Image by Getty and Unsplash+.
As of June 1, 2026, Bolivian Indigenous and working people had been massively protesting for more than two months against repressive measures imposed by the government of conservative President Rodrigo Paz, in office since November 8, 2025.
Bolivia’s Parliament eliminated taxation of the very wealthy. Paz’s Decree 5503, issued in December, ended longstanding fuel subsidies and instituted privatization measures. Subsequently, fuel prices skyrocketed. Poor-quality fuel damaged cars and trucks.
His government enacted Law 1720 in April; it allowed small farmers’ land holdings to qualify as collateral for bank loans. Bankers and wealthy landowners would consequently be able to absorb small bits of land into larger tracts to further mining and industrial-scale agriculture. Small farmers would lose protections for land ownership established by land-reform legislation in 1953.
Chaotic times
A firestorm of opposition emerged. On April 8, Indigenous peoples in Pando and Beni Departments, in the Amazonian lowlands, began a 600-mile march to Bolivia’s capitol, La Paz. Already, the country’s major labor federation, the Bolivian Workers’ Central (COB in its Spanish initials) was demanding higher salaries, better pensions, lower gasoline prices, and limits put on privatization – and that President Paz resign.
Together, the Indigenous marchers and COB protesters assembled in La Paz on May 4. The COM represents powerful miners’ unions and unions representing rural teachers, healthcare employees, transportation workers, and farmers. Some 70 unions were on hand. The alliance between the FSTMB, a federation of mine workers’ unions, and the CSUTCB, a federation of small farmers’ unions, was emblematic of renewed unity.
Highway blockades appeared in La Paz and nearby El Alto and extended along highways connecting La Paz with Oruro in the Amazonian North. As of May 29, 100 points of blockade were active in six departments. Now essential goods are not arriving in peripheral areas. This is a general strike.
The government mobilized 3500 troops and police to create a “humanitarian corridor” through roadblocks in La Paz, El Alto and along the highway heading north. They arrested hundreds of protesters, wounded many and killed four – and failed. Officials ordered the arrests of COB executive secretary Mario Argullo and 24 other union officials on charges of terrorism and funding by narcotraffickers.
Responding to the pressure, Paz installed a new cabinet, canceled recently-instituted salary increases for high officials, and proposed salary cuts for himself and his cabinet. He dropped the proposed privatization measures and rescinded Law 1720. But the Chamber of Deputies immediately began to consider a revised version.
Paz endorsed a plea for dialogue from the Catholic Church. Even so, Bolivia’s Parliament on May 27 voted to allow a “state of exception,” thus authorizing the President to order the Army into action against the protesters.
The emergence of Paz and governmental repression of Bolivia’s majority population is reminiscent of the old order prevailing in Bolivia until 2006. Likewise, the new government projects a highly negative view of progressive political changes put in place after 2006 by President Evo Morales and his Movement to Socialism (MAS) Party.
Looking back
Historical perspective is useful. Indigenous peoples, reduced to slavery-like conditions, resisted their colonial rulers. Indigenous peoples, small farmers, and workers would later take on Bolivia’s own upper echelons, always given over to plunder and racism. As of 2012, 41% of Bolivia’s population identified as Indigenous. Agrarian reform in the 1950s instituted protection of small land holdings.
Achieving a lot, the Morales government advanced social protections and improved lives and living conditions. Income generated by newly-nationalized oil and gas exports paid for social programming. Then troubles began. Dwindling production and sales of natural gas led to reduced funding for both human needs and the purchase of essential imported goods, like fuel. Additionally, Morales’s problematic scheme for evading constitutional barriers to a third presidential term provoked much criticism.
A U.S.-assisted coup ended his presidency in 2019. MAS presidential candidate Luis Arce won a surprising first-round electoral victory the following year. But Bolivia’s economic situation worsened. Arce and Morales were competing for control of MAS. The MAS Party failed miserably in the 2025 elections.
By that time, Bolivia’s GDP growth was contracting; it had averaged 4% annual GDP growth over 20 years. Imported goods were scarce, particularly food products, gasoline, and diesel fuel. Foreign currency reserves, source of the dollars needed for imports, were now depleted. Inflation exceeded 23%. An observer pointed to “the worst economic crisis in the last four decades.”
Hordes of MAS voters backed presidential candidate Paz. His rhetoric about “Capitalism for all!” was both appealing and ambiguous. Paz’s vice-presidential running mate Edman Lara, a progressive, attracted votes.
The US and its friends
On taking office, President Paz restored diplomatic relations with the United States and invited the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) back to Bolivia. Former President Morales, alleging dangerous interventions, had expelled the DEA and the U.S. ambassador in 2008.
Responding to the current uprising, Secretary of State Marco Rubio commented: “Let there be no doubt: the U.S. unreservedly supports the constitutional and legitimate government of Bolivia. We don’t allow criminals and narcotraffickers to overthrow democratically elected leaders in our hemisphere.” The United States on May 15 joined with eight rightwing regional governments in a statement backing President Paz and condemning the strike.
U.S. intervention is on the horizon. The general secretary of a Cochabamba farmers’ union reported the arrival in Santa Cruz Department on May 28 of a U.S. Air Force Hercules cargo plane carrying “munitions and U.S. military personnel.” A union official representing six federations in the Trópico region of Cochabamba on May 31 referred to the presence in Cochabamba alone of “296 communication antennas” claimed to be providing “intelligence for the pursuit and capture of the principal leaders who are defending the homeland.” The U.S. is seeking to “consolidate the delivery of strategic resources like lithium and rare earths to transnational companies.”
The report from Cochabamba mentions U.S. intelligence gathering activities in Santa Cruz Department. That’s significant because U.S. operatives collaborated with the Santa Cruz dissidents who staged the 2019 coup that removed Evo Morales. Santa Cruz is a major center of agribusiness and of oil and gas production. The wealthy and privileged of Santa Cruz have long dedicated themselves to suppressing left-leaning politics and Indigenous aspirations. A plot to kill Morales originated in Santa Cruz in 2009. Reports emerged at that time of successionist stirrings.
The fascist-inclined Santa Cruz Civic Committee recently hosted a meeting on the current crisis attended by representatives of the country’s other civic committees and by a stand-in for President Paz. Meanwhile, the Santa Cruz Association of Municipalities indicated through a spokesperson that, “We cannot allow an insignificant and radical group to settle in and ask the president to resign.” Senator Branko Marinkovic, emblematic Santa Cruz agricultural impresario and secessionist plotter against Morales, was a “key sponsor” of the aforementioned Law 1720. The media refer to the “Marinkovic Law.”
The future comes
President Paz blames the protests on Evo Morales. The former president told an interviewer recently that, “This government is totally subservient [to the United States]. I realize that the time has come to define who is in charge, the empire or the people …. This rebellion, I am convinced, opposes the neoliberal model and the neocolonial state.”
Morales, playing no major role in the current protests, is hiding in the Chapare part of Cochabamba Department where his political and union-organizing career took off. Accused of sexually abusing a family member, Morales faces criminal charges. His defenders dismiss these as pretext for his removal from politics.
Milton Machuca Cortez, author of Socialismo en Bolivia, comments on June 3 that President Paz may yet resign, but also that this protest, or general strike, must “mature.” He adds that, “[I]t is not enough to bring down a government if there is no political project capable of replacing it. It is not enough to say ‘out’ if we do not build a ‘toward.’ The left cannot be content with anger; it must turn that anger into a program, an organization, and a vision.”
