Talk:2019 Bolivian political crisis

coup d'etat once more

OR

I actually support the title of a coup d etat. On a cold blooded analysis I must admit though, that this doesn't represent NPOV. On the other hand not mentioning coup d'état in the title violates exactly in the same way NPOV (there are quite enough arguments about this already, I don't want to repeat them here, the following tablet analyses the situation anyway and tries to compress these arguments). Is there a title that can achieve consensus and reflect both these edges? my answer is:YES: 2019 Coup d etat (?) in Bolivia. In this way we mention the fact that the situation has (actually almost all of) the characteristics of a coup d'état and (through the question mark) point out that there are also characteristics, that don't represent a coup d'état (I mean: die Cocaleros are now actually deciding, who their new leader will be, without being threatened...). The change in the title is thereafter the only that respects at last the NPOV fundamental principle of Wikipedia (which is actually definitely NOT being respected with the "political crisis" title) and respects also consensus. A comment about the Tablet: the references are actually a combination of comments and references. I couldn't find a way to separate them, without making it extreme difficult to read the tablet. The tablet should be simple, in order to make the arguments easy to see. Comments and references ↓Part of the Definition of a Coup d'état→ Yes Fact Yes Claim No Fact No Claim Not clear There were ways to solve the problem with legal meanings which were not used ✔ The military participated in the act (✔) (✔) ✔ The government members were intimitated ✔ ✔ The new regime was based on the army (✔) (✔) ✔ The new regime arrested (oder tried to arrest) all members of the government and the parlament ✔ ✔ The new regime violated the constitution (✔) (✔) ✔ The new regime violated human rights ✔ The new regime tried to suppress the mind of its opposition ✔

Thanks for posting, I agree it was a coup as well. MarianAlmazan (talk) 01:35, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

I agree it should be called a coup as well. Not sure if you even need the question mark really because there's a preponderance of evidence that it's a coup, but overall I like your approach and appreciate the through analysis. I think [3] is a bit more clear-cut than you're aware though. He clearly was intimidated and harassed (protesters committed a number of violent acts towards specific MAS government officials, including literally burning down his sister's house).

It is now more clear than ever- both in the increased doubt of the alleged fraud and in the behavior of the supposedly temporary regime in repressing dissent, arresting and threatening the political opposition, and continuing to delay elections- that this was a coup. It fits virtually every element of the definition. Zellfire999 (talk) 12:25, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure why this is even up for discussion. At the time it was apparent it was a coup, and since more evidence has been revealed to indicate it. With the sentencing of Jeanine Áñez to prison for her actions during this should be the "nail in the coffin" on this one. Detsom (talk) 03:58, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

Given the continued concern both nationality and internationally over judicial independence in the processes against Áñez, calling it a coup would still be NPOV. Krisgabwoosh (talk) 05:42, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

Exactly. This was definitely a coup, no question. The title needs to change to reflect this. Enigma91 (talk) 22:21, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

The most common reaction I can find in the media around the term "coup" is that experts disagree over whether this crisis was a coup. That's the NPOV fact that is currently reflected in the article.

It's apparent that the use of the term coup is very important to English speakers. It's also very important within Bolivia, where "golpe" is a shibboleth used by members and allies of el MAS and almost no one else.

The article could be improved by the addition of a section which directly addresses the discussion that took place around the term.

Some points and sources for a section on "Use Of The Term Coup" might include:

• The AP said it's very important to figure out if the crisis was a coup on November 11, 2019, because it determined the legitimacy of an incoming government. [1]
• Morales called the riots and protests a coup long before the military deserted him. In response, Carlos Mesa claimed that the alleged fraud amounted to a coup. [2]
• When General Williams Kaliman made his "suggestion" and deserted Morales at least one US politician chose to call that a coup on Twitter. Some other politicians in the US and Nicaragua and some periodicals waited until Morales fled Bolivia. [3] [4] [5]
• Some high profile Twitter accounts and probably some media sources called Áñez's assumption of the presidency a coup. Some others used the word coup when the massacres started.
• Still others who use the term coup do not differentiate at what point the crisis was properly called a coup.
• There is a list in the lead section of references that discuss this question. Some of those have direct quotes from expert opinions for and against the inclusion of the word. Those opinions should be included in a section like this.
• The Washington Post draws a distinction between "old coups" and "new coups", implying a shifting or nebulous definition or character to coups. It quotes an expert who points out that 80% of coups involve explicit threats of force, leaving 20% that do not. [6]
• The section could discuss other crises which people have hesitated to call coups, such as the 1997 Turkish military memorandum which is sometimes called the "post-modern coup".
• The section could discuss examples of coups in which the military had a "soft touch" or was only tangentially involved, such as the Tunisian "medical coup", referenced in The Washington Post article above.
• The section could discuss comparisons to the many acknowledged Coups d'état in Bolivia.

