Plane carrying Morales lands in Paraguay after getting refusal from Peru

Evo Morales

Paraguayan media including the newspaper ABC Color reported on Tuesday: An aircraft of the Mexican Air Force carrying resigned Bolivian President Evo Morales has landed in Paraguay after a request for landing in Peru was rejected. At the same time, thousands of pro-Evo protesters were marching towards Bolivia’s legislative assembly.

The plane was supposed to refuel in Peru before heading to Mexico, where Morales has been granted political asylum, with the local authorities having already granted agreement to it.

However, the departure held off due to the need to coordinate the route again.

The aircraft carrying Evo landed at 04:35 GMT.

The decision to land in Paraguay was made after traffic controllers in Peru, Chile and Brazil banned the aircraft from passing over their airspace.

An ABC Color correspondent said, citing the Paraguayan military, that the aircraft would refuel and then continue its flight to Mexico. It may leave Paraguay later on Tuesday.

Bolivia’s resigned top officials may be traveling with Morales to Mexico on the same plane, since Mexican Deputy Foreign Minister Maximiliano Zuniga has posted on Twitter a photo featuring Morales accompanied by several people, including former Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera and Senate President Adriana Salvatierra.

A group comprising at least six people is captured on the photo, taken at Bolivia’s Chimore International Airport.

Mexican officials have never mentioned any other officials, commenting on granting asylum to Morales.

Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard refused on Monday to reveal the names of any Bolivian officials and lawmakers requesting asylum, referring to the threat they could face.

Earlier, Mexico’s Foreign Minister confirmed that Morales had boarded a Mexican government aircraft “sent to ensure his safe transfer to our country.”

“Evo Morales is already on the Mexican Government plane sent to ensure his safe transfer to our country,” Ebrard wrote on Twitter on Monday evening.

Mexico grants Evo political asylum

Mexico has offered Bolivian President Evo Morales political asylum on Monday after his forced resignation in the wake of a coup, while

“It’s a coup because the army requested the resignation of the president, and that violates the constitutional order of that country,” Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said.

Ebrard recalled that Mexico was known for respecting the domestic affairs of any nation, as well as granting the right to political asylum for whoever suffered from political persecution.

He reported that Morales did a formal request following Mexico’s offer of asylum, and granted the status over “humanitarian reasons, and the emergency situation currently experienced in Bolivia.”

Evo vows to return with more strength & energy

Evo Morales has announced his departure to Mexico.

Evo said he would leave Bolivia to take up the Mexican government’s offer for political asylum extended earlier on Monday, but promised to return with renewed energy.

“Sisters and brothers, I leave for Mexico,” Morales said in a tweet on Monday night, adding he was “grateful” to Mexico for providing asylum and “[taking] care of our lives.”

He wrote: “It hurts to leave the country for political reasons. Soon I will return with more strength and energy.”

Bolivian defense minister resigns

Bolivian minister of defense Javier Savaleta resigned in the light of ongoing protests, according to a tweet his ministry released Tuesday.

“I am leaving the post of Minister of Defense in order to maintain unity in the ranks of the Armed Forces,” Savaleta said.

The resigning minister said that the commanders were never ordered the use of military force against the civilians.

“We never gave an order for our soldiers and sailors to wield a weapon against their people and we will never give it. The state we built is a Bolivia in which a military man defends his country alongside his people and never from them,” he emphasized.

Army to repress protesters rejecting the coup

Bolivia’s armed forces commander Williams Kaliman announced Monday that the military would take joint action with the police in repressing people’s mobilization against the coup that forced out President Evo Morales’ democratically elected government.

“In the face of acts of vandalism, force will be used proportionally. We call for common sense and peace and we remind the population that the armed forces will never open fire on them,” Kaliman said.

In doing so, the commander in chief is obeying the request of the Senate’s Second Deputy Senate Majority Leader and member of the opposition Democratic Union party Jeanine Anez, who asked the military to join with the police units to “control the masses; hordes,” referring to militants and supporters of the Movement for Socialism (MAS) who demand the respect of the popular vote.

Protests and clashes continue

After the coup on Sunday, hundreds of people mobilized Monday to reject it urging that President Morales start his duties.

However, the demonstrators were repressed by police forces leaving several wounded with two people seriously injured.

Despite threats from opposition parties and security forces to attack social demonstrations, the leader of the Confederation of Intercultural Communities Henry Mamani announced that his organization would join the mobilization in defense of the democracy.

Hectic protests and clashes between rival activists have continued in cities around Bolivia even after Morales’s resignation.

In La Paz on Monday night, security forces and opposition protesters erected barricades in the streets in preparation for a large confrontation, as thousands of Morales supporters march toward the city.

Live ammunition: Police attack Evo supporters protesting the coup: 1 Dead

Police has started attacking Evo Morales supporters in a major way. Death of one Evo Morales supporter has already been reported.

Residents of the city of El Alto, in the department of La Paz, took to the streets Monday to protest against the coup.

However, they were met with violent police repression, in which officers are reportedly using live ammunition and rubber bullets.

“After the first day of the civic-political-police coup, rebellious police use bullets to cause deaths and injuries in El Alto. My solidarity with those innocent victims, among them a girl, and the heroic alter people, defender of democracy,” Morales said from his Twitter account Monday.

According to videos posted by residents of El Alto on social media networks, among the injured are two people and a girl who were shot and evacuated by protesters.

Protesters denounce that the Bolivian police joined the coup against Morales, with the support of the now ex-commander of the Yuri Calderón institution.

