Coup by Farthing Linda;Becker Thomas;

Author:Farthing, Linda;Becker, Thomas; [Farthing, Linda;Becker, Thomas;]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781642596847
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Published: 2021-12-03T06:00:00+00:00

COVID-19 AND CORRUPTION

Áñez’s early and forceful actions against COVID-19, including a complete quarantine across the country in late March, initially won her praise.69 A survey in early May found that her popularity had soared,70 despite government restrictions allowing people to leave their homes only one morning a week to go food shopping—a daunting constraint in the world’s largest informal economy.71 Her support waned quickly, however.

Bolivia’s challenges in confronting the virus were enormous. Despite substantial investments in healthcare infrastructure under the MAS, the county was ill-equipped to cope, possessing approximately one-third of the intensive care beds public health officials estimated necessary.72 In poor areas such as the city of El Alto, only eight beds were available for a population of about a million.

The quarantine fell hardest on the poorest and most vulnerable.73 Potable water, needed for handwashing, is inaccessible to about a quarter of the population. While some middle-class Bolivians organized food drives, in one of South America’s poorest countries, this was a drop in the bucket.74 A third of the population surveyed by the firm Ciesmori in mid-April said that they did not have enough food for the following seven days.75 At the same time, the government regularly referred to those who broke quarantine rules as “terrorists” and “subversives.”76

Just like everywhere in the world, violence against women spiked during the pandemic. The country already had the region’s second-highest rate of femicide.77 “We are considerably alarmed that a high level of resources is directed toward prosecuting those who are protesting government action on COVID-19, and there are almost no resources to address the increasing violence against women,” Nadia Cruz of the publicly funded Ombudsman’s Office (Defensoría del Pueblo) told La Razón newspaper.78

Many residents in working-class neighborhoods feared the quarantine was an excuse to unleash more repression, undermining its effectiveness. Protestors in Cochabamba told the press, “We aren’t afraid of COVID-19; it’s an invention of the right wing … they want us to die of hunger.”79

Few could stick to three months of one of the strictest lockdowns in the world, given the limited and tardy public assistance on offer. This accelerated the spread of the virus and, combined with inadequate medical resources, catapulted Bolivia to the world’s third-highest per capita death rate by October 2020.80 Across the country, students struggled as the government declared an early end to the school year, slated to end in November, slashing the number of low-income youth able to pursue higher education.81

As the Áñez government’s missteps multiplied, many of the impoverished people who had risen into the middle class during the MAS government once again found themselves struggling financially. Whatever public confidence remained dissipated in late May when Áñez’s health minister was arrested for fraud involving a multi-million-dollar ventilator purchase. He had authorized the purchase of more than a hundred Spanish respirators not designed for use in intensive care wards at a price four times higher than they were listed.82

The handling of the pandemic was not the only area plagued by corruption and mismanagement. The de facto government steamrollered decisions that benefited its friends and supporters in agribusiness.

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