Some of these last points may cross the line into original research, but I'm confident that there's enough material in secondary sources to make something of this shape a worthwhile addition to the article. Dan Kuck (talk) 16:50, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

That may be better suited for an article with a broader scope, such as Populism in Latin America. Calling everything a "coup" is a regular tactic of populist rhetoric, under their view anything that goes wrong for a left-wing president is because of a "coup". Morales resigns amid huge popular protests? A coup. A completely legal impeachment removes Dilma Rouseff? A coup. Cristina Kirchner's party lost in 2015 in clean elections and with no specific issue to protest about? They don't call it a coup (that would be too much), but they compare Macri with the 1976 dictatorship anyway, just because. Any of them are being investigated for crimes and having a tough time in courts? A coup. They are so awfully bad at ruling that their countries have economies worse than a war-ravaged one? A coup. And the latest example: if farmers store their grains and decide to sell them later and not right now... that, somehow, is also a coup.

In short, don't entertain too much the question that if this was a coup or not. That's just a rhetorical denouncement, but nothing more. Cambalachero (talk) 19:22, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

First, wow.

'Calling everything a "coup" is a regular tactic of populist rhetoric, under their view anything that goes wrong for a left-wing president is because of a "coup".

Not true, there were plenty of right-wing populist Americans screaming coup after the 2020 United States presidential election.

Secondly, I don't appreciate your words and hypocrisy. You accuse people of being left-wing populists while spouting rhetoric that sounds straight out of a textbook from the School of the Americas. Zero self-awareness there and not much I can suggest for that, but it would be nice if you'd review Wikipedia:No_personal_attacks before casting a wide net of accusations. Maybe Other_(philosophy) would be another good one, because I'm definitely interpreting some othering happening w/r/t to how you appear to feel about people with leftist political views.

Detsom (talk) 20:30, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

@Cambalachero: @Detsom: Reminder to both that this talk page is not a forum. Keep discussion constructive to the direct subject (move or not move article). Krisgabwoosh (talk) 21:12, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

Elections

Including rose-tinted purple prose about the Election bill, and claiming that MAS "returned to government," is completely baseless. The coup government has "delayed" elections three times, has sold off huge amounts of public assets, massacred protesters, broken diplomatic relations with several countries, and they did all of this with a "President" that appointed herself without quorum. The Washington Post has repeatedly retracted their support for the coup. If you consider Evo Morales running with the approval of the courts to be "illegitimate," then surely an unelected "president" who denies elections that were supposed to be done a month after the interim government was formed is far more "illegitimate."

It is absolutely embarrassing to pretend that this is even a contentious issue. It isn't. Everyone who was trumpeting Evo's removal has been back pedaling for a year.

References

Requested move 13 February 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. (non-admin closure) ❯❯❯ Raydann^(Talk) 12:15, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

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2019 Bolivian political crisis → 2019 Bolivian coup d'état – In 2022, the consensus seems to have shifted in favour of calling it a coup, compared to the consensus when this article was created. Let's establish that using this move discussion. See for example this WaPo article or this article by MIT Press. PhotographyEdits (talk) 21:09, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Oppose: The very WaPO article cited above still calls the event "a political crisis in 2019". More importantly, I am still very weary of taking the assertive stand of calling this a "coup d'état" as opposed to the more neutral "political crisis". Most importantly, for me, is that the "coup or no coup" question remains hotly contested in the country itself, so taking one side over the other brings up significant NPOV issues.

First and foremost, the issue of whether the event was a coup remains the subject of ongoing litigation, so siding with one party over the other has potential legal ramifications. We would be explicitly assigning guilt to multiple former ministers and public officials, Áñez herself, the Bolivian Catholic Church, and many others who are still assuming their legal defense.

