Shortly after several social-democratic opposition members of the Parliament of Canada, a number of national and local unions, and members of the left-wing Quebec Solidaire party in Quebec’s National Assembly, took a position against the coup in Bolivia, another Canadian union issued a press release.
The release by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), representing 54,000 workers, is dated November 20 and titled: “CUPW condemns Bolivian coup.”
“CUPW [the Canadian Union of Postal Workers] is appalled to see international actors including Canada, the UK and the U.S.A. condoning a coup d’état in Bolivia, enacted by a group of military, police and right-wing politicians.
“Socialist Evo Morales was Bolivia’s first indigenous president. His social policies pulled many people out of poverty and leave a legacy of indigenous empowerment and improvements for the Bolivian working class. Bolivia adopted a new secular constitution in 2009 under his administration.
“Right-wing forces and the military refused to acknowledge Morales’ October 2019 re-election – by a resounding majority on the first-round ballot – and forced his resignation. He has been in exile [in Mexico] since.
“Though election ‘irregularities’ were alleged, there’s been no evidence of election fraud put forward.”
After mentioning the racist and classist nature of the violence resulting from the coup, the CUPW goes on to express its solidarity with Bolivian trade unions and social movements. It concludes:
“CUPW holds very dear the right to peoples’ self-determination and will never accept an undemocratic, violent coup against the clear and overwhelming democratic will of the people.”
While opposition to the coup grows in Canada, neither the Canadian government nor the capitalist media, which always support the so-called “opposition” (i.e., whoever the U.S. favors), as they have done in Venezuela, apparently have nothing to say.
Yet the workers and peoples of Canada are determined. No power anywhere in the world can make the people turn their anti-imperialist movement into an appendage of the Trudeau government’s foreign policy in Latin America and the Caribbean.
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This article was originally published in Spanish in Trabajadores, Newspaper of the Cuban Trade Union Central.
Arnold August is a Canadian journalist and lecturer, the author of Democracy in Cuba and the 1997–98 Elections, Cuba and Its Neighbours: Democracy in Motion and Cuba–U.S. Relations: Obama and Beyond. He collaborates with many web sites, television and radio broadcasts based in Latin America, Europe, North America and the Middle East. Twitter Facebook, His trilingual
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