dissent is not political but
spiritual and ethical and thus we're called to bear witness and suffer...
whether at the hands of the Materialists or the Sacralists... who in the end
serve the same master. Either way we're called to suffer and proclaim the truth
in a world of lies. I hope and pray that voices in Latin America will proclaim
this and preserve a faithful remnant... a pilgrim people who refuse to
capitulate to culture but who also reject the devilish aspirations and gospel-distortion
of Dominionist ideology.
---
*Don't be fooled by the recent political shift within
Argentina and the return of Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner to high office.
While often decried as being a Leftist and part of the Pink Tide her record and
that of her husband places her solidly within the Pseudo-Left.
Don't misunderstand me, Washington isn't happy about this
development and will certainly labour to undermine her and the new Fernandez
administration... which many view as a continuation of the Kirchner policies as
represented by both Nestor and Cristina.
However, her record demonstrates that while she frustrated
Washington (and London) and reached out to figures like Chavez, she was in the
end a far cry from what she pretended to be. Peronism is a difficult concept
and while it contains elements of Leftist ideology and thought, it combines
these with Far-Right impulses. Nationalist and Protectionist, the movement is committed
to Trade Unionism. Its record on the Free Market is mixed and while the
movement resonates with populist impulses it also is in certain respects
progressive. It's hard to pin down but I think it's best described as a
Centrist Party akin to maybe the Sanders and Warren wing of the Democrats in
the United States. While those on the Right view them as hard-leftists a more
sober examination of their platform reveals them to be Centre and perhaps even
Centre-Right, a form of Right-wing nationalism and economics combined with
liberal social policy.
See also: