{:en}{:en}

In the face of any attempt to impose an authoritarian solution to the Bolivian crisis, let us respond with more organization, more unity, and more solidarity!

By LENA SOUZA

The passage of the new Law on the Regulation of States of Emergency by Rodrigo Paz’s administration marks an escalation of repression by the State amongst the political and social crisis that is taking place in Bolivia. Although the executive branch has not yet formally ordered the State of Emergency, the approval of a regulation that expands the authority of the Government and the repressive forces is happening amidst a scenario of increasing mass mobilizations, blockades, and protests. The law constitutes a warning/ regarding the direction the government intends to take towards the growing popular discontent. While the legal framework is being prepared for a potential harsher intervention of security forces, union, peasant, and Indigenous leaders are already facing severe persecution and arrests.

The State of Emergency Law: License to kill

Unions, grassroots organizations, Indigenous groups, and numerous defenders of democratic rights agree that the new law represents impunity for crackdowns against protests. The regulation expands the executive branch’s ability to intervene in internal conflicts and modifies the limits that previously regulated the actions of the armed forces and police.

One of the most noticeable differences between the new Law on the Regulation of States of Emergency and the previous Law 1341 is the expansion of powers of the executive branch and the increased safeguards granted to repressive State forces. While the previous law established that the armed forces could only intervene in a complementary role to the police when the latter had been essentially overrun and it maintained individual legal, civil, and administrative liability for its personnel, the new rules incorporate the concept of “sudden operational failure” to justify joint action of the military and police. In addition, Article 26 established that the actions of the armed forces and police during the state of emergency will be presumed to be lawful. Article 27 also guarantees state legal representation to service members that face charges for incidents that may occur during the operations.

For those who are protesting, the law constitutes a veritable “license to kill,” as it prioritizes the defense of order above democratic freedoms and the peoples’ right to protest.

Increased repression and arrest of several leaders

Although the state of emergency has still not been declared, reports regarding political persecution and repression continue to mount. The crackdown has escalated as the government lays the groundwork for an eventual declaration of the state of emergency. According to information released in recent days, at least 365 people were arrested during the more than five weeks of conflict gripping the country.

Among the most recent detentions are that of Justino Apaza, president of the Federación de Juntas Vecinales (FEJUVE, or Federation of Neighborhood Associations), who was kidnapped by hooded men in a vehicle without license plates and sent to pretrial prison based on accusations of terrorism, criminal conspiracy, and public incitement to commit a crime; there was also Bernabé Gutiérrez, leader of the Ponchos Rojos; and the arrest of five national leaders of the COB on June 7th. According to a complaint by the Central Obrera Boliviana (COB, Bolivian Workers’ Union), the leaders were driving on a public road in a private vehicle in the city of El Alto and were intercepted by hooded individuals wearing civilian clothing who were armed and did not identify themselves or show arrest warrants. During the operation, they threw tear gas into the vehicle to force them to get out, and the leaders were subsequently transported to FELCC facilities (the Bolivian National Police).

This policy seeks to create fear in the sectors that are protesting and to undermine mass mobilizing. Thus, the approval of a new state of emergency law is part of a strategy that has already begun to contain the social movement by force.

Paz follows the script of the right wing and Trump

During the passage of the new State of Emergencies Law, President Rodrigo Paz has justified the crackdown with the familiar rhetoric of associating the protests and roadblocks with a network tied to “narco-terrorism.” This is not new rhetoric in Latin America. In the last few years, right-wing governments and the sectors aligned with the foreign policy of the United States have used labels such as “terrorists,” “subversives,” and “narco-terrorists” to discredit and criminalize the social struggles, justify intervention by repressive forces, and to restrict democratic freedoms. By presenting the mobilized/ sectors as a threat to national security, the government wants to de-legitimize the demands that originate from the economic crisis, the deteriorating quality of life, and popular discontent. The supposed fight against drug trafficking, terrorism, or organized crime is constantly used as an argument to increase political, diplomatic, and military interference of the United States in Latin America. In this context, Paz’s speech constitutes an attempt to prepare public opinion for a further escalation of repression, to legitimize the arrests of union leaders, peasants, and Indigenous people, and to convince the population of the need for imperialist interference in the country.

