The mockery of January 22 | La mofa del 22 de enero

Manfredo Kempff., El Deber:

The mockery of January 22

The January 22 holiday is a mockery, it is the biggest rant that has been made on historical issues in the country and that should no longer be allowed. January 22 is not remembered as Plurinational State Day; t is a lie, because what is being celebrated is the assumption of command of Evo Morales. Morales took command of the nation on January 22, 2006, as we all know, but the Plurinational State emerged from the regrettable Constitution of February 7, 2009 and was officially declared only by Supreme Decree on the following March 18, that is, three years later.

So Bolivians who believe in the Plurinational State may learn that what they are celebrating is the arrival of Morales to power; but, nevertheless, since in Bolivia everything can be done and because Bolivians are idiots, we maintain a holiday that praises the most dangerous subject that our country has ever given birth to. If it were about celebrating Plurinational State Day (which there is no reason to do so) it would have to be either February 7 or March 18.

Evo Morales knows that January 22 is his day, that it is his holiday because he felt like it, and now he celebrates it by blocking roads and forcing people to have another day of leisure for some and suffering for others. Blocking is the genesis of his success. The blockage is in his brain and with a blocked mind there is no way to compose anything. He has been the worst ruler that Bolivia had, because he deceived us with lies and silenced us with threats. With his fatal example, during the last five decades, Bolivia has been blocked almost daily. Instead of the “culture of peace,” which Masismo boasts of, what they imposed in Bolivia was the “culture of blockade,” that is, the paralysis of the country, the decline of its motor skills, turning us into a paraplegic nation.

But while Morales blocked happily, sure of his success (what blockade is not successful in Bolivia?), the peaceful but devious President Arce, entangled in the tricks and truculent arts of his predecessor and beloved boss, celebrated the Day of the Plurinational State in the People’s House, populated by public employees and some indigenous people brought from who knows what places. The usual sycophants spoke and then the ineffable former chancellor and now president of Congress, “jilakata” or “jiliri”, David Choquehuanca, with opaque lights, nourished us with his numbing Aymara philosophy – as beautiful as it was falsified by the MAS.

And then, celebrating Evo Morales’ accession to power, of course, President Arce spoke. He enrolled the Chapareño chief within the “new right”, but without daring to pronounce his name. Before there was a brief Argentine chacarera show, but it was presented as our dance. Badly done, because there is no nation, among the 36 that the 2009 Constitution says, that has had that dance as its own. It is very good that we dance the chacarera because it is very beautiful, but it is wrong that we incorporate it as part of the national folklore; and much less than in the House of the People, where the president and all of his ministers applaud, in the face of a blatant theft.

But, chacarera aside, President Arce continued with his lazy, inconsequential, repetitive, and lying oratory. Before, an announcer spoke about the continental and world power that awaits Bolivia at the end of Arce’s mandate. It seemed a little exaggerated to us. The president has been deceiving us that we have gone through some difficulties that have been successfully overcome, but that, now, the time has also come for the march towards the second centenary of the creation of the Republic. Are they going to celebrate it, perhaps? Why did they say that the hated oligarchic Republic was dead? It is the incomprehensible and repeated incongruity of those who think with their guts.

The president briefly repeated the hackneyed figures from his last interventions, about low inflation, growth, exports, debt, low unemployment, the weight of subsidies and little else; and he concluded that, despite some inconveniences, we were doing very well, and he placed Bolivia, more or less, in third place in progress in South America. Of course he didn’t mean, at all, that we no longer have gas left, except in our bellies.

Nor did he say that they have not discovered a miserable gas field, after all the immensity that the “neoliberals” left behind and that the “pluris” sold without replacing anything; that drug trafficking has proliferated like never before, as an alternative livelihood; that the infamous unconstitutionally extended justice is the fault of their laziness along with that of the parliamentarians; and that, with Milei in charge, smuggling from Argentina will no longer be a source of livelihood for many jobless families. He has not pointed out a single major industry that has been created in this “Government of Industrialization.”

Fortunately, his reference to lithium was only in passing. Because it turns out that, with the industrialization of lithium, which this Government mentions as the “white gold” that is going to save us, we have information worldwide that is disappointing and does not seem crazy at all: Australia 47 percent in production; Chile 30; China 15; Argentina 5. Bolivia does not appear in the ranking, but it is recognized that our country has the largest reserves in the world. That also means that we have the most inept rulers on the planet. Producing brines for gargling is not the national hope.

The president has spoken of the “harvest” that is coming after his three years of promoting industrialization and obsolete and failed import substitution. Is Mr. Arce serious? Harvest of what if he has not sown anything? Without the slightest desire for ridicule, even worse now that we are so bad, the only important harvest in sight, in this pre-election year, is just the coca leaf substitutes. In the dirty business of coquita. There we are doing better than with lithium. White is the lithium and white is the result of the maceration of coca. The future of the country is blank.

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