President Gabriel Boric of Chile arrived at the border with Bolivia, where his army was already mobilized, to demand that Luis Arce act seriously with the currents of the Venezuelan exodus.
Bolivians get nervous when a Chilean authority approaches the binational border accompanied by the military: the last time that happened, was in 1879, Bolivia lost its access to the Pacific.
This time, the Chilean president did not want more Bolivian territory but demanded that the Arce government receive the walkers who entered Chile from Bolivia.
The Bolivian government has not formally responded, but an official from the Foreign Ministry denied that there is such a commitment and that Venezuelans do not have passports and are not listed as immigrants.
The opponent José Carlos Sánchez believes that the Arce government prevents the walkers of the Venezuelan exodus from staying in Bolivia because it detests all critics of Nicolás Maduro, a MAS ally, and considers them traitors to the Chavista revolution.
Evo Morales has another interpretation of the case: “We regret the unilateral position of the brother president of Chile Gabriel Boric towards migrants who are victims of the US economic blockades against Venezuela and the hunger policies of the neoliberal model in Latin America. Respect human rights.”
Although Boric’s protest was loud in the border town of Colchane, the Bolivian government did not respond as expected due to the economic nightmare it is experiencing.
Nor has he said anything about the permanence, since the beginning of January, of the Peruvian army on the border, busy preventing the entry of agitators and cocaleros from the Evo Morales current who promote revolts and separatism in the Puno region.
When Boric was still on the border, the JP Morgan rating agency put Bolivia’s country at risk, for the first time, above the 1,000 barrier. In January, it had been 564, Bloomberg recalled.
And during those hours too, Fitch Rating gave a lapidary diagnosis on the health of the Bolivian economy. It lowered the long-term foreign and local currency issuer default ratings from “B” to “B–”, downgraded the rating outlook from “stable” to “negative” and disclosed that the Bolivian government had used the Special Rights of Turn (DEG).
But, in addition, the rating agency alluded to the fall in natural gas reserves and the political risks that the country presents.
The Central Bank sold dollars at the official exchange rate because the private banks did not have them, but at the same time, there was a run by savers from Banco Fassil and queues formed at the doors of all the banks in the city of Santa Cruz. Banco Fassil has Venezuelan and Argentine capital, according to versions that its executives denied. But the version coincides with the suspicion that “21st century socialism” has ventured into regional financial activities.
The economic crisis is very serious and the prestigious economist Antonio Saravia has suggested that President Arce resigns from office and has proposed that he include this paragraph in his resignation letter: “I am not resigning only because my government has been a failure and has left us to the door of a severe crisis, but because my ideas and my actions since I was a minister have proven to be profoundly wrong.
Arce doesn’t have time to resign or even to read because the economy is collapsing, aggravated by infighting in the MAS party.
Former minister Teresa Morales, from the Evo Morales regime, denounced on television that the state oil company, YPFB, is importing more gasoline than is needed because the surplus must be re-exported by the corruption embedded in the company. Last year, the former minister said, the country lost 1,666 million dollars as a result of these acts of corruption. Carlos Romero, another former minister of Evo Morales, said that in the Arce government “mega-corruption” broke out in YPFB.
Evo Morales’ side makes repeated allusions to acts of corruption in the oil company and recalls that one of Arce’s sons is in charge of these operations.
With the criticisms of the governments of Chile and Peru, the reproaches of the IMF and the country risk rating agencies, Luis Arce only manages to apply a very strong hand to the political prisoners of the regime, the only demand of Evo Morales that he meets at the foot of the letter.