Thus, once again we condemn Lula’s position, who, under the pretext of “respect for democratic institutions and the rule of law,” has sided with the Paz government against the workers’ mobilization.

Freedom for those imprisoned for the struggle! We call for the broadest international solidarity!

The struggle unfolding today in Bolivia transcends national borders. Its outcome will have consequences for all working people, campesinos, and indigenous peoples in Latin America, who face an increasingly aggressive offensive by right-wing governments, large transnational corporations, and imperialism against democratic rights, natural resources, and the living conditions of the poor and working people.

A victory for the popular mobilization in Bolivia would strengthen the struggles of the peoples throughout Latin America against austerity measures, repression, and the plundering of natural resources; while conversely, a defeat would pave the way for new offensives against social and democratic gains across the region.

International solidarity is not only an act to support the Bolivian people, but also a way to defend the common interests of Latin American peoples in the face of imperialist domination and policies that serve the economic elites.

That is why it is essential to build the broadest unity of action in defense of the Bolivian people’s struggle and the freedom for the detained and political persecuted.

We call for international solidarity from trade union federations, peasants’ organizations, indigenous movements, and democratic and human rights organizations throughout Latin America and the world. The defense of democratic freedoms in Bolivia is a cause that concerns all workers and all peoples that face austerity policies, persecution, and the criminalization of protests.

We must promote statements, publicity campaigns, public events, and solidarity actions at Bolivian embassies in different countries to demand the respect of democratic rights and the freedom of all those who have been detained.

History shows that when governments try to resolve social crises through repression, national and international solidarity becomes a fundamental weapon of the people. In the face of any attempt to impose an authoritarian solution to the Bolivian crisis, let us respond with more organization, more unity, and more solidarity.

Immediate release of all those detained for the struggle!

Down with criminalizing social protest!

Long live international solidarity with workers and the people!

All power to the COB!

First published here by the IWL

By LENA SOUZA

The month-long general strike in Bolivia follows decades of both mass-resistance against neoliberal economic programs, as well as the failure of the reformist politics led by former presidents Morales and Arce.

The background to the current uprising

The deep political and economic crisis and the popular uprising currently unfolding in Bolivia cannot be understood without analyzing the historical cycle that began more than two decades ago. The streets, which today are once again the scene of clashes, have inherited the lessons and contradictions of prior revolutionary processes, such as those of 2003 and 2005, which did not fundamentally transform the structure of the capitalist system or destroy the bourgeois state, but merely resulted in a change in political leadership.

a) The 2003 uprising and the fall of the Sánchez de Lozada government

The year 2003 marked the beginning of a profound crisis of hegemony for the neoliberal model implemented in 1985. Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada’s (“Goni”) second term began amid a severe fiscal crisis, high unemployment rates, and deep social discontent stemming from the prior privatization of public enterprises. The trigger for the insurrection was the government’s plan to export natural gas to the U.S. and Mexican markets via Chilean ports. The aim was to halt the plundering of strategic resources by transnational corporations (such as the Pacific LNG consortium), which were robbing the Bolivian state by paying royalties of just 18%.

The civilian population saw the export of gas under these conditions as a re-enactment of the historical plundering of Potosí’s silver and tin in the early 20th century. The unifying slogan of the workers’, peasant, and neighborhood movement became the defense and recovery of natural resources for the country’s own industrialization.

The popular uprising adopted radical and communal methods of struggle:

The siege of the cities: Indigenous communities of the Altiplano, led by Felipe Quispe (“El Mallku”), surrounded the entrances to the seat of government by blocking strategic roads, demanding the cancellation of the gas project and the release of detained leaders.

The armed insurrection in El Alto: The city of El Alto, with a population composed mostly of migrants and Aymara people, became the epicenter of the resistance. Organized through the Neighborhood Councils (FEJUVE) and the El Alto Workers’ Federation, thousands of residents brought the city to a standstill with barricades, trenches, and neighborhood watch committees to repel the advance of military armored vehicles.

