Two Bolivian army leaders were arrested Wednesday after soldiers and tanks took up position in front of government buildings in what President Luis Arce called an attempted coup.
According to reports, the troops and tanks entered Plaza Murillo, a historic square where the presidency and Congress are situated, in the afternoon, prompting global condemnation of an attack on democracy.
One of the tanks tried to break down a metal door of the presidential palace.
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.”
Zuniga was captured and forced into a police car as he addressed reporters outside a military barracks later on Wednesday, footage on state television showed.
“General, you are under arrest,” Deputy Interior Minister Jhonny Aguilera told Zuniga.
A second senior military officer Juan Arnez Salvador, who was head of the Bolivian navy, was also arrested Wednesday night.
Salvador’s arrest was announced by Interior Minister Eduardo del Castillo, who said that Zuniga and Arnez are “two military coup leaders who tried to destroy democracy and the institutionality of our country and failed.”
Speaking from a balcony of the government palace, Arce told hundreds of supporters that “No one can take away the democracy we have won.”
He had urged “the Bolivian people to organize and mobilize against the coup d’etat in favor of democracy,” in an earlier televised message to the country alongside his ministers inside the presidential palace.
He fired Zuniga and Salvador and swore in a new set of military leaders.
Before he was arrested, Zuniga told reporters that the president had told him to stage an uprising, in order to trigger a crackdown that would make him look strong and boost his sagging approval rating.
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,” Zuniga said.
Former president Evo Morales wrote on social media platform X that “a coup d’etat is brewing” and urged a “national mobilization to defend democracy.”
Bolivia is deeply polarised after years of political instability and the ruling Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) party is riven by internal conflict between supporters of Arce and his former mentor Morales.
Morales, who was Bolivia’s first Indigenous president, was extremely popular until he tried to bypass the constitution and seek a fourth term in office in 2019.
Condemnations of the troop movements also poured in from across Latin America, with leaders of Chile, Ecuador, Peru, Mexico, Colombia and Venezuela calling for democracy to be respected.
Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva wrote on X: “I am a lover of democracy and I want it to prevail throughout Latin America. We condemn any form of coup d’etat in Bolivia.”
The Organisation of American States (OAS) said the international community would “not tolerate any form of breach of the legitimate constitutional order in Bolivia.”
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