Bolivia November 13, 2019
Top Bolivian coup plotters were School of the Americas grads, served as
attachés in FBI police programs
Commanders of Bolivias military and police helped plot the coup and
guaranteed its success. This investigation reveals that they were educated
for insurrection through notorious US military and FBI training programs.
By Jeb Sprague
The U.S. played a key role in the military coup in Bolivia, and in a direct
way that has scarcely been acknowledged in accounts of the events that
forced the countrys elected president, Evo Morales, to resign on November
10.
Just prior to Morales resignation, the commander of Bolivias armed forces
Williams Kaliman suggested that the president step down. A day earlier,
sectors of the countrys police force had rebelled.
Though Kaliman appears to have feigned loyalty to Morales over the years,
his true colors showed as soon as the moment of opportunity arrived. He was
not only an actor in the coup, he had his own history in Washington, where
he had briefly served as the military attaché of Bolivias embassy in the US
capital.
Kaliman sat at the top of a military and police command structure that has
been substantially cultivated by the US through WHINSEC, the military
training school in Fort Benning, Georgia known in the past as the School of
the Americas. Kaliman himself attended a course called Comando y Estado
Mayor at the SOA in 2003.
At least six of the key coup plotters were former alumni of the infamous
School of the Americas, while Kaliman and another figure served in the past
as Bolivias military and police attachés in Washington.
Within the Bolivian police, top commanders who helped launch the coup have
passed through the APALA police exchange program. Working out of Washington
DC, APALA functions to build relations between U.S. authorities and police
officials from Latin American states. Despite its influence, or perhaps
because of it, the program maintains little public presence. Its staff was
impossible for this researcher to reach by phone.
It is common for governments to assign a few number of individuals to work
at their countrys embassies abroad as military or police attachés. The late
Philip Agee, a one-time CIA case officer who became the agencys first
whistleblower, explained in his 1975 tell-all book how US intelligence
traditionally relied on the recruitment of foreign military and police
officers, including embassy attachés, as critical assets in regime change
and counter-insurgency operations.
As I found from the more than 11,000 FOIA documents I obtained while writing
my book on the paramilitary campaign waged in the lead up to the February
2004 ouster of Haitis elected government and the post-coup repression, U.S.
officials worked for years to ingratiate themselves and establish
connections with Haitian police, army, and ex-army officials. These
connections as well as the recruitment and information gathering efforts
eventually paid off.
In Bolivia, too, the role of military and police officials trained by the US
was pivotal in forcing regime change. U.S. government agencies such as USAID
have openly financed anti-Morales groups in the country for many years. But
the way that the countrys security forces were used as a Trojan Horse by US
intelligence services is less understood. With Moraless forced departure,
however, it became impossible to deny how critical a factor this was.
As this investigation will establish, the coup plot could not have succeeded
without the enthusiastic approval of the countrys military and police
commanders. And their consent was influenced heavily by the US, where so
many were groomed and educated for insurrection.
Leaked audio exposes School of the Americas grads plotting a coup
Leaked audio reported on Bolivian news website la época (and by
elperiodicocr.com and a range of national media outlets) reveals that covert
coordination took place between current and former Bolivian police,
military, and opposition leaders in bringing about the coup.
The leaked audio recordings show that former Cochabamba mayor and former
presidential candidate Manfred Reyes Villa played a central role in the
plot. Reyes happens to be an alumni of WHINSEC (the School of the Americas
[SOA]) who currently resides in the US.
The other four who are introduced or introduce themselves by name in the
leaked audio are General Remberto Siles Vasquez (audio 12); Colonel Julio
César Maldonado Leoni (audio 8 and 9); Colonel Oscar Pacello Aguirre (audio
14), and Colonel Teobaldo Cardozo Guevara (audio 10). All four of these
ex-military officials attended the SOA.
Cardozo Guevara, in particular, boasts about his connections amongst active
officers.
The identities of these individuals are confirmed by cross-checking the data
of the Schools of Americas Watch lists of alumni with Facebook and local
Bolivian news articles and the leaked audio recordings.
The School of the Americas is a notorious site of education for Latin
American coup plotters dating back to the height of the Cold War. Brutal
regime change and reprisal operations from Haiti to Honduras have been
carried out by SOA graduates, and some of the most bloodstained juntas in
the regions history have been run by the schools alumni.
For many years, anti-war protesters have staged a protest vigil outside the
SOAs headquarters at the Fort Benning military base near Columbus, Georgia.
A protest vigil outside the School of the Americas at Fort Benning
The leader of those protests, Father Roy Bourgeois, has described the SOA
as: a combat school. Most of the courses revolve around what they call
counter insurgency warfare. Who are the insurgents? We have to ask that
question. They are the poor. They are the people in Latin America who call
for reform. They are the landless peasants who are hungry. They are health
care workers, human rights advocates, labor organizers, they become the
insurgents, theyre seen as El Enimigo, the Enemy. And they are those who
become the targets of those who learn their lessons at the School of the
Americas.
Bourgeois was deported from Bolivia in 1977 when he spoke out against the
human rights abuses of Gen. Hugo Banzer, a right-wing dictator who rose to
power through a US-backed coup that toppled a leftist government. History
repeats itself today as Banzers ideological heirs drive another socialist
leader from power through time-tested destabilization tactics.
In the recently leaked audio recordings, coup plotters discuss plans to set
ablaze government buildings, get pro-business unions in the country to carry
out strikes, as well as other tactics all straight out of the CIA
playbook.
Also alluded to in the leaked audio is that the coup attempt would be
supported by various evangelical groups as well as by Colombian President
Iván Duque, ex-Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, and most notably Brazils
neo-fascist President Jair Bolsonaro.