The response of the Sánchez de Lozada government was to confront the protest militarily, enacting the “Decree of Death” (Supreme Decree 27209), which exempted from criminal liability any military personnel involved in maintaining public order. In October 2003, the army’s attempt to break through neighborhood blockades in El Alto using military convoys loaded with gasoline to supply La Paz triggered the so-called “October Massacre.” Troops used military-grade weapons and snipers against unarmed civilians.

The brutal state repression left more than 60 people dead and at least 400 wounded. But rather than breaking the resistance, the massacre of civilians sparked a wave of national outrage that garnered the active support of La Paz’s middle classes, university students, and professional sectors, all demanding criminal prosecution of the president. With a fragmented cabinet, lacking parliamentary political support, and discredited by international public opinion, Sánchez de Lozada fled by helicopter to the United States on Oct.17, 2003.

Following Goni’s flight, constitutional succession fell to the vice president, historian and journalist Carlos Mesa. In the streets of La Paz and El Alto, the mobilized masses debated whether to move toward a direct seizure of power or allow for an institutional transition.

The Bolivian Workers’ Confederation (COB), led at the time by figures such as Jaime Solares, adopted a stance that proved decisive: it decided to lift the human blockade and the military-popular cordon surrounding the Government Palace. By calling a truce and paving the way for Carlos Mesa’s inauguration, the COB leadership contained the insurrectionary force of the rank and file. This gave the Bolivian bourgeoisie a respite under Mesa’s promise to convene a Constituent Assembly and hold a referendum on gas, diverting the crisis from the streets into institutional channels.

b) The electoral diversion of the process and the election of Evo Morales

The 2003 truce did not resolve the structural demands. In 2005, a new wave of protests against Carlos Mesa (who refused to nationalize hydrocarbons) also forced his resignation. The popular movement demanded total nationalization without compensation and a sovereign Constituent Assembly.

However, the revolutionary energy that threatened to dissolve the bourgeois state was channeled toward the electoral route. The Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), led by coca-planter leader Evo Morales, presented itself as the only viable institutional alternative to pacify the country. In the December 2005 elections, Morales capitalized on the discontent and won with a historic 53.7% of the vote. This electoral victory served as a diversion from the insurrectionary process: the struggle for power in the streets was transformed into the management of the existing state apparatus.

c) The diversion of the insurrectionary process

Once in power, the government of Evo Morales implemented reforms that responded to the pressure of the October 2003 Agenda, achieving economic stability unprecedented in the country’s history.

Nationalization of oil and mining companies: In May 2006, the “nationalization” of hydrocarbons was decreed (Heroes of the Chaco Decree). Through the reestablishment of Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB), the state took control of resource ownership and demanded the renegotiation of contracts with multinationals, capturing up to 82% of oil revenues in the largest fields. Similarly, the Bolivian Mining Corporation (COMIBOL) was reactivated, and strategic smelters such as the one in Vinto were reclaimed.

Distribution of oil revenues: The massive inflow of foreign exchange from gas exports (fueled by the commodities boom) was partly allocated to public investment and the creation of universal social benefits. Programs such as the Juancito Pinto Bonus (to reduce school dropout rates), the Juana Azurduy Bonus (for pregnant women), and the Renta Dignidad (an old-age pension) lifted millions of Bolivians out of extreme poverty and stimulated the domestic market.

Despite anti-imperialist rhetoric and the proclamation of the “Plurinational State,” Evo Morales’s government operated as a key factor in social containment. Instead of moving toward the destruction of the landowning and capitalist state, the MAS, in practice, maintained the continuity of dependence and of extractivist capitalism. What Evo Morales’s government did was to take advantage of the commodities boom to capture greater rents and grant welfare concessions to the masses, thereby managing to dampen the class struggle without touching the profits of the landowning oligarchy or transnational corporations.

