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The process of intervention and asymmetric warfare by the United States and other countries of the Global North against the government of Evo Morales Ayma in Bolivia has been systematic and multifactorial, however some dimensions can be distinguished that help identify how Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) played preponderant roles to rearrange and dismantle the notion and structuring of the nation-state. Washington seeks to overthrow democratically elected presidents through media campaigns of lies and half-truths, inciting social unrest, delegitimizing the government, causing street violence, economic upheavals and strikes. The standard format implies the role of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the National Fund for Democracy (NED), the International Republican Institute (IRI), the National Democratic Institute (NDI) to help fund NGOs to do dirty work. These have become the “humanitarian” face of imperialist intervention.

Behind the rhetoric of the “promotion of democracy,” Washington aspires to impose neoliberal regimes that open their markets to the U.S. without conditions and align with their foreign policy. In the case of the recent coup d'etat in Bolivia, the work of NGOs is a demonstration of how the processes of deconfiguration of the social fabric are accelerated through continuous financing and the systematic work of U.S. diplomacy in cooperation with local actors.

An international team of researchers have constructed a map that reflects how a network of US government agencies, private corporations, foundations, non-governmental organizations and the media were ‘essential’ in ousting Bolivia’s President Evo Morales. The researchers created a damning map that links the U.S. deep state, including NGO’s, as well as the U.S. government, the private sector and the media that were pivotal to the coup against Morales. The map featured in a report titled “The US and the coup architecture in Bolivia” was published by the Latin American Strategic Centre for Geopolitics (Centro Estratégico Latinoamericano de Geopolítica (CELAG)).

A creator of the map, Silvina Romano, claimed that “There is always talk about imperialism and world domination, but people do not believe it because they say there is no proof of it,” which of course is objectively untrue, however there is little doubt that the map has conclusively linked the connection between the U.S. government and transnational corporations – dubbed as the Power Network.

“This Power Network, woven for a coup in Bolivia, shows the link between local, regional, transnational institutions and personal trajectories,” which helps us “understand the minimum percentage, a small part of how these institutions associated with the right-wing parties operate at the local and transnational level when they disagree with the political and economic course of government.”

In 2008 Evo Morales accused the American ambassador Philip Goldberg of conspiracy, with Washington responding by expelling the Bolivian ambassador Gustavo Guzmán. Morales also expelled the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in 2008 under the same accusation of conspiracy. The U.S. embassy in Bolivia indicated in 2013, when Morales expelled USAID from the country, that in 50 years the agency spent $2 billion on health, education, agriculture, food security, alternative development, economic development and environment. After accusing the agency of conspiring against his government, the president announced that “USAID is leaving Bolivia!”

For its part, the United States decided at the beginning of 2014 to withdraw economic cooperation for social projects that it had in Bolivia. Media published in 2014 an investigation in which it is revealed that, between 2005 and 2006, USAID redirected more than 75% of its financing to separatist groups, which aimed to undermine the government of the first indigenous president of Bolivia. One of the most funded programs, since 2004 when USAID established a Transition Initiatives Office in Bolivia, was the Democracy Program that prioritized decentralized democratic governments: departmental and municipal governments. American-Venezuelan lawyer and journalist Eva Golinger described the role that the Office play in the USAID as one for destabilizing a system.

They function as rapid response teams to political crises in countries strategically important to the interests of the United States and supposedly only handle political issues, even though USAID is supposedly dedicated to humanitarian aid and development assistance. They generally have access to large amounts of liquid funds in order to achieve their objectives quickly and efficiently and function as intelligence agencies because of their relative secrecy and filtering mechanism that involve large contracts granted to U.S. companies to operate temporary offices in countries to channel money to political parties and NGOs that work for Washington’s interests.

After 2007, the Office was absorbed by USAID/Bolivia Democracy Program and attempted to impose an American political and ideological model. All this financing and logistical support encouraged destabilization activities during those years, including extreme violence and racism against indigenous communities, terrorist acts and attempts to murder Morales.

In 2015, the Bolivian government accused NGO’s and foundations linked to both the Republican and Democratic parties, of acting in Bolivia through third parties with “facade companies” that promote forms of subversion. Hugo Moldiz, former Bolivian Minister of Government (Interior), accused the United States of maintaining “a policy of permanent interference in Latin American affairs” and of acting in Bolivia “with the open development of forms of subversion.”

The map outlines the funding schemes from USAID, which is funded by the NED and “linked with the financing of counterinsurgency forces since its establishment in the 1980s,” according to Romano. They are the main agencies in promoting the coup against Morales, according to the study. “The NED has contributed not so much with money as it has approved certain trends and an international view of the situation," she added.

Although there were always the hints that the U.S. were behind the coup against Morales, and there were also plenty of motives for it, this map of the Power Network conclusively demonstrates the huge network that Washington utilized to orchestrate the removal of the indigenous president. This will certainly put other Latin American states on alert and seriously rethink their security arrangements to protect themselves for U.S. coup attempts.