Venezuela coup attempt

There has recently been a coup in Bolivia. If you only get your information from more established news sources, or even most Catholic alternative sources, you are probably under the opinion that it was an overthrow by the people of a violent government, instead of a military coup.  You are mistaken.

I had certainly heard of the protests in Bolivia for a while but I did not expect them to lead to the overthrow of the government. It took me quite some time after the coup to realise that it was actually a military coup the likes of which the U.S. had unsuccessfully attempted to implement in Venezuela, but which bore much greater success in Bolivia when the army issued what essentially was an ultimatum to Evo Morales: Resign or be removed, or worse.

It shocks me not one bit that the established media has carried the line of the U.S. government - selling state ideology being its primary role, with the choice of whether to use a leftist or rightist lens seemingly being the only one left open to debate. What has shocked me is how positively the news of a military coup, the violent consequences of which are ongoing, has been received by Catholics who should know better. I am not talking about EWTN types, who get their news from Fox News in Catholic drag, but from those who at first hand don't seem to swallow every government lie unquestioningly.

As anybody familiar with Evo Morales will know, he is the source of the infamous communist crucifix with which Bergoglio was gifted on his state visit to Bolivia, I would presume. I believe Morales has also been at the Vatican a few times. He is the first elected indigenous president of Bolivia, or so I have been informed. I have also been informed that Bolivia is about 60% 'indigenous' - i.e., the majority - with most of the rest presumably being either wholly or partially of Spanish descent. He was a 'populist' figure in the true sense of the word, as proved by his multiple election victories. He had just won his 4th term, reportedly with the required margin of more than 10% which prevents a candidate having to have a run-off election. Under his rule, the levels of poverty drastically reduced and the native population of Bolivia was left much better off, in a country which had experienced one of  the  highest rates of economic growth in South America under his leadership, if not the very best. In other words, we cannot accuse him of having failed his base, unlike many other populists, some of whom are quite popular with Catholics right now.

Those are the facts. Now comes the conjecture.

I do now know whether the man is Catholic. Nothing of his public behaviour has implied to me that he is - his close relationship with Bergoglio would naturally imply that he is not Catholic, but he may well be. I do not know anything about Bolivia's record on the rights of the unborn, nor of Morales' stance on killing or saving them, and I have not bothered to look it up as it is not relevant to this piece. He is said to have lost a referendum on running for a 4th term yet ran anyway as the ban was ruled unconstitutional by the high court - or something to that effect. Regardless of that, his victory margin was well in line with the vast majority of polls ( I have read figures of 5/6 from one source). Whatever people may have felt at the time of the referendum, that he would win the presidential election seems to have not been in any doubt.

It is widely assumed that the CIA was behind this coup, and I have not come across anyone - for or against - who even questions this assertion. The fact that Donald Trump - himself somewhat of a victim of a CIA coup attempt - was one of the first to congratulate the new junta in charge, and the fact that Juan Gaido - the self-appointed president of Venezuela, a CIA stooge - also joined in should be enough to alleviate any doubts about who was behind it.

One would expect Catholics who claim to be against globalism and in favour of nationalism and populism to support a man who was obviously popular in his own country, and who had obviously improved the economic conditions of the poorest sections of his country. Yet, that is not what seems to have happened. Here is where the dreaded pachamama comes in.

It has been reported that one of the leaders of the coup declared “Pachamama will never return”, which was evidently enough to get Catholics on the bandwagon . Then we had the self-declared president posing with what seems to be to be a liturgical book and what is reported to be the Gospels, and that was enough for others to give jump over to her side. Even Gloria.tv, which is generally against americanist interventions and American imperialism, has not criticised what is obviously an externally-orchestrated coup and has reported on the anti-Pachamama statements and the holding-the-Gospels show without much question or suspicion.

It seems that Catholics, even those against NOChurch, are quite easily fooled. All you need to do is utter some words against pagan statues, and hold a liturgical book, and all of a sudden you will have even battle-hardened Catholics jumping for a coup like a bitch in heat. To me though, the ostentatious anti-paganism is in and of itself a mark of the whole thing being plotted from abroad.

What seems obvious to me is that the coup plotters would have been following what happened at the syond of the Amazon. They would know that a lot of Catholics would have been against pachamama. They would have known that it was a trending word so they had one of their guys stand in front of a camera and say something against...