Independent mobilization by unions and indigenous communities was systematically discouraged or co-opted. Every time the rank and file attempted to push beyond the limits of private property or existing laws, the government used its revolutionary prestige to pacify the conflicts, arguing that “attacking the government was playing into the hands of the right.” In this way, worker participation was subordinated to the state bureaucracy.

d) Evo Morales provided major benefits to landowners and the banking sector

Behind the socialist rhetoric, the MAS administration consolidated the traditional economic power structure, sealing pacts of coexistence with the oligarchy of eastern Bolivia (Santa Cruz) and the financial sector.

Alliance with agribusiness: The government halted radical agrarian reform in the lowlands. Laws such as the Economic-Social Function (FES) Act were relaxed, and there were “pardons” for illegal deforestation, guaranteeing the property rights of large cattle and soybean estates. The use of GMOs was promoted, and agricultural frontiers were expanded through decrees allowing controlled burning, which directly benefited traditional landowners in exchange for political peace.

Record profits for the banking sector: The private financial sector experienced its greatest economic boom. The government guaranteed legal security for private banks, which multiplied their profits year after year thanks to the economy’s liquidity and domestic consumption, without ever facing attempts at nationalization.

e) The MAS government’s attack on the movement against the 2011 pension reform and the handing over of mining areas to transnational corporations

The contradictions of the model erupted when the working class clashed head-on with the interests of the government and its corporate allies.

Pension Conflict (2011–2013): During the regulation of the new Pension Law, the COB and mining sectors took to the streets demanding a pension based on 100% of final wages and a reduction in the retirement age. The government of Evo Morales labeled the protests “coup-mongering” and “selfish,” mobilizing allied sectors to counter the workers’ marches.

Handing over mining to transnational corporations: Despite the rhetoric of nationalization, the Mining and Metallurgy Law consolidated foreign companies’ control (such as Japan’s Sumitomo at the San Cristóbal mine or the U.S.’s Coeur Mining) over the country’s richest deposits. Furthermore, enormous privileges were granted to traditional mining cooperatives—which operate under a logic of private labor exploitation—to the detriment of state-run mining and the environmental rights of local communities.

f) Evo’s decline and the resurgence of the right

Toward the end of the 2010s, the model began to show signs of exhaustion due to the drop in international gas prices. At the same time, Evo Morales’s stubborn insistence on running for reelection indefinitely led to severe political erosion.

His refusal to recognize the result of the February 21, 2016, referendum (21F), in which the majority voted against his new candidacy, undermined his democratic legitimacy and alienated broad sectors of the urban middle classes. This climate of discontent was skillfully capitalized on by traditional right-wing forces and business-led civic committees, which reorganized their forces, using the banner of “defending democracy” to prepare their assault on power.

g) Coup d’état in 2019

The political crisis reached its breaking point in the October 2019 elections. Following allegations of electoral fraud promoted by the Organization of American States (OAS) and the interruption of the quick-count system, the radical right unleashed violent urban mobilizations.

The reactionary insurrection took hold when the Bolivian Police mutinied and the Armed Forces “suggested” the president’s resignation. On Nov. 10, 2019, Evo Morales resigned and went into exile in Mexico (and later in Argentina). Two days later, right-wing Senator Jeanine Áñez assumed the interim presidency in a legislative session without a quorum, inaugurating a military-backed regime that persecuted union leaders and carried out massacres against the popular resistance in Sacaba and Senkata.

h) The defeat of the coup and the rise of Luis Arce

The Áñez regime quickly collapsed due to its violent repression, corruption scandals in the midst of the pandemic, and disastrous economic management. The resistance of the working-class and indigenous grassroots reorganized independently, and in August 2020, through a national road blockade that paralyzed the country, forced the government to set a date for elections.

