This article is part of the book Challenges and Threats to Security in Latin America.
Abstract
This article discusses the concept of Unrestricted Warfare and its doctrinal origins. It then shows how this concept has been applied in Latin America starting with the social protests in Bolivia from 1995-2005 that brought the MAS party to power and finally briefly discussing the similarities and differences of recent mass social protests in Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru between 2019 and 2021.
Key words: Unrestricted Warfare, Social Protest, Insurgency, Illicit Money.
Introduction
Unrestricted War is the latest development in the art and science of Asymmetric Warfare. Asymmetric Warfare is the strategy of weaker adversaries to combat stronger ones and win. It can be used by nations, subnational and transnational groups that are attempting to take territory, defend sovereignty, dominate territory, overthrow governments or even international regimes. This article discusses the evolution of Unrestricted Warfare and its Application in Latin America today.
Development of the Theory
Asymmetric Warfare has a long history going back to before the beginning of recorded history, but it was not really codified and disseminated until the 19th century by Marxist and Anarchist revolutionaries such as Marx, Bakunin and then later by Lenin, Mao, Che Guevara and Truong Chinh, among others. The most sophisticated methodology was developed by Mao Tse Tung for the Chinese Revolution and then interpreted by Truong Chinh for the Vietnamese Revolution with such concepts as strategic and tactical phases, bottom-up popular mobilization, and the combination of all forms of struggle or war of interlocking. Although most of their recommendations for asymmetric warfare had the objective of establishing Marxist regimes, the methodology was about achieving victory through asymmetric warfare which had universal application to the degree that such diverse non-Marxist groups as the Provisional Irish Republican Army, Al Qaeda and the Islamic State adopted them and modified them for their own uses.[1]
These essential principles of asymmetric warfare remained unchanged for around 100 years until two Chinese colonels, one from the Air Force and one from the Army, wrote the book Unrestricted Warfare, published in 1999. While they claim their ideas are not Maoist, the influence is unmistakable, not only of Mao but of many of the classic Marxist thinkers as well. Colonels Qiao and Wang start out asking the same question that Mao asked: how a weaker country can defeat a technologically advanced country like the United States? The answer is they come up with is the implementation of “new principles of war” which consist of “using all means, including armed force or non-armed force, military and non-military, and lethal and non-lethal means to compel the enemy to accept one’s interests.”[2]
The thesis of Unrestricted War is actually not original. Truong Chinh’s advocated that the best way to achieve victory was through what he called the war of interlocking or combination of all forms of struggle, explaining that the war of interlocking meant conflict occurring simultaneously in many domains: military, political, economic, propaganda, international and as many other forms of struggle that were pertinent to the cause. The form of struggle that predominated in time and space depended on the relative correlation of forces vis a vis the enemy.[3] In other words if the situation was such, given the correlation of forces, that you could achieve or approach victory through political, or economic struggle, then that was the form that should predominate. If it was through military struggle, then that form should predominate. However, none of the other forms of struggle were to be discarded, but rather played supporting roles to the main form of struggle. It was possible that in time, the correlation would shift again, and one of the supporting methods would come to the fore, while the heretofore main effort became a supporting effort.
