Here are a few more lessons for scammers' assistants.

By Moisés Mendes, do Journalists for Democracy

Bolivia continues to send us information that is very useful. A piece of news from the last few days should be carefully considered by those aspiring to be accomplices in coups who intend to embark on new versions of the Adélio Bispo stabbing.

Two high-ranking Bolivian uniformed aides finally admitted that they participated in the 2019 coup against Evo Morales, when the generals were drawn into the chaos of a National Police mutiny, encouraged by civilian coup plotters.

Those who decided to speak are the former commanders of the Air Force, Gonzalo Terceros, and of the Navy, Palmiro Jarjuri Rada. They are imprisoned and are being prosecuted. They have asked the Public Prosecutor's Office for an expedited trial.

This means they will confess to the crimes of complicity in rioting, attacks against democracy, and coups, identify accomplices, and make a deal with the Public Prosecutor's Office and the Judiciary to obtain a reduced sentence.

The confession of the former Army chief, Jorge Mendieta, is still missing. They were all around William Kaliman, head of the Armed Forces, at the moment when the general read the military's manifesto calling for Morales' resignation, on November 10, 2019.

Jeanine Añez, the former senator used as a front by the coup plotters and who assumed the government in place of Morales, has been imprisoned since March of last year and enters her fifth day of hunger strike this Monday.

A month ago, Evo Morales revealed yet another detail about the state of permanent coup in Bolivia. In the October 2020 election, almost a year after the plot that ousted him, the right wing orchestrated yet another attack on democracy.

Members of the National Force (which is their uniformed federal military police) would attack public buildings in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, acting as if they were militiamen. They would not wear uniforms and would be commanded by civilians.

The plan failed because the militia soldiers did not want to take the same risk as in 2019, when they mutinied and created the chaos that led to Morales's ouster.

The heads of the National Police are in jail. The leaders of armed civilian militias are imprisoned. And the civilian ringleaders of the coup are free, among them their Bolsonaro, Luis Fernando Camacho, governor of Santa Cruz de la Sierra.

Camacho, the ranchers, the bankers, the business bourgeoisie, they all abandoned the generals, the National Police officers, the militarized militias, and Jeanine Añez.

They're still putting on a show, as if they were on the side of those who fell, and

They are working tirelessly to orchestrate a new coup, this time against Luis Arce, elected in 2020 by Morales' Movement for Socialism.

All because Camacho has immunity. In March of last year, while Añez and the generals were being arrested, Camacho was elected governor of Santa Cruz, the state of large landholdings, dominated by the right and far right.

Civilians have a power that the military coup plotters, both from the Armed Forces and the National Police, failed to acquire. The lesson, once again, is this: when push comes to shove, coup leaders abandon their henchmen.

And, to reiterate, Williams Kaliman, the head of the Armed Forces, remains a fugitive. He was the only military leader who fled. All the others are imprisoned. In Bolivia, henchmen of coup plotters are jailed and become useless dogs.