Ten days ago, when the military pushed Bolivia's left-wing leader Evo Morales to resign, the country is sinking into a whirlpool of chaos and violence. More than 30 of his followers died in the riots, most of them apparently shot by soldiers and police. "It scares me," Morales said in a conversation with Der Spiegel in his Mexican exile.
- "It's worth it to die for:" Read the whole interview with Morales here.
Some of his followers invoke a civil war. Trying to appease her, Morales assures me, "I reject violence." But he also acknowledges that his appeals often die away: "Most protests are spontaneous." They are a "natural response to the humiliation of the poor".
Morales' trailers block highways, fights with the police. Thirty people were injured when soldiers and police cleared blocks in El Alto City Wednesday to make way for tanker trucks.
Morales calls on the international community and the pope to mediate in the Bolivian conflict. If it serves the pacification, he is ready to renounce in new elections on a new candidacy, he assures - "although I have the right to do so".
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This in turn denies interim President Jeanine Añez, an ultra-right-wing opposition politician who has called herself a president by calling on the constitution and wants new elections - on Wednesday she submitted a law to Congress. It would also cancel the election results of 20 October.
Añez accuses Morales of electoral fraud, which he vehemently rejects. Their supporters in the rich province of Santa Cruz have sparked a religious war against Morales and his followers, who belong to the indigenous population majority. You see in Morales a "Satan who occupied the presidential palace".
In fact, his opponents have awakened old demons with the overthrow of the Left Bolivia: The gap between the poor, indigenous highlands and the rich, mestizo-plains with the economic metropolis of Santa Cruz has broken again. Racism and the friend-enemy thinking of the Cold War are revived. The right-wing interim government accuses the socialist government in Cuba and its "vassal" Maduro in Venezuela of fueling the conflict in Bolivia. Ex-President Jorge "Tuto" Quiroga even fears a "South American Vietnam".
"It's a class struggle," says Morales in SPIEGEL - and stirs up the worst fears of his opponents. He blames Washington for his fall: "See you in front of the US embassy," his supporters warned him 14 years ago when he was first elected president.