The Latin American Mission Program celebrates with the Bolivian people on their election in October. In this election, Luis Arce, the economic minister under Evo Morales, the former president for 12 years, won with a landslide of 55 per cent of the vote, more than 25 per cent from his closest rival.
This triumph of democracy is a result of the courage in particular of the majority Indigenous people of Bolivia, continuing the struggle begun with the election of their former president Evo Morales in 2007. His government was overturned by a military coup backed by the U.S and Canadian governments last fall. They shamefully disregarded the Bolivian people’s election of Evo Morales in 2019 when it was falsely reported that these elections had fraudulent results. These reports were demonstratively proven to be false by various international institutions this year.
LAMP has seen the devastating results of these American backed coups in Latin America over the last 100 plus years including the one in the Dominican Republic in 1965; Chile-1973; Guatemala-1954; etc. What we haven’t seen until this past year is the Canadian government backing this overthrow of a democratically elected government. A similar interference is present in the position taken by the Canadian government regarding the democratically elected government of Venezuela. Here again, Canadian foreign policy in Latin America is aligning itself with right-wing governments like the Trump administration in the U.S and the Bolsonaro regime in Brazil. These Canadian foreign policy shifts reflect an anti-democratic position which is antithetical to most Canadians. Much worse, these positions have resulted in tremendous suffering to the peoples of these Latin American countries who have for centuries endured the oppression and subjugation of colonization by Europeans and imperialistic American adventures.
We call upon the Canadian government to urgently reconsider these dangerous foreign policy positions in relationships with our neighbours in Latin America. We must respect the rights of these countries to determine their own future and governments.
Father Phil Callaghan,
LAMP member,
Charlottetown