Truong Chinh’s concepts were themselves an interpretation of Mao’s teaching about the mobilization of the masses and other forms of struggle to become the sea in which the enemy forces would drown.[4] Mao’s writings in turn reflected the ideas of Vladimir Lenin. In his 1906 article on Guerrilla Warfare, Lenin wrote:
Marxism differs from all primitive forms of socialism by not binding the movement to any one particular form of struggle. It recognizes the most varied forms of struggle; and it does not “concoct” them, but only generalizes, organizes, gives conscious expression to those forms of struggle of the revolutionary classes which arise of themselves in the course of the movement. Absolutely hostile to all abstract formulas and to all doctrinaire recipes, Marxism demands an attentive attitude to the mass struggle in progress, which, as the movement develops, as the class-consciousness of the masses grows, as economic and political crises become acute, continually gives rise to new and more varied methods of defense and attack. Marxism, therefore, positively does not reject any form of struggle. Under no circumstances does Marxism confine itself to the forms of struggle possible and in existence at the given moment only, recognizing as it does that new forms of struggle, unknown to the participants of the given period, inevitably arise as the given social situation, changes.[5]
So, clearly these ideas have been evolving since at least 1906. Yet, since the Russian Revolution Marxist or Marxist-trained insurgents have almost universally been focused on developing the military struggle as the primary method. Why? An answer may be found in a founding FARC document:
We are revolutionaries that fight for a change of regime. However, we wanted and fought for that change employing the least painful path for our people: the peaceful path, the democratic path of the masses. That path was violently closed on us with the fascist pretext of combating supposed “Independent Republics” and as we are revolutionaries that in one way or another play our historic role that corresponds to us, we had to find the other way: the armed revolutionary path for the struggle for power.[6]
Whether the FARC’s statement was true or not, 20th Century revolutionaries commonly believed that non-military paths were closed to them, and therefore the main effort had to be military to open space for other forms of struggle, particularly the political. In some cases, revolutionaries didn’t even bother to attempt to develop non-military forms of struggle for their campaigns. However, this was a grave mistake. Virtually all the groups that were overly focused on the military struggle were defeated.
Qiao and Wang’s contribution bring the doctrine of the combination of all forms of struggle full circle. While they don’t reject armed struggle, they reject its universal primacy. To them it is merely one tool among many. In particular, Qiao and Wang are skeptical about the primacy of military struggle in an age where technological advances give a country like the United States a lopsided domination of the battlefield. They were particularly impressed the by the United States overwhelming superiority during the 1991 war with Iraq. In 30 days of a preliminary air campaign and 3 days of ground war, the United States and its allies totally defeated the Iraqi Army (that at the time was the third largest in the world) in conventional battle. Few doubted the outcome of the war, but most observers thought it was going to be a much longer and bloodier affair. The Iraqi route after three days of ground combat stunned the world, to include the United States military.
Qiao and Wang assert that this stunning victory employing advanced technology by one side called for a rethinking the tools of war to broaden them from purely military means to all means, including military, but not exclusively or even primarily military, to help a country or cause to achieve their strategic objective.[7]
This author prefers the concept of unrestricted war over the more popular “hybrid warfare” that has been featured in many recent publications and discussions. Hybrid Warfare is understood as a form of warfare that is still predominantly military but is combined with many other elements: conventional warfare, irregular warfare, cyber-attacks, economic attacks, and so forth. As such, hybrid warfare can be thought of as a subset of unrestricted warfare as unrestricted warfare may or may not include military means in the lead or supporting roles, while hybrid warfare still regards the military effort as playing a principal or leading role. Thus, unrestricted warfare allows for hybrid warfare, where hybrid warfare would not allow for unrestricted warfare that was not led by a military effort.
According to Qiao and Wang, the new principle of war is to use all means, including armed force or non-armed force, military and non-military, and lethal and non-lethal means to compel the enemy to accept one’s interests.[8] How do they break out this concept? What are the new rules or parameters? Listed below are a few of the most important, although there may be more: (1) According to Qiao, the first rule of unrestricted warfare is that there are no rules, nothing is forbidden;[9] (2) The military is no longer the predominant instrument of war, but rather is one more tool; (3) The war can begin long before weapons are fired in anger, if this even occurs; (4) The enemy can be attacked with cyber-attacks, artificial economic crises, subtle biological attacks, etc.[10] In other words, nontraditional weapons of war; (5) Actions can be carried out in various combinations at all levels: international, national, state, sub-state, non-state; (6) Civil society is part of the conflict even if they are not conscious of being involved or willing to be involved;[11] and (7) A country can be at war with another country without the second being aware.[12]
The Application of Unrestricted Warfare in Latin America
How has this and is this playing out in Latin America? The last traditional insurgencies that occurred in Latin America were the FARC insurgency in Colombia and the Communist Party of Peru Shining Path (PCP-SL) in Peru. These insurgencies failed because they overfocused on the military struggle and were unable to adapt their combination of forms of struggle to the new reality of the region. They remained focus on military forms of struggle even though the entire region, except for Cuba, democratized by 1990. The political doors were no longer slammed shut as the FARC claimed in 1964.[13] However, both organizations had become so vested in the armed struggle that they were unable to adjust to the new reality. As time went on the organizations became less and less relevant to Colombia and Peru’s political arena and more and more isolated from the population. This facilitated their defeat as they had alienated their would-be supporters.
