Morales was incredibly thoughtful, reflective, insightful, and analytical about virtually everything we discussed, not only about Bolivia but also regional and world politics. But that expectation proved untrue. Morales was incredibly thoughtful, reflective, insightful, and analytical, not only about Bolivia but also regional and world politics.

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From The Intercept

ON NOVEMBER 10, Evo Morales, who served as president of Bolivia for 13 years and presided over extraordinary economic growth and a reduction of inequality praised even by his critics, announced that he was resigning the presidency under duress, with implicit threats from the Bolivian military. Morales later made clear that he viewed these events as a classic right-wing military coup of the kind that has plagued the continent for decades, explaining that he was removed from his position by force and then ultimately pressured by a police mutiny and military threats to flee his own country.

Morales went to Mexico, where he was granted political asylum, and has lived under heavy security in Mexico City ever since (earlier this week, he was granted refugee status in Argentina). On December 3, I sat with Morales in Mexico City for an hourlong interview that was wide-ranging in scope: not only about the events that led to his removal and exile from Bolivia, but also broader trends in regional and global politics, as well as the role played by the U.S. in Latin America.

We discussed who was behind this coup, what its motives are, the role played by both the U.S. and Brazil, the use of violence by the right-wing "interim" government against Indigenous protesters, the criticisms voiced against him for seeking a fourth term despite constitutional term limits, and how his removal by military force in favor of an unelected right-wing coup regime led by the country's right, white, Christian minority reflects broader trends in Latin American politics and global political trends generally.

We also discussed the once-notorious but now forgotten extraordinary event in 2013, when Morales's presidential plane was forced to land in Austria as he was traveling back to Bolivia from a state visit in Russia, on the pretext that the U.S. believed he had Edward Snowden on board and was taking him back to Bolivia for asylum. And Morales was particularly insightful on the role played by Bolivia's deals with China to sell lithium, and its alliance with Russia, and why those relationships so infuriated the U.S.

I was not sure what to expect from this interview. After all, Morales had suffered a violent military coup that forced him from his country only weeks earlier, and I thought that brimming with anger and resentment over recent events he might be unwilling or unable to do much more than offer platitudes about the injustices, repression, and military violence in his country that forced him to flee.

As someone who presided over a left-wing success story for 13 years in the U.S.'s backyard, he obviously has a unique and sophisticated perspective on a wide range of geopolitical events, and that wisdom shaped the interview. As a result, I regard this as one of the most informative and compelling interviews I've done. I hope you'll watch the full 50-minute video as I believe it's well worth your time, providing a sophisticated perspective rarely heard in the mainstream press.

Authors Bio:

[Subscribe to Glenn Greenwald] Glenn Greenwald is a journalist,former constitutional lawyer, and author of four New York Times bestselling books on politics and law. His most recent book, "No Place to Hide," is about the U.S. surveillance state and his experiences reporting on the Snowden documents around the world. His forthcoming book, to be published in April, 2021, is about Brazilian history and current politics, with a focus on his experience in reporting a series of expose's in 2019 and 2020 which exposed high-level corruption by powerful officials in the government of President Jair Bolsonaro, which subsequently attempted to prosecute him for that reporting.

Foreign Policy magazine named Greenwald one of the top 100 Global Thinkers for 2013. He was the debut winner, along with "Democracy Now's" Amy Goodman, of the Park Center I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism in 2008, and also received the 2010 Online Journalism Award for his investigative work breaking the story of the abusive detention conditions of Chelsea Manning.

For his 2013 NSA reporting, working with his source Edward Snowden, he received the George Polk Award for National Security Reporting; the Gannett Foundation Award for investigative journalism and the Gannett Foundation Watchdog Journalism Award; the Esso Premio for Excellence in Investigative Reporting in Brazil (he was the first non-Brazilian to win); and the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer Award. The NSA reporting he led for The Guardian was also awarded the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. A film about the work Greenwald and filmmaker Laura Poitras did with Snowden to report the NSA archive, "CitizenFour," directed by Poitras, was awarded the 2015 Academy Award for Best Documentary.

In 2019, he received the Special Prize from the Vladimir Herzog Institute for his reporting on the Bolsonaro government and pervasive corruption inside the prosecutorial task force that led to the imprisonment of former Brazilian President Lula da Silva. The award is named after the Jewish immigrant journalist who was murdered during an interrogation by the Brazilian military dictatorship in 1977. Several months after the reporting began, Lula was ordered released by the Brazilian Supreme Court, and the former President credited the expose's for his liberty. In early 2020, Brazilian prosecutors sought to prosecute Greenwald in connection with the reporting, but the charges were dismissed due to a Supreme Court ruling, based on the Constitutional right of a free press, that barred the Bolsonaro government from making good on its threats to retaliate against Greenwald.

After working as a journalist at Salon and The Guardian, Greenwald co-founded The Intercept in 2013 along with Poitras and journalist Jeremy Scahill, and co-founded The Intercept Brasil in 2016. He resigned fromThe Intercept in October, 2020, to return to independent journalism.

Greenwald lives in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil with his husband, Congressman David Miranda, their two children, and 26 rescue dogs. In 2017, Greenwald and Miranda created an animal shelter in Brazil supported in part through public donations designed to employ and help exit the streets homeless people who live on the streets with their pets.