LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) â Bolivia President Luis Arce on Thursday denied being behind an attempted coup against him and said the general who apparently led it âacted on his own," lashing out at accusations that he had asked for the mutiny in a plan to boost his popularity.
In his first appearance before the press after the failed apparent coup, Arce called suggestions of a self-coup as âlies,â and he added: âI am not a politician that is going to win popularity through the blood of the people.â
Arce spoke hours later that his government announced that a total of 17 people had been arrested for their alleged involvement in the attempted government takeover, including the army chief, Gen. Juan JosĂ© ZĂșñiga, and former navy Vice Adm. Juan Arnez Salvador, who were taken into custody the day before.
The president claimed that not only military officers were involved in the plan, but people retired from the military and civil society. He did not elaborate.
ZĂșñiga will be investigates and he will âface justice,â he added.
Thursday morning, some of his supporters rallied outside the presidential palace on Thursday, giving some political breathing room to the embattled leader as authorities made more arrests in a failed coup that shook the a day earlier.
The South American nation of 12 million watched in shock and bewilderment Wednesday as military forces appeared to turn on the government of President Luis Arce, seizing control of the capitalâs main square with armored vehicles, repeatedly crashing a small tank into the presidential palace and unleashing tear gas on protesters.
Senior Cabinet member Eduardo del Castillo did not elaborate on the other 15 people who were arrested, except to identify one civilian, AnĂbal Aguilar GĂłmez, as a key âideologueâ of the thwarted coup. He said the alleged conspirators began plotting in May.
Riot police guarded the palace doors and Arce â who has struggled to manage the country's shortages of foreign currency and fuel â emerged on the presidential balcony as his supporters surged into the streets singing the national anthem and cheering as fireworks exploded overhead. âNo one can take democracy away from us,â he roared.
Bolivians responded by chanting, âLucho, you are not alone!" Lucho, a common nickname for Luis, also means âfightâ as a Spanish verb.
Analysts say the eruption of public support for Arce, even if fleeting, provides him with a reprieve from the countryâs economic quagmire and political turmoil. The president is locked , his erstwhile ally who has threatened to challenge Arce in 2025.
âThe presidentâs management has been very bad, there are no dollars, there is no petrol,â said La Paz-based political analyst Paul Coca. âYesterdayâs military move is going to help his image a bit, but itâs no
Before his arrest late Wednesday, ZĂșñiga alleged without providing evidence that Arce had ordered the general to carry out the coup attempt in a ruse to boost the presidentâs popularity. That fueled speculation about what really happened. Opposition senators and government critics joined the chorus, calling the mutiny a âself-coup" â a claim strongly denied by Arce's government.
âWhat we saw is extremely unusual for coup d'etats in Latin America, and it raises red flags,â said Diego von Vacano, an expert in Bolivian politics at Texas A&M University and former informal adviser to President Arce. âArce looked like a victim yesterday and a hero today, defending democracy."
Some Bolivians said they believed ZĂșñiga's allegations.
âThey are playing with the intelligence of the people, because nobody believes that it was a real coup,â said 48-year-old lawyer Evaristo Mamani.
Lawmakers and former officials, particularly those allied with Morales, echoed the allegations. âThis has been a setup,â said Carlos Romero, a former official in the Morales government. âZĂșñiga followed the script as he was ordered."
Soon after the military maneuver was underway, it became clear that any attempted takeover had no meaningful political support. The rebellion passed bloodlessly at the end of the business day. In an extraordinary scene, Arce argued viciously with ZĂșñiga and his allies face-to-face in the plaza outside the palace before returning inside to name a new army commander.
Speaking in Paraguay on Thursday, U.S. deputy secretary of state for management, Rich Verma, condemned ZĂșñiga, saying that âdemocracy remains fragile in our hemisphere.â
The short-lived mutiny followed months of mounting tensions between Arce and Morales, Bolivia's first Indigenous president. Morales has staged a dramatic political comeback since mass protests and a deadly crackdown prompted him to resign and flee in 2019 â a military-backed ouster that his supporters decry as a coup.
Morales has vowed to run against Arce in 2025, a prospect that has rattled Arce, whose popularity has plunged as the countryâs foreign currency reserves dwindle, its natural gas exports plummet and its currency peg to the U.S. dollar collapses.
Moralesâ allies in Congress have made it almost impossible for Arce to govern. The cash crunch has ramped up pressure on Arce to scrap food and fuel subsidies that depleted state finances.
Defense Minister Edmundo Novillo told reporters that Zuñiga's coup attempt had its roots in a private meeting Tuesday in which Arce sacked Zuñiga over the army chiefâs threats on national TV to arrest Morales if he proceeded to join the 2025 race.
But Zuñiga gave officials no indication he was preparing to seize power, Novillo said.
"He admitted that he had committed some excesses,â he said of Zuñiga. âWe said goodbye in the most friendly way, with hugs. Zuñiga said that he would always be at the side of the president.â
Hours later, panic gripped the capital of La Paz. Surrounded by armored vehicles and supporters, Zuñiga burst into government headquarters, sending Bolivians into a frenzy. Crowds thronged ATMs, lined up outside gas stations and ransacked grocery stores.
The countryâs fragmented opposition rejected the coup even before it was clear it had failed. Former interim President Jeanine Ăñez, , said that soldiers sought to âdestroy the constitutional order," but appealed to both Arce and Morales not to run in the 2025 elections.
In his speech after storming the palace, ZĂșñiga had called for the release of political prisoners including Ăñez and powerful Santa Cruz Gov. Luis Fernando Camacho, also detained for allegedly orchestrating a coup in 2019.
Before being arrested, ZĂșñiga told reporters that Arce had asked him directly to storm the palace and bring armored vehicles into downtown La Paz.
âThe president told me: âThe situation is very screwed up, very critical. It is necessary to prepare something to raise my popularity,ââ ZĂșñiga alleged.
Even if proven false, accusations of Arce's involvement have stoked confusion and threatened more chaos.
âWas it a media spectacle put on by the government itself, as General ZĂșñiga says? Was it just some military madness? Was it simply another example of lack of control?â Camacho wrote on social media platform X.
Bolivian officials have insisted the general was lying to justify his actions. Prosecutors said they would seek the maximum sentence of 15 to 20 years in prison for ZĂșñiga on charges of âattacking the constitution" pending further investigations.
But pro-democracy advocates have already expressed doubt that any government-led investigation can be trusted.
âJudicial independence is basically zero, the credibility of the judiciary is on the floor," said Juan Pappier, deputy director of the Americas at Human Rights Watch. âNot only do we not know today what happened, we probably will never know.â
___
DeBre reported from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
___
Follow APâs coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at
Paola Flores And Isabel Debre, The Associated Press