However, the one aspect of these organizations allowed them to survive and even flourish, well beyond their ability to mobilize the population, were revenue streams from drug trafficking. It can be debated whether FARC or PCP-SL were true drug trafficking organizations or not. That is not the point here. What is clear is that at a minimum, both organizations relied heavily on money from the narcotics industry to finance their revolutionary war. In this sense, FARC and PCP-SL can be seen as bridges from traditional insurgency to new forms of insurgency in the region that employ an “unrestricted war” methodology.
The first successful Unrestricted War insurgency occurred in Bolivia. It is improbable that they were conscious of the new doctrine since they essentially began their new approach in 1995, and the Chinese book wasn’t translated into English until shortly after publication in 1999. Nevertheless, the Bolivians employed a new methodology that aligns very closely with the ideas of Qiao and Wang. The following discussion will summarize my previous article on the Bolivian insurgency authored with Hugo Acha that is referenced below.[14]
A large number of Bolivian cocaleros were originally miners that went to the Chapare to grow coca after the mines went bankrupt in the mid-1980s. This eventually attracted the attention of the United States that carried out combined counternarcotics operations with the Bolivian government against the burgeoning coca crops and cocaine production in the country. The cocaleros reacted by organizing to resist. First, they organized coca growers’ unions. Then they began resisting through social protest and armed militias. The reaction on the government side was to double down, increasing counternarcotics operations and passing increasingly harsh counternarcotics laws. The conflict escalated on both sides and the cocaleros increasingly moved towards guerrilla warfare in their attempts to resist the escalating counternarcotics operations. They even brought in foreign guerrilla instructors from PCP-SL, and MRTA from Peru, the FARC and ELN from Colombia and the ETA from Spain.[15]
On the verge of adopting largescale classical insurgency, the key political adviser, Filemón Escobar, convinced them not to go down this path. He asserted that it would attract the full attention of the United States and would end in disaster when the latter fully intervened. Instead, to avoid U.S. intervention, he advocated for a much more subtle approach, employing social protest combined with political participation as the way to shift the situation in their favor.
As time passed the final objective changed. Initially the goal had been to resist, then to effect a change in the law, and finally to take over the state. The combination of methods of struggle also evolved over time, but in the end it combined five elements: (1) Violent social protest as the main form of struggle; (2) Financing of the protests through coca profits; (3) Guerrilla forces to protect the source of cocalero income, coca crops and processing labs, from eradication. They also carried out very targeted acts of violence when required; (4) The formation of a legal political party to participate in national politics to promulgate laws to consolidate the gains made by the social protests; and (5) A national and international information campaign to portray the violence as about indigenous rights and not about taking power and legalizing coca.
Protest as the main form of struggle was brilliant because it made it difficult for the government to combat. The government had developed forces to combat an armed insurgency, but these forces were neutralized because their new opponents didn’t resemble the threat they had trained for. Nevertheless, an important part of the social protest was mob violence, particularly aimed at sabotaging infrastructure and generating a climate of fear. Occasionally the violence was directed at soldiers and police, particularly when it could be done surreptitiously and provoke the authorities to overreact against the crowd. The problem for the security forces was that many, if not most of the protesters were unarmed civilians, so distinguishing between armed or violent elements and the unarmed majority was difficult. When the police or military did overreact, it was usually caught on film and then rebroadcast repeatedly on the evening news to mobilize even larger crowds against the government.
