The first sign of unrest among Bolivians on Wednesday afternoon was the sight of armored vehicles circling La Paz’s normally quiet Plaza Murillo, its historic central square. By the time military columns marched into the presidential palace, the collective confusion and shock had reached fever pitch.
By 2:30 p.m., small tanks were repeatedly ramming the gates of the neoclassical building known as the Palacio Quemado, and troops forced their way in, creating an extraordinary scene that saw a confrontation between the coup leader, disgruntled former army commander Juan José Zúñiga, and President Luis Arce.
Surrounded by his ministers and clutching a ceremonial rod – a symbol of his status as head of state – the 60-year-old President Arce ordered Zuniga to stand down, saying: “I am your commander. General, withdraw all troops immediately.”
The heated exchange was filmed for several minutes and ended with Zuniga turning around and walking out the same broken door he came in through, then driving away in a bulletproof military vehicle.
It may go down as the shortest coup attempt in the Andean country’s two-century, checkered history. It lasted just three hours, during which President Arce “mobilized” Bolivians to defend democracy, put down the rebellion in one-on-one combat, and appointed a new military command that ordered the rebels back to their barracks.
The unrest shocked and confused the Bolivian people.
But rumours began swirling as soon as a semblance of normality returned in this country of 12.5 million people that has seen some 190 coups, military dictatorships and revolutions since independence in 1825.
Shortly before his arrest on Wednesday, the alleged mastermind, Zuniga, sowed doubts by telling journalists, without providing evidence, that President Arce had ordered him to stage a fake coup to bolster the president’s fading popularity. The former commander, reportedly close to the government, had been fired the day before the putsch, according to Bolivian government minister Eduardo del Castillo.
Zúñiga’s comments were picked up by the opposition, who called for a congressional investigation into claims that Arce had rigged the presidential election. Auto Goal (self-coup). Alejandro Reyes, a member of the Civic Community Bloc, said: Observer “This [coup] “It is planned and may include management participation.”
Deixi Choque, a lawmaker from the ruling Movement for Socialism (MAS) who defended Arce, warned that the coup might have succeeded “if the president, the ministers and the whole of Bolivian society had not immediately taken a stance in denial of these acts.” Choque argued that Zúñiga’s statements were unreliable because he had repeatedly changed them.
President Arce on Thursday strongly denied accusations that he was behind the coup attempt, saying: “We will never approve the procurement of weapons against our people. What the former army commander did was […] “Our goal was to turn against the Bolivian people and attack the democracy for which the Bolivian people shed their blood. We will never do that. Never.”
On Friday the government announced the arrest of 20 more people, including a former navy vice admiral. Bolivia’s ambassador to the Organization of American States said about 200 military officers were involved in the coup attempt.
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There is no doubt that President Arce is presiding over a struggling economy, with natural gas exports plummeting, foreign currency reserves dwindling, rising food prices, shortages of fuel and US dollars and growing protests over deep divisions within his own party.
“Bolivia is facing multiple crises: political, economic, social, environmental and, above all, institutional,” said Franklin Pareja, a political scientist at Bolivia’s San Andres University. “The government is in a very fragile situation. There is no unity within the party.”
Arce is embroiled in a bitter power struggle with former President Evo Morales, who helped him win the 2020 presidential election. Arce, a British-educated economist, served as Morales’ finance minister and became the MAS candidate to replace Morales after the country’s longest-serving democratically elected leader was ousted in 2019 amid allegations of electoral fraud, which Morales denies.
Both men have announced their intention to run for president in next year’s MAS elections. Morales initially denounced the coup attempt but has since remained silent, but some of his supporters have joined the skeptics. MAS Vice President Gerardo Garcia has accused Arce of staging the coup attempt. “A mockery of the nation” and the “intellectual author” of the false coup.
Whether true or not, rumors of a “coup” have “taken root in people’s minds” and may be hard for President Arce to dispel, Pareja said. “If this backfires, it could deepen the weakness and fragility of the regime.”