In October 2020, the MAS returned to power through the ballot box. Luis Arce Catacora, Evo Morales’s former Minister of Economy, won the presidential election with 55.1% of the vote, reflecting the people’s unanimous rejection of the coup-plotting right wing.

i) The government of Luis Arce

The government of Luis Arce took office with the central promise of implementing “economic reconstruction.” As a former Minister of Economy and considered the “architect” of the previous economic boom, his strategy was based on immediately injecting liquidity into the grassroots through the Anti-Hunger Voucher and launching the ambitious Import Substitution Industrialization Model (ISI). This state plan envisioned the construction of more than 150 public industrial plants (biodiesel plants, NPK fertilizer plants, zinc refineries, and lithium and food processing plants) with the aim of processing local raw materials, reducing dependence on foreign manufacturers, and preventing capital flight.

However, the ambitious state industrialization plan ran headlong into the structural and insurmountable limits of Bolivia’s extractivist model. The sustainability of the entire state apparatus and subsidies had historically depended on natural gas exports to Brazil and Argentina. Decades of underinvestment in hydrocarbon exploration led to the critical depletion and decline of gas reserves.

This decline in the country’s main source of revenue triggered a catastrophic domino effect:

The dollar shortage crisis: As gas exports contracted drastically, the flow of foreign exchange that fed the Central Bank’s Net International Reserves (NIR) dried up. This caused a chronic shortage of U.S. dollars in the formal market.

The fuel shortage: Historically, Bolivia has subsidized the price of gasoline and diesel domestically to keep them artificially cheap. Since it did not produce enough crude oil, the government was forced to import increasingly larger volumes of fuel at international prices. With insufficient dollars in the public coffers to pay international suppliers, the state-owned YPFB began to delay payments. This led to a chronic shortage of diesel and gasoline, forcing transporters, agricultural producers, and citizens to wait in kilometer-long lines for days on end at gas stations.

By the end of his term, his government found itself trapped in a dead-end of fiscal deficit and stagflation, leaving a scenario of deep economic vulnerability and social fracture that paved the way for the subsequent turbulent political landscape.

j) Divisions within the MAS

The political cycle of the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) entered its final phase due to an irreversible internal fracture. The violent struggle for party leadership between the “Evoist” wing (loyal to Evo Morales) and the “Arcist” wing (loyal to President Luis Arce) divided the country’s main social organizations.

Both sides clashed in the courts, at parallel congresses, and through roadblocks in an effort to disqualify one another. The lack of consensus led to the virtual ban on their unified candidacies or calls for abstention. This left the working-class and indigenous base fragmented and without a cohesive political option.

k) The 2025 elections

Against a backdrop marked by the deep crisis of the MAS and a major economic crisis, general elections were held in August 2025. The electoral process was shaped by an open recession that had been dragging on since 2024, triggered by the depletion of international reserves, chronic fuel shortages, and a severe dollar shortage that sent the black market soaring. This collapse demonstrated that the previous boom was nothing more than a period sustained by the commodities boom; as high international prices dissipated, the MAS model laid bare the persistence of the dependent, extractivist, and subordinate capitalism that Morales and Arce had taken it upon themselves to preserve.

In this context, the first round on August 17 gave the lead to Senator Rodrigo Paz Pereira of the Christian Democratic Party (PDC), with 32.1% of the vote, followed by former conservative president Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga of the Freedom and Democracy Alliance (Libre) with 26.8%, consolidating a shift toward the traditional right as a consequence of the government’s deviation from its course and the historic failure of its reformist agenda.

l) Paz’s victory

On October 19, 2025, the presidential runoff was held. Contrary to many initial poll predictions, Rodrigo Paz Pereira (son of former President Jaime Paz Zamora) and his running mate, Edmand Lara, secured victory by winning 54.5% of the vote against Quiroga’s 45.4%.

Paz managed to prevail by moderating his rhetoric in the final campaign stretch to capture the vote of the political center and disenchanted progressives, presenting himself as an institutional alternative in the face of the economic crisis.

The MAS’s traditional voter base crumbled. The electorate, battered by inflation, fuel shortages, and a lack of dollars, harshly punished the party at the polls.