A brilliant tactic employed by the protesters was to block the main highways between eastern and western Bolivia. Western Bolivia and particularly La Paz were dependent on food produced in eastern Bolivia and cutting off the roads for prolonged numbers of days caused desperation among the population of the capital city who blamed the government more than the protesters for its inability to keep the roads open. These prolonged roadblocks were possible because of funding from coca production. The cocaleros funded full-time protesters that were assigned for a year or two so that roadblocks and protests could be theoretically sustained indefinitely, the heretofore weakness of social protest as a main tactic. Eventually people must go back to work to eat, but not the professional protesters.
Additionally, coca money corrupted government officials, bought political influence, and allowed the cocaleros to coopt similar oriented social organizations such as the indigenous movement and the miner’s unions. In this manner they could present their struggle as a poor against rich, and an indigenous versus white struggle, rather than one about illicit narcotics. As we shall see, money also bought them a political party.
The armed element did not disappear, but played a vital, yet secondary role. They protected coca crops from government eradication campaigns. These armed elements conducted a low intensity guerrilla war against the government military and police forces carrying out counternarcotics operations. Their tactics consisted mostly of mining coca fields and road barricades with improvised explosive devices, as well as harassment and sniper fire against moving government units producing a low intensity but steady flow of casualties. However, on occasion the cocalero militias carried out full ambushes of government units, and occasionally attacks on government outposts or units. This low intensity warfare produced about 40 dead and over 100 injured per year among the security forces, proportionally (based on Bolivia’s population) this equaled about 50 % of the casualties per annum of the guerrilla war in Colombia.
Besides occasional training from foreign guerrilla organizations mentioned above, the main source of training and weapons for the cocalero militias was the government itself. The cocalero youth were ordered to present themselves for national military service and served almost exclusively in the elite Bolivian units. Furthermore, purchasing weapons and ammunition from military units was not difficult for the right price, which the cocaleros had in abundance. However, both the government and the cocaleros had different reasons to deny the armed aspect of the conflict. The government didn’t want to admit the gravity of the situation and call it terrorism, to avoid having to recognize that they were at war and make things even worse. The cocaleros didn’t want the government to label them as terrorists because then it could take action like declaring their political party illegal. Both sides spoke euphemistically of the actions as being carried out by nameless “drug traffickers.”
Besides resisting drug eradication, these armed elements also helped the cocaleros push the government to the brink of collapse in October 2003, by infiltrating the marches and exacerbating violence during massive protests in La Paz. However, the cocaleros and their allies intentionally stopped short of overthrowing the government through violence, because they needed to create the perception of coming to power through legitimate political means, via elections. In this way it would make external action against the revolution very difficult. Democratic elections were the best way to establish the required legitimacy.
To come to power via elections, the cocaleros needed a political party. Initially they tried to buy space within an existing leftist political party, but soon they realized that this party was willing to take their money but was not willing to be their tool. So, they found an existing legal party -Movement to Socialism, MAS- that was on life support and outright bought it. This party was directly controlled and represented the interests of the cocaleros. This party served to legalize the gains made by the social protest and served as a vehicle for cocaleros to be elected to power.
Much of this was facilitated by a public relations campaign that presented to the world and to Bolivians that the struggle was not about illicit crops, but rather the 500-year struggle between the indigenous and poor peoples of the country and the legacy of colonialism: the white elites. The main candidate of the MAS was chosen because he looked indigenous, but in fact, other than his looks, he had little to do with the indigenous communities. He was tall, unlike most indigenous men and didn’t speak either Quechua or Aymara. The myth of the centrality of the indigenous struggle was perpetuated in part thanks to sympathetic NGOs and news organizations from the United States and Europe.