Furthermore, I am apprehensive towards the prospect of directly siding with the Bolivian government on this matter. As the lead promoter of the coup theory, it is, obviously, slanted towards a certain outcome. I would also recommend against arguing that positive judicial rulings affirming the coup theory necessarily justify calling this a coup. The Bolivian judiciary has long been established to lack political independence and I wouldn't even be surprised if many rulings here get overturned the second a government of different ideological orientation takes charge, as has been the case before.

Lastly, there continues to be sustained public debate element. Bolivians remain continually split on either side of the debate. From what I've read, most Bolivian press outlets remain highly skeptical in their reporting. Academics, legal scholars, and constitutional experts in the country actually seem to mostly reject the coup premise.

For all of these reasons: the politicization of the topic, potential legal ramifications, and active and sustained debate; I am firmly against applying the coup label. There is, in my opinion, more evidence calling the 2021 United States Capitol attack a coup than there is here, yet we do not label the former as such out of an abundance of caution. To me, this is a topic that cannot be accurately labeled in the present climate and will need to be reevaluated in the future, perhaps when less biased historians begin writing on it.

Krisgabwoosh (talk) 23:03, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Oppose. I have searched the term in international news networks that mentioned it this year, to see if there was any change. Few results, it's not much of international news anymore, so it's not enough coverage to consider a change in the focus (meaning, the old consensus should still apply). I found those.

• CNN, February 8. "supuestamente tomar parte en un golpe", "alledgely taking part in a coup".
• Reuters, January 26. "The leftist government has since prosecuted opposition leaders for the unrest, which they call a 'coup.'"

As you can see, both mention the "coup", but only as something the Bolivian government claims, not in an editorial voice. Cambalachero (talk) 03:12, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

References

Notes

• Oppose per others. Also, the recent events in Peru have been compared to the events in Bolivia a few years back, but that is not regarded as a coup by Boluarte or by Congress.--Estar8806 (talk) 03:53, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Possible Additional Section needed?

Hi, I'm new to Wikipedia contributions, so I decided to put this in the talk section instead of the article itself. In 2020, a couple news articles dropped from the New York Times and Washington Post, that basically admitted the original OAS report was wrong. Here's the WaPo articleand here's the NYT article. I believe there are others as well, but these were the first I found on the search.

To me, this is a bit more...unambiguous? denouncement of the OAS' repot, as both the NYT and WaPo were in support of Evo Morales' forced removal from office and used the OAS report as backup beforehand. It's something that I think needs to be mentioned somewhere in the article; the largest papers of note supporting the OAs and then later coming out against the OAS, after the Anez government had seized power, is an important part of these events to talk about. 50.220.136.42 (talk) 18:40, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

So? The Washington Post and the New York Times played no part in those events. They were just newspapers, reporting what was happening. Cambalachero (talk) 19:35, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

They (and others) put their backing behind the report's truthfulness, and the New York Times are even cited in the article already as a voice against the CEPR. That they later said that the report is false is not only not nothing, but a damning indictment of the OAS report in the first place.

If they were just newspapers, reporting what was happening, then it's still important to note that they now believe the OAS report was wrong to begin with. 50.220.136.42 (talk) 22:12, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

I think, in general, this article needs quite a bit of rewrites. I'd probably lean towards ditching most of the weight put behind the New York Times—I don't mean removing it as a source, just excluding its opinions where not strictly necessary. Krisgabwoosh (talk) 02:41, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Social media campaign

Really? A section to discuss tweets and facebook posts and accounts? Does any of that stuff have any impact beyond the niche microworld of social networks? Cambalachero (talk) 14:05, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

Social media is a major source of information, including news. Governments use secret service agencies to monitor and influence the behaviour of populations using psyop techniques. One arm of the British government responsible for this is the 77th Brigade. The U.S. government created fake Facebook and other social media accounts to create dissent and spread right-wing pro-US, pro-capitalist propaganda in Cuba.[7] USAID created the social media site ZunZuneo as a long-term strategy to encourage Cuban youths to revolt against the Cuban government. The Israel Defense Forces has an information-security department which monitors social media.[8] Áñez' government employed a PR firm "to carry out lobbying in support of Bolivian democracy" and "in support of holding new presidential elections". Presumably it believed social media was a good way of influencing the population. The section is well sourced. Burrobert (talk) 14:54, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

