Bolivia’s 2019 coup against Evo Morales happened for the same reason as Guatemala’s 1954 coup: he recovered natural resources and broke up latifundio lands.
The new constitution recognized Indigenous and campesino land rights.
Recently, under a neoliberal government, Law 1720 (the “Land Conversion Law”) directly threatened those lands. Indigenous communities marched, defended their rights, and got the law repealed. But now, with new modifications looming, the danger of dispossession is back.
On this day in 1954, the US backed a coup against Jacobo Árbenz, the progressive, democratically elected leader of Guatemala, because he sought to restore land to small farmers and Indigenous communities that had been dispossessed by US fruit companies.