As mentioned earlier, this came to a head in October 2003, when the cocalero/indigenous and miners coalition led a particularly violent uprising over the pretext of Bolivian gas being exported to the world via a pipeline to be built through Chile. Chile seized Antofagasta from Bolivia in the War of the Pacific in 1879, and this has been a point of contention between Bolivia and Chile ever since. The outcome was the forced resignation of President Sanchez de Losada and an interim government under Carlos Mesa until elections could be held in December 2005, in which Evo Morales won with 54 % of the vote. The MAS had remained in power ever since, except a one-year break from November 2019 to November 2020, after Evo Morales was forced to resign when electoral fraud was too blatant, after which the military and police refused to repress anti-Morales demonstrations. However, the MAS was able to return to power through new elections because their opposition failed to create a united front or offer a better program than the MAS.
A couple of observations on the Bolivian insurgency and Unrestricted Warfare. First, it was so innovative that it was only several years later that it was acknowledged as having been an insurgency. This was because the military method was not the primary means of struggle, while at the same time not unimportant. Furthermore, the cocaleros were able to deflect the blame for the military action on “nameless drug traffickers.” They were also able to disguise the connection of this violence or coca cultivation to their strategy to take power. Finally, the MAS came to power through a democratic election, not triumphant guerrilla columns marching through the capital. So, while people knew that something had happened, they were unaware that it had been an insurgency.
The reason this is important is because this model was subsequently spread to other parts of Latin America. Violent social protests in Ecuador, Chile, Colombia and Peru in 2019, 2020 and 2021 fit the pattern. There is another article in this volume that describes the social protests in Colombia. It and the other cases share many common elements. The first is general dissatisfaction with the performance of the existing government. Perception is more important than politics, so whether deserved or not, a climate existed in all these countries in which the governments were being perceived as being corrupt, inept, unresponsive or all of the above.
Second, social organizations existed that had been organizing and proselyting for months if not years. Third, even though these organizations often represented special interests, they had been forming coalitions around shared values for months. The most important shared value was that they could not achieve their agendas through the existing political system. Something extra-institutional had to happen to break the stranglehold on power, such as a revolutionary social uprising, although most stopped short of supporting guerrilla warfare. Nevertheless, there were important segments of these coalitions who were not so hesitant to support revolutionary violence, and there were also insurgent and criminal organizations that sought to manipulate and control the social protests. Finally, there were foreign elements, Cuba, Venezuela, and Russia that sought to manipulate the social protests morally, materially and informationally for their own ends. The insurgents, criminals and foreign interests injected money and agents into the various scenarios to enhance their violence and give them a more revolutionary character.
It very well may be that the protests would have occurred without the insurgent, criminal, and foreign elements. However, it is also probable that they would have been less violent and had much less of a strategic impact. The government might have been able to negotiate much more limited agreements to satisfy the protesters demands. Likewise, there were some interesting recurring patterns that are worth noting. First, most of the pretexts for the protests were very innocuous: a new tax law in Colombia, an international loan negotiation in Ecuador, an increased subway fare in Chile, and the impeachment of an essentially dysfunctional president in Peru, the Peruvian case being the least innocuous of them all.
However, the subsequent rapid explosion of the social protests out of proportion to the pretext indicated planning and organization with an agenda far beyond the initial cause. In Ecuador it became about overthrowing the Moreno government. In Chile it became about rewriting the constitution. In Colombia it became about 104 leftist demands that, had they all been implemented, would have converted Colombia into a socialist state. In Peru, the agenda remained essentially static, over the impeachment of President Vizcarra for corruption.
Unlike Bolivia, much of the coordination and mobilization for the protests was done by social media and smart phone, which hadn’t existed or been in widespread use between 1995 and 2005. In contrast, by 2019, nearly everyone rich or poor had such a device. In addition, there was also significant foreign interference through social media with a concerted bot or troll campaign coming out of Russia that was disseminating disinformation to exacerbate the situation and stir up the protesters to commit acts of violence, such as sabotage.[16]
In Colombia both the FARC dissidents and the ELN were heavily involved with the protests, particularly their more violent aspects. They funded and trained the so called “first line” which were the shock troops of the protest movements. They also paid people to commit acts of vandalism as well as bussed and fed protesters from rural areas to the cities where the most violent protests took place.[17] In Chile, the degree to which the Mapuche insurgent movement was involved or coordinated with the protests is unknown. It is a subject for further research.