“The first thing we have to do is organize groups in all cities, we will proceed to arrests to grab all the heads that are causing anxiety, we will take back the city,” Calderón said when he resigned.

Unions, social movements oppose coup and refuse to recognize Morales’ resignation

Unions and social movements have come out against the coup.

The organizations said they refuse to recognize Morales’ resignation as it was forced on him by the military after weeks of right-wing violent protests and attacks.

Non-stop violence  

Earlier in the day, Evo Morales condemned right-wing opposition leaders Carlos Mesa and Lusi Camacho for failing to stop the violence in the country and warning that they intend to blame him for such violence instead of taking responsibility following the coup against his leftist government.

“Mesa and Camacho, discriminators and conspirators, will go down in history as racists and coup plotters,” Morales said in a tweet early Monday morning. “That they assume their responsibility to pacify the country and guarantee the political stability and peaceful coexistence of our people. The world and Bolivian patriots repudiate the coup.”

I am a victim of conspiracy: Evo

Morales repeated on Monday that he was the victim of a conspiracy by enemies including election rival Carlos Mesa and protest leader Luis Fernando Camacho. “The world and our Bolivian patriots repudiate the coup,” he tweeted.

Mexico slams OAS over inaction

The Mexican foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard will demand an emergency meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS), which he accused to remain silent after the “military pronouncement and police operations”.

The Mexican government said Monday it recognizes Evo Morales as the “legitimate” president of Bolivia, denouncing that his resignation was due to a “coup” carried out by the army, which it described as a serious setback for the region.

Foreign Minister also said the administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador would not recognize a military government in the Andean country.

“What happened yesterday (in Bolivia) we consider a coup. It is a coup because the army requested the resignation of the president and that violates the constitutional order of that country,” said Ebrard at the morning press conference of Lopez Obrador.

“The position that Mexico has defined today is to claim, demand respect for constitutional order and democracy in Bolivia,” added the foreign minister who will demand an emergency meeting of the OAS he accused to remain silent after the “military pronouncement and police operations.”

It is a coup

Several countries, including Argentina, Venezuela, Cuba, and Mexico described the events in Bolivia as a coup.

Russia, China and Uruguay also expressed support for Evo Morales.

Expressing strong support to Evo Morales Russia lamented the Bolivian President’s forced ouster as “an orchestrated coup.”

“We are alarmed by the dramatic developments in Bolivia, where the wave of violence, unleashed by the opposition, prevented the completion of Evo Morales’s presidential mandate,” said Russia’s Foreign Ministry in a statement.

China expressed “hopes to see that both parts can find a political solution in Bolivia as soon as possible so political stability would return.”

Granma, the official voice of the Communist Party of Cuba central committee said on November 11, 2019:

The President of the Republic of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, strongly condemned the coup in Bolivia on Sunday, stating on his Twitter account, “With a violent, cowardly coup the right wing has attacked democracy in Bolivia.

“Our forceful condemnation of the coup and solidarity with brother President Evo Morales Ayma. The world must be mobilized to preserve the life and freedom of Evo,” he insisted.

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla tweeted the ministry’s condemnation of the coup and expressed solidarity with Evo, leader and symbol of the demands for justice of the original peoples of Our America.

On November 9, Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a declaration stating, “Disregarding electoral institutions and the people’s mandate expressed at the polls, sectors of the Bolivian opposition, with the support and leadership of the United States and regional oligarchies, have launched a coup with the aim of denying the Bolivian people the electoral result. The opposition coup strategy has led to severe violence across the country, which has cost lives, hundreds of wounded, and expressions of racism toward original peoples.”

Argentine President-elect Alberto Fernandez and Uruguay echoed Morales’ denunciations of the conspiracy and coup.

Correa says OAS is an instrument of US domination

Former leader of Ecuador Rafael Correa said the resignation of Bolivian President Evo Morales was the result of a coup d’etat and that events could have ended in worse violence, if the socialist leader had not resigned.

In an exclusive interview RT Spanish on Monday, Correa told: “Of course there was a coup d’etat.”

He explained that such an insubordination of the country’s armed forces “cannot exist in a constitutional state of law” or democracy. “If Evo Morales did not resign, there would have been a bloodbath because there was no public order,” he said.

There can be no true democracy until the arbitrators are the citizens and “not the uninformed,” Correa said.

He added that he would not be surprised if there were foreign forces behind the efforts to oust Morales.

Correa said that the OAS, which encouraged Morales to call for new elections, did not condemn events in socialist Bolivia because democracy is only valid when it serves the interests of the right.

“You can see the double standard that exist in all this. For the right, democracy is valid as long as it meets its interests,” Correa said. When those interests stop being fulfilled, suddenly democracy is not enough and “the situation must be changed to blood and fire, as we are seeing in Bolivia.”

Correa said the Bolivian people have experienced dignity and prosperity under Morales’ leadership and that after recent events, people across Latin America will soon be convinced that the OAS is “useless” and nothing but “an instrument if U.S. domination.”

He said that the OAS wants elections in Bolivia but only without Morales because they know that he was democratically elected by the people already. “They have just forcibly removed a president who has won the election widely,” he said, insisting that Morales is the rightful leader of Bolivia.

Cuban medical brigade

The 701 members of the Cuban medical brigade in Bolivia are safe, with all necessary provisions, and are being kept informed of events in permanent communication with the mission’s leadership, stated Yoandra Muro, head of the brigade in Bolivia. Muro was speaking on Cuban Television.


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