Bolivia’s former President claims his car was shot during an assassination attempt

This article was originally published in Spanish

Former Bolivian President Evo Morales claimed he survived an assassination attempt on Sunday after unidentified men opened fire on his car.

He was not injured in the alleged attack that quickly became the latest flashpoint in a power struggle between the ex-leader and his successor, current President Luis Arce.

Morales blamed President Arce’s government for the outburst of violence, saying it was part of a coordinated campaign by the Bolivian authorities to sideline him from politics.

Arce’s government pointed its finger at Morales, claiming the leftist icon staged an attack on himself to boost his political fortunes ahead of presidential elections next year.

Both sides rejected the claims against them.

Morales alleged the shots were fired while he was being driven in Bolivia’s coca leaf-growing region of Chapare, the ex-president’s rural stronghold whose residents have blockaded the main east-west highway for the past two weeks in a show of defiance and solidarity after new legal threats against Morales emerged.

The roadblocks and mass vigils have choked off major cities and disrupted food and fuel supplies, exacerbating the country’s rolling economic crisis.

A ‘self-attack’?

Morales, who served as Bolivia’s first Indigenous president from 2006-2019, described the burst of gunfire that hit his car on Sunday as part of a conspiracy by Arce’s government to drive him out of politics.

On Sunday, Morales emerged unscathed, appearing on his weekly radio show in his usual calm manner to recount what happened. He told the radio host that as he was leaving home for the radio station, hooded men fired at least 14 shots at his car, wounding his driver.

“Arce is going to go down as the worst president in history,” Morales said. “Shooting a former president is the last straw.”

From Arce’s government, Deputy Security Minister Roberto Rios insisted that police had not carried out any kind of operation against the former president.

He said authorities were investigating a theory that Morales had conducted “a possible self-attack.”

“Morales is seeking confrontation and violence on the roads for political interests and to achieve impunity,” Rios told reporters.

Officials in Arce’s government have yet to respond to requests to elaborate on the contested claims.

Political persecution

Even before the shots were fired, the country’s political atmosphere was rife with personal attacks and at times violence.

Earlier this month, Bolivian prosecutors launched an investigation into accusations that Morales fathered a child with a 15-year-old girl in 2016, classifying the case as statutory rape. Dismissing the renewed prosecution attempt as politically motivated, Morales has refused to testify in court.

Since reports circulated of a possible warrant against him, the ex-president has been holed up in the Chapare region, in central Bolivia.

Last month, in a show of political strength, Morales and his supporters set off on a highly anticipated dayslong march to La Paz, the capital, from a rural village in an effort to pressure Arce to address dire shortages of fuel and dollars.

The march, which also called for authorities to allow Morales to run in next year’s election despite his disqualification by the election commission, quickly devolved into street clashes with counter-protesters.