The plotters also mention the strong support of ultra-right U.S. senators
Bob Menéndez, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio, who is said to have the ear of U.S.
President Donald Trump when it comes to U.S. foreign policy in the Western
Hemisphere.
Military and Police Attachées in DC: A breeding ground for U.S. intelligence
networking
As tensions built over recent weeks, it was the Commander General of the
Bolivian Police, Vladimir Yuri Calderón Mariscal, who broke the stalemate by
leading large parts of the police force to revolt on November 9th, just a
day prior to the resignation of Morales.
Then-Col. Vladimir Yuri Calderón Mariscal (third on the left) with other
APALA officials in 2018.
In 2018 Calderón Mariscal served as President of Police Attachés of Latin
America in the United States of America (APALA), which is based in
Washington DC.
APALA has been described as a multidimensional security program that works
to build relations and connections between U.S. authorities and police
officials from many of the Organization of American States members.
At APALAs founding in 2012, then-OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza
(center in photo below) met with the groups leadership.
Today APALA hosts police attachés from ten countries: Brazil, Bolivia,
Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Panama, Peru, Mexico and the
Dominican Republic.
According to its Facebook page, the group was created, with the objective
of generating, promoting, and strengthening ties of solidarity, friendship,
cooperation and support between the members of the group and their families
through social, cultural activities, which allow to generate integral
development.
It claims to be facilitating the integration and exchange of the police
institutions that comprise it, in addition to promoting the exchange of
successful experiences developed by the different police forces of Latin
America.
Photo of Calderón Mariscal (center-right) at the FBI training academy that
is 36 miles outside of Washington, DC
A mysterious organization, APALA has shut down its website www.ApalaUSA.com
and does not answer phone calls. It functions in some capacity as an arm of
U.S. federal agencies as its social media platform and now defunct website
showcase numerous meetings and photos of APALA officials and participants
alongside FBI, DEA, ICE, and other U.S. officials.
As Philip Agee explained in his book Inside the Company, the CIA often uses
other U.S. government agencies such as the FBI and USAID, as well as various
front-organizations, to carry out its clandestine activities without leaving
fingerprints.
Below: APALA participants at the FBI headquarters in Washington DC
One of APALAs key local members is Alex Zunca, a police officer in
Baltimore, who is the Director of International Affairs for the Hispanic
National Law Enforcement Association which is based in Washington, DC.
APALAs street address listed on its now defunct website is the same address
as the Embassy of Mexico in Washington, DC. The group was apparently run out
of the Mexican Embassy, at least between 2017 and 2018 when its website was
active during the administration of the US friendly former Mexican President
Enrique Peña Nieto.
Interestingly, a colleague of Calderón Mariscals and also a former
President of APALA is an Associate Minister of the Federal Police of Mexico
named Nicolás González Perrin.
Below, he can be seen seated beside a Mexican national flag and an FBI hat.
In a 2017 interview with the Washington Hispanic, a DC-based Spanish
language newspaper, González Perrin declared that APALA holds meetings,
permanently, with the most significant federal agencies in the United
States, from INTERPOL to DEA, ICE and the FBI, who work with us, based on
mutual needs.
Another important APALA participant is Hector Ivan Mejia Velasquez, the
former General Commissioner of Hondurass National Police, who has led
brutal operations against protesters in his own country, and regularly posts
anti-leftist screeds on social media.
Calls to APALAs public contact Alvaro Andrade Sejas went unanswered. My
messages to his number, which is listed as being located in Rockville,
Maryland, went straight to a voicemail stating that it was restricted.
Andrades Linkedin profile states that he is based in Panama and is the CEO
of an ATM system and the chief executive officer of a group that specializes
in giving advice on computer hacking.
Previously, Andrade was an advisor for an Ecuadorian based group working in
forensic information and focusing on computer crimes and computer
intelligence, and prior to that he worked for the telecommunications
company Nuevatal PCS of Bolivia as its chief information security officer.
Between 1998 and 2002 he attended Bolivias Military School of Engineering.
APALA whose Facebook page Andrade appears to operate has worked with
other Bolivian police officials as well, such as another one of Bolivias
Police Attachés Heroldina Henao.
The other key official that helped to bring about the November 10th coup is
General Williams Kaliman, the current head of Bolivias military. He served
as a Military Attaché for his countrys embassy in Washington D.C. in 2013.
A decade prior (as previously mentioned) he took part in training at the
SOA. Little is known about his time in the United States.
General Williams Kaliman, head of Bolivias military
At different times both Kaliman and Calderón Mariscal appear to have either
been loyal to or feigned loyalty to the constitutional government, but
ultimately split from it or were convinced over time to carry out a military
putsch.
For his part, deposed President Morales has claimed that a member of his own
security team was offered $50,000 to betray him.
The November 10 coup détat did not materialize out of thin air. Events that
have transpired inside Bolivia are intimately connected to U.S. efforts to
influence military and police forces abroad through programs like SOA and
APALA.
While U.S. President Donald Trump cheers on a a significant moment for
democracy in the Western Hemisphere, Bolivians are suddenly under the
control of de facto military regime.
Jeb Sprague
Jeb Sprague is a Research Associate at the University of California,
Riverside and previously taught at UVA and UCSB. He is the author of
Globalizing the Caribbean: Political economy, social change, and the
transnational capitalist class (Temple University Press, 2019),
Paramilitarism and the assault on democracy in Haiti (Monthly Review
Press, 2012), and is the editor of Globalization and transnational
capitalism in Asia and Oceania (Routledge, 2016). He is a co-founder of the
Network for the Critical Studies of Global Capitalism. Visit his blog at:
http://jebsprague.blogspot.com