The official MAS-IPSP ticket obtained a historic and marginal 2.48%, and went from holding a majority bloc of 96 assembly members elected in 2020 to retaining a single representative in Parliament following the official 2025 count.

m) Paz’s Measures

Under the slogan of opening up the economy and implementing “capitalism for all,” Rodrigo Paz’s government wasted no time in forging political alliances with international far-right governments, expressing rapid and unconditional support for Donald Trump while swiftly adopting an aggressive package of neoliberal reforms in line with his economic program:

Exchange rate and fiscal adjustment: Creation of an Exchange Rate Stabilization Fund to unify the dollar market, accompanied by a total liberalization of exports and imports along with a tax overhaul to lower corporate taxes.

International opening: An immediate diplomatic shift to strengthen financial and political ties with the United States and international credit agencies.

Structural reforms: Proposals for free-market agrarian reform in productive regions and the proposal of a constitutional reform that the opposition denounced as the beginning of the privatization of strategic natural resources.

Judicial offensive: The announcement of a profound restructuring of the judiciary with direct warnings that leaders of the previous government, especially Evo Morales, would face criminal prosecution.

n) From the isolated struggles of 2025 to the January 2026 rebellion: Paz’s first defeat

Throughout 2025, the resistance of the Bolivian masses against the currency crisis and the recession inherited from 2024 began to manifest itself through a series of isolated, sectoral, and fragmented struggles across the country. Trade union protests against inflation, drivers’ strikes over fuel shortages, teachers’ strikes over funding, and local peasant blockades initially operated in a scattered manner. However, this scenario changed radically with the enactment of the violent neoliberal package of Supreme Decree 5503, which eliminated fuel subsidies, froze public sector wages, cut government spending, and deregulated the economy to open up strategic resources to transnational capital. The decree served as the definitive trigger that unified the accumulated rage of all the exploited masses. Breaking through sectoral isolation and overwhelming their own leaderships, the various sectors in struggle centralized their forces in the great national mobilization of January 2026, which brought more than 500,000 people into the streets and paralyzed the country through blockades and workers’ strikes. This colossal mass direct action dealt the first major defeat to the government of Rodrigo Paz by forcing it to completely repeal the decree.

o) The uprising of May 2026

Social fragmentation was definitively broken in May 2026, converging into a massive nationwide social uprising. The persistent fuel shortages, low wages devoured by inflation, and the resounding rejection of the covert privatization of natural resources united the popular civic committees, independent unions, and rural communities.

The country’s main highways are blocked, paralyzing logistics and cutting off key access routes to the city of La Paz. While President Rodrigo Paz publicly insists that there are “radical groups that do not want to engage in dialogue” and criminalizes the marches, Bolivia’s working class, indigenous peoples, and popular sectors have once again taken up their historic methods of direct action, opening a new chapter of confrontation in the streets that recalls the insurrectionary days of 2003 and threatens the stability of the new capitalist regime.

OUT WITH RODRIGO PAZ! BUILD A REVOLUTIONARY ALTERNATIVE FOR THE COUNTRY!

The scenario of confrontation that is currently paralyzing Bolivia marks the definitive exhaustion of reformist illusions. Historical experience has shown that governments of class conciliation, such as those of Evo Morales and Luis Arce, constituted a strategic deception for the working class: changing the political leadership of the bourgeois state without fundamentally transforming the socioeconomic system only served to breathe new life into the landowning bourgeoisie and transnational corporations and facilitate the subsequent return of brutal neoliberal plans like that of Rodrigo Paz.

The lessons learned leave an irrefutable lesson for the sectors in struggle: the masses only triumph when they unify their scattered demands in the streets, overwhelm the union bureaucracies, and rely exclusively on their own strength in an independent manner. Therefore, the task at hand in the face of the current nationwide upheaval is not to negotiate crumbs or new institutional pacts, but, as the fighters have already stated, to overthrow the starvation government of Paz.

At the same time, it is essential to build our own revolutionary alternative, so that the working class, together with the peasants, indigenous peoples, and popular sectors, can take the reins of the country, resolve the pending democratic and institutional tasks, and found, on the ruins of the bourgeois state, a socialist Bolivia.

First published here by the IWL