However, in October 2020, the Colombian government killed an ELN commander named Uriel and captured a computer which revealed that not only were the ELN involved in the protests in Colombia, but also Chile.[18] There is also less solid information about Colombian FARC dissidents involved in the October 2019 protests in Ecuador, but more solid information about Venezuelan agents involvement. In other words, not only were the violent protests in each of the respective countries coordinated among radical national organizations, but also counted on reinforcement, training, advice and funding from regional groups and countries as well.[19]
A final tactic employed in Bolivia, Brazil and Chile has been the use of forest fires to effect political outcomes. This is a very irregular tactic, but well within the unrestricted war concept, and has the advantage of making it difficult for the target to know they are being attacked. As election day approached in Bolivia in 2019, in which Evo Morales sought reelection, severe forest fires suddenly broke out in Santa Cruz, the main center of the opposition. By the end over a million acres of forests were burned. This was not a natural phenomenon as the progress of the fires went against the prevailing winds. Eventually, 452 persons were charged for causing the fires, 20 of them criminally.[20] It is thought that the fires were set in part to disrupt the mobilization of the opposition to vote against the President.[21] Morales won his reelection bid but was then accused of fraud and overthrown.
Shortly before, a series of fires were set in Brazil. Between January and August of 2020, there were 44,013 outbreaks of fire in the Amazon and Pantanal. The volume of fire was as great as the previous six years combined. Experts determined that the fires in Pantanal were caused by humans.[22] President Bolsonaro by all accounts reacted badly and was ostracized by the international community. There are accusations that these fires were set to cause him political difficulties. It is yet to be determined if this is accurate.
Finally, in Chile, the terrible forest fires of 2016-2017 were widely reported to have been caused by human beings. It was portrayed as having been caused by human carelessness. There were persistent rumors of those fires being set deliberately by Mapuche dissidents, but not until 2019 did the Chilean Minister of Interior declare that some of the fires over the years were indeed associated with the Mapuche cause.[23]
Conclusions
The use of violent social protest financed by illicit markets is pretty well established as a new methodology to effect political change or overthrow governments in the region. However, the use of the forest fires is still a little uncertain. If a political tool, we don’t know what the intent of the method is. However, if it is a new struggle tactic, it is an excellent example of how very unorthodox methods are being employed under the unrestricted war concept. This begs the following questions: What else is currently being used as unorthodox weapons against western nations that we are unaware of? How will this impact Latin America? What new things do we need to prepare for?
Endnotes:
- See How to Survive in the West, a manual attributed to the Islamic State that began circulating on the Internet in 2015. How to Survive in the West: A Mujahid Guide (2015), https://blazingcatfur.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/ISIS-How-to-survive-in-the-west.pdf, (accessed March 30, 2022). ↑
- FBIS abridged translation of: Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, Unrestricted Warfare, (Beijing: PLA Literature and Arts Publishing House, February 1999), at https://www.c4i.org/unrestricted.pdf, (accessed March 28, 2022). ↑
- Truong Chinh, Primer for Revolt, (New York: Praeger, 1963), 139-153. ↑
