Jeanine Anez receiving Bolivian presidential sash from the military (photo: EFE).
This week on CounterSpin: US corporate media were in vocal support of last year’s coup against Bolivia’s Evo Morales. But they’re rather quiet now that Jeanine Añez—who, in a legislative session without a quorum, due to the fact that many lawmakers were in hiding, jumped the line of succession and declared herself president—is putting off holding elections, again; and has said she is running, despite previous promises to the contrary. US media were frictionless transmitters for assertions of fraud in Morales’ re-election coming from the Organization of American States, assertions that, some now quietly acknowledge, were groundless. But as Camila Escalante wrote recently for FAIR.org (7/8/20), the fact that the supposed basis for the bloody authoritarian coup against Bolivia’s first indigenous leader was itself meritless hasn’t led US media to reexamine their own role in promoting the charges or the coup itself. To the extent the story’s being told, it’s being told too late. But CounterSpin listeners learned in real time; in November 2019, we heard from Alex Main of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. We’ll hear some of that conversation this week.
(cc photo: James Willamor)
Also: The 2020 election had enough problems before the coronavirus and the White House disinformation campaign around voting by mail, and Trump’s latest brazen attempt at derailment and distraction—as we record, that would be his suggestion to postpone the election, but by the time you hear the show, who knows? We talked about those pre-existing challenges and their historic roots back in February with Carol Anderson, professor of African-American Studies at Emory University, and author of, among other books, One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy. We’ll hear part of that conversation as well.
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CounterSpin | Radio Free (2020-07-31T16:23:57+00:00) Alex Main on Bolivia Coup, Carol Anderson on Voter Suppression. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2020/07/31/alex-main-on-bolivia-coup-carol-anderson-on-voter-suppression/
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