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Former heads of Bolivia’s army and navy arrested over failed coup
(www.theguardian.com)
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The former heads of Bolivia’s army and navy are among 17 people so far arrested for their alleged roles in a seemingly bungled military coup designed to topple the South American country’s leftwing president, Luis Arce.
In his television interview, Del Castillo claimed that on Tuesday night, the eve of the alleged revolt, Arce and Zúñiga had met in the presence of another senior minister and that the president had informed the army chief he was being relieved of his duties because his conduct “was not in line with the political constitution”.
Wednesday’s brief and still poorly explained mutiny, which lasted only about three hours and reportedly saw 12 people injured, was the latest convulsion to grip a notoriously volatile nation that has witnessed 190 revolutions and coups since it gained independence in 1825.
Adding to the confusion were comments made by Zúñiga in the moments before he was detained, in which the ex-army chief appeared to accuse Arce of staging a sham coup in order to boost his flagging popularity.
As the war of words intensified, armed police, their faces covered with balaclavas, guarded the wrought iron gates of the 19th-century neoclassical palace where much of the previous day’s drama had unfolded.
The apparent coup attempt in Bolivia was the subject of almost universal condemnation from across the political spectrum in Latin America, with conservative governments in Ecuador, Uruguay and Paraguay speaking out, as well as leftwing ones in Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico.
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