- Mao Tse Tung, On Protracted War, (May 1938), https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_09.htm, (accessed March 28, 2022). ↑
- Vladimir I. Lenin, Guerrilla Warfare, (1906), https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1906/gw/i.htm#v11pp65-213 (accessed March 19, 2022). ↑
- FARC-EP, Programa Agrario de los Guerrilleros de las FARC-EP, (July 20, 1964), https://partidofarc.com.co/farc/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/2.9-INFORMACION-ADICIONAL-PROGRAMA-AGRARIO-DE-LOS-GUERRILLEROS-DE-LAS-FARC.pdf, (accessed March 28, 2022). ↑
- Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, Unrestricted Warfare. ↑
- Ibid. ↑
- Ibid., 2. ↑
- Ibid., 123-124. ↑
- Ibid. ↑
- Ibid. ↑
- FARC-EP, Programa Agrario de los Guerrilleros de las FARC-EP. ↑
- David E. Spencer and Hugo Acha Melgar, “Bolivia, a new model insurgency for the 21st century: from Mao back to Lenin”, Small Wars & Insurgencies 28:3 (2017), 629-660, https://doi.org/10.1080/09592318.2017.1307617 ↑
- Ibid., 636. ↑
- Lara Jakes, “Con las protestas en Sudamérica también aparecieron troles rusos en Twitter,” New York Times, (Washington: January 21, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/es/2020/01/21/espanol/america-latina/troles-rusos-sudamerica.html, (accessed April 3, 2022). ↑
- Noticias Semana, “La peligrosa ‘primera línea’: ¿un nuevo grupo criminal nació en Colombia?”, Revista Semana (July 17, 2021), https://www.semana.com/nacion/articulo/exclusivo-asi-opera-y-estos-son-los-planes-de-la-peligrosa-primera-linea/202118/, (accessed April 3, 2022). ↑
- Noticias Infobae, “Matar a los hijos de Álvaro Uribe, secuestrar en Argentina e infiltrar protestas en Chile: revelan los planes de Uriel, el abatido jefe del Eln”, Infobae (January 30, 2021), https://www.infobae.com/america/colombia/2021/01/30/matar-a-los-hijos-de-alvaro-uribe-secuestrar-en-argentina-e-infiltrar-protestas-en-chile-revelan-los-planes-de-uriel-el-abatido-jefe-del-eln/ (accessed April 3, 2022). ↑
- Noticias LF, “¿Disidencias de las Farc infiltraron protestas en Ecuador?”, La FM Colombia (October 11, 2019), https://www.lafm.com.co/internacional/disidencias-de-las-farc-infiltraron-protestas-en-ecuador, (accessed April 3, 2022); Sabrina Martin, “Lenín Moreno: protestas en Ecuador están infiltradas por FARC y chavistas”, Panam Post (October 11, 2019), https://panampost.com/sabrina-martin/2019/10/11/lenin-moreno-denuncia-infiltracion-en-protestas/, (accessed April 3, 2022). ↑
- Yvette Sierra Praeli, “A million hectares ablaze as forest fires sweep through Bolivia”, Mongabay (November 20, 2020), https://news.mongabay.com/2020/11/a-million-hectares-ablaze-as-forest-fires-sweep-through-bolivia/, (accessed April 3, 2022). ↑
- Interview with Hugo Acha Melgar, October 10, 2020. ↑
- Carlos Madeiro, “Agosto atinge recorde de focos de incêndio no ano; AC e Pantanal preocupam”, Universo Online (September 12, 2020), https://noticias.uol.com.br/meio-ambiente/ultimas-noticias/redacao/2020/09/01/agosto-atinge-recorde-de-focos-de-incendio-no-ano-ac-e-pantanal-preocupam.htm?cmpid=copiaecola, (accessed April 3, 2022); G1 MG, “Polícia investiga responsáveis por focos de incêndio que deram início a grandes queimadas no Pantanal de MT”, Mato Grosso (September 12, 2020), https://g1.globo.com/mt/mato-grosso/noticia/2020/09/12/policia-investiga-responsaveis-por-focos-de-incendio-que-deram-inicio-a-grandes-queimadas-no-pantanal-de-mt.ghtml, (accessed April 3, 2022). ↑
- Daniel Labarca, “Rodrigo Ubilla, ministro (S) del Interior: ‘Algunos incendios del último tiempo están asociados al tema de la causa mapuche’”, La Tercera (February 19, 2019), https://www.latercera.com/politica/noticia/rodrigo-ubilla-ministro-s-del-interior-incendios-del-ultimo-tiempo-estan-asociados-al-tema-la-causa-mapuche/532043/, (accessed April 3, 2022). ↑