Following what President Luis Arce described as an attempted coup, Bolivia’s army chief sent soldiers and tanks to establish themselves in front of government facilities. The general was taken into custody on Wednesday.
The afternoon’s incursion of the military and tanks into Plaza Murillo, the historic area housing the Congress and the presidency, sparked international condemnation of an assault on democracy.
A tank attempted to smash through a presidential palace metal door.
Surrounded by soldiers and eight tanks, the now-dismissed army chief General Juan Jose Zuniga said the “armed forces intend to restructure democracy, to make it a true democracy and not one run by the same few people for 30, 40 years.”
Reporters from AFP saw tanks and soldiers retreating from the square shortly after that. The five hours or so that the rebellion lasted.
Later on Wednesday, according to footage on state television, Zuniga was apprehended and thrown into a police car while speaking to reporters outside a military barracks.
“General, you are under arrest,” Deputy Interior Minister Jhonny Aguilera told Zuniga.
“No one can take away the democracy we have won,” Arce said from a balcony of the government palace in front of hundreds of supporters.
In a televised address to the nation earlier, he and his ministers within the presidential palace had exhorted “the Bolivian people to organize and mobilize against the coup d’etat in favor of democracy.”
In addition, he fired Zuniga and swore in new military commanders.
Zuniga told reporters just before he was arrested that the president had actually instructed him to organize an uprising in order to start a crackdown that would raise his declining approval rating and make him appear tough.
At a meeting Sunday, the general said, Zuniga asked Arce “so we bring out armored vehicles?” He said the president answered, “bring them out.”
Arce’s instructions were to “stage something to raise his popularity,” the general said.
Former president Evo Morales wrote on X that “a coup d’etat is brewing” and also urged a “national mobilization to defend democracy.”
