There is fire to that smoke though. Bolibian rare earths was the main reason for the coup.

There was probably some of that in the financing of the coup, but what little I saw of the actual people doing it sounded more like culture war - they wanted to suppress indigenous culture and bring back Christianity, things like that.

Note lithium isn't a rare earth element, it's actually pretty common but some sources are cheaper than others. As for Tesla, I believe they don't get lithium from Bolivia and have upcoming chemistries that don't use cobalt at all. Not sure about other EV or phone companies.