“A pair of a black ox and a white ox.”
With this metaphor, Evo Morales, when he was president of Bolivia, described his association with his vice president Álvaro García Linera, who was the second man of the Movement towards Socialism (MAS) from 2006 to 2019, thanks to his close and complementary relationship with the first president. .
Today the “yoke” has broken catastrophically.
Morales has described García Linera as “just another enemy” and has thrown his most poisonous darts at him.
He declared to EL PAÍS that they have “structural differences on how to continue the process” that they led together.
Every Sunday, the former president is interviewed by Kawsachun Coca radio, owned by the coca farmers, whom he has led for decades.
He usually speaks against the government of President Luis Arce, with whom he has been in a frontal war for several months.
And sometimes he personally attacks politicians who, according to him, have “betrayed” him.
Regarding García Linera, Morales stated that he “knew [in advance] of the coup” d'état that, in the opinion of the MAS, determined the fall of both leaders in November 2019. He was also surprised that, unlike what happened With his house, which was raided, the home of the then vice president was respected by the protesters who acted violently against the main leaders of the MAS in the days when this party had just been overthrown.
The objective of his intervention was to show an alleged complicity between García Linera and the “forces of the empire” who, according to him, were behind his loss of power.
The politician and intellectual has responded to “these little things” with a question: “What greater loyalty could I have if in 2019 I gave up the possibility of being president, since no one was asking for my resignation and I could have replaced Evo?”
On November 10, 2019, García Linera flew with Morales to his stronghold of Chapare to protect himself from the police mutiny that had broken out days before in the country, there he resigned from his position at the same time as the president and, the next day, both left. to exile, first to Mexico and then to Argentina.
The house in which he had lived until then, located in a wealthy neighborhood of La Paz, was besieged by a group of activists, but the neighbors prevented it from being looted.
García Linera earned the enmity of Morales for not joining his faction after the split of the MAS and for asking that the leaders of both wings step aside to allow the candidacy, in the 2025 elections, of a new figure that can promote unity, thinking about the current president of the Senate, Andrónico Rodríguez, 35 years old, who is indigenous and a coca leader.
García Linera and President Arce are also estranged.
They have not spoken since before the second came to power, at the end of 2020.
Before Morales' explosion against him, the former Bolivian vice president, who is currently dedicated to university teaching, had declared to the media that "the divided MAS would lose in the first round" against the opposition, despite the fact that it too It is fragmented.
He said that, for different reasons, “the votes are not enough” for either of the two leaders of his party.
To avoid this defeat, “which would hurt the most humble people, because those who kick Indians and want to hand over Bolivian companies to the gringos would return,” he proposed a political agreement in which all internal sides win and the continuity of the changes that the country has been experiencing for almost two decades.
“You can define a political future for the MAS in which both [groups] win a little, but not everything.
Negotiations can be made, as long as you don't look at your navel, but rather look at the country and its needs.
There is always a viable political solution, but it requires greatness;
greatness in the face of history and in the face of the current moment,” he declared.
Morales' response was very harsh.
According to his former collaborator, what distances them “deep down” are different conceptions of the problems facing his movement and the ways to solve them.
“Evo believes it is an administrative problem.
That will be fixed if he presides over the country instead of Arce.
I believe that to preserve the process, reforms are needed on three levels: radically changing economic structures, new discourses that understand what has happened in the country and represent it, and indigenous renewal of leadership," he explained to this newspaper.
These days, Morales' adherents have elected him the "single candidate" of the left.
On the other hand, Arce and his followers are setting the stage to stay with the MAS in May in a party congress that the unconditional supporters of the other side describe as spurious.
The Plurinational Constitutional Court (TCP) recently ruled that no Bolivian can preside over the country more than twice, continuously or discontinuously, which prevents the participation of Morales, who has been president of Bolivia three times.
The opposition has accused the TCP of having failed “to suit” Arce's interests.
Morales denies legitimacy to this constitutional ruling and has assured that he will be present in next year's elections.
García Linera has considered that the disqualification of the former president is “a scoundrel”, but, at the same time, that, no matter how much he protests, Morales will not be able to reverse it.
“That is why Evo must have a plan B,” he said.
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