It may be sourced, but it is irrelevant trivia. Let's say it's true. SO WHAT? Did it change anything? Did it have any real consequences? Did anyone commit a crime by doing this? (not a breach of Facebook's own by-laws, but an actual crime). Did something come out of this? Cambalachero (talk) 15:57, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

An action does not need to be criminal in order to be included in Wikipedia. Does anyone know what effect this had? The most relevant point is whether readers should be given this information. Burrobert (talk) 16:52, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

It is not required to be a crime, but if it was, that would have been a possible real-life consequence coming out of all this, that would have justified the section's inclusion. Alas, it is not a crime, so there are no convictions, indictments, or any such thing coming out of any of this. I say that this whole thing had no consequences in the real world, and the section, referenced and all, does not seem to mention any. The basic definition of irrelevant information. To keep it, to decide "whether readers should be given this information" as you say, someone should point out any such consequences. If not, we should delete the section. Cambalachero (talk) 17:42, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

While I'd argue this article is messy and in need of a serious re-write, for its current form, the section has sufficient citations to relevant and reliable sources to justify its inclusion. Wikipedia is not in the business of deciding what is sufficiently important to merit inclusion; the sources decide that. I'd also add that weaponization of social media is a not uncommon topic in the Bolivian news cycle; campaigns by both past and future presidents have been subject to press scrutiny over this. Krisgabwoosh (talk) 21:44, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

P.S. An argument about employing WP:SUMMARY style could be made here; although, that's also the case for large chunks elsewhere. @Cambalachero: I am eventually planning on a full re-write. There is a lot of overlapping information between 2019 Bolivian protests, 2019 Bolivian protests, and 2019 Bolivian political crisis. Krisgabwoosh (talk) 04:01, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

The lead section needs to be summarised. The "readable prose size" of the article is currently 45 kB which is not yet a cause for major concern. Burrobert (talk) 06:39, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

"Wikipedia is not in the business of deciding what is sufficiently important to merit inclusion; the sources decide that." Actually, Wikipedia is in that "business", we have WP:NOT and several related pages. References are necessary but not sufficient for inclusion, and content that can be verified may still be removed if it's useless or pointless, as in this case. Social media campaigns are a common thing in Bolivia? Even more reason to consider this irrelevant: you are saying that what Añez did was nothing out of the ordinary, so why should we care? Cambalachero (talk) 13:43, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

This article is about the political crisis that Bolivia was experiencing in 2019. The usurping government arranged for the creation of "fake accounts used to secretly manipulate politics in Bolivia" and "a large anti-Morales Twitter bot network". One of the intentions was to persuade people that the events were "not a coup". The existence of this "social media campaign" is not irrelevant to the subject of this article. Burrobert (talk) 14:24, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Which portion of WP:NOT are you specifically referencing? There's WP:NOTDB – but I've already argued the section could be shortened and summarized. I doubt there's a style guide in Wikipedia stating that what sources are and aren't relevant is exclusively up to the editors to decide – I'm open to being corrected, of course. Krisgabwoosh (talk) 15:47, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Burrobert, you make it sound so nefarious, but actually none of it is criminal, questionable, or even worthy of notice at all. So, a politician wants to persuade people that his political views are right? Well, duh... that can be said of all politicians, in all countries and districts. So, they created some hundreds of fake accounts to turn #AñezRules and #MoralesSucks into trending topics? Why should anyone outside of the owners of the social networks themselves even care? The actual effects in the real world are hardly different from that of an inane TV advertising. And besides, I have heard somewhere that this is something all Bolivian presidents do to some degree, so it's hardly even a new form of advertising.

Krisgabwoosh, the point of WP:NOT is that, in general terms, it is false that content that can be verified can not be challenged and removed from an article: there are many reasons that may justify doing so. Not limited to those in policies: if it can be explained why a piece of text is actually a WP:BADIDEA, as I'm doing, that should be enough. And remember, the purpose here is to explain what happened, not to point fingers and decide who was right and who was wrong in those events, as phrases like "usurping government" may suggest. Cambalachero (talk) 18:04, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Doesn't matter. That such a thing existed is notable on its own, regardless of wether or not it succeeded Genabab (talk) 13:17, 16 September 2023 (UTC)