Not your ordinary .22

This was the weapon that was confiscated from one of the Nazis hanging around the airport in Bolivia where Evo Morales was about to touch down last Thursday. Machetera doesn’t know that much about guns but it doesn’t look like something you’d use to go after squirrels.

In fact it doesn’t look much like anything anyone should be hauling around an airport where a president is due to arrive any minute. What do you think would happen to someone found carrying this anywhere near where The Decider was about to touch down? You don’t need to answer that.

Gunning for Morales, literally

If you read the Reuters or even the Al Jazeera account of the arrests of the would-be assassins of Evo Morales, you’d think, ah, well, someone hauling a gun around, that probably happens all the time in Bolivia, big deal. Maybe those Morales people are paranoid.

There’s a little more to it than that. And yes, it involves the Nazis from the Santa Cruz Youth Union. Let’s see what Telesur reported.

Bolivian Government Denounces Assassination Attempt Against President Evo Morales

(Two men arrested carrying a rifle with a telescopic sight were later liberated by authorities in Santa Cruz.)

Translation: Machetera

Those close to the arrest of two members of the ultra-rightwing Santa Cruz Youth Union (UJC), detained this Thursday in the El Trompillo airport in Santa Cruz for carrying a firearm, have concluded that they meant to kill President Evo Morales.

This was the denunciation made on Friday by the Vice Minister of the Office of Governmental Coordination with Social Movements, Sacha Llorenti, who explained that those arrested were caught with a rifle with a telescopic sight and 300 shells, in a place where minutes later the Bolivian president arrived for an event in the town of Bicito in Santa Cruz.

Llorenti explained that “apparently these people were to go to the “Center” cinema, which is the highest in the area, with a roof that offers a panoramic view of the El Trompillo airport.”