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Weeks of Upheaval Have Paralyzed This South American Nation. Here’s Why.
Protests in Bolivia triggered by a feud between the president and a political rival have caused turmoil. One fallout: fuel shortages that have left drivers lining up for gas for days.
Genevieve reported from Bogotá, Colombia, and María Silvia from Santa Cruz, Bolivia.
Demonstrations have rocked Bolivia for more than two months. A longstanding political rivalry has boiled over, with supporters of the president and his chief opponent clashing in the streets. Protests have blocked the movement of goods, exacerbating fuel shortages. Some Bolivians lined up for days to buy gas.
The upheaval is part of a broad level of unrest across the Andean region of Latin America. Ecuador, Peru and Colombia — Bolivia’s neighbors to the west and north — are all facing significant levels of political turmoil, causing intense anger among their populations.
Behind the discontent in Bolivia is a rupture within the Movement for Socialism, or MAS, a leftist party that has dominated the country’s political landscape for two decades.
Bolivia’s president, Luis Arce, and his onetime mentor, former president Evo Morales, are fighting over the party’s leadership — and both insist that they will be the party’s candidate in next year’s presidential elections.
The turbulence reflects a steep decline in influence for both the leftist party and Mr. Morales, Bolivia’s first Indigenous president and a monumental figure in the country. He held office for 14 years — longer than any other leader.
Bolivia’s top court ruled last month that Mr. Morales could not run for a fourth term, seemingly closing the door to the possibility of a Morales candidacy.
Analysts disagree over whether Mr. Morales constitutionally has any legal recourse to run again, but most agree that the justice system is so intertwined in politics that it is hard to trust any decision that it makes.
“People have realized that the government is ruling through this court,” said Veronica Rocha, a Bolivia political analyst.
As protesters in La Paz, the capital, shouted that they were hungry last month, Mr. Arce, in another part of the city, celebrated the court’s ruling against Mr. Morales in an Indigenous ceremony. (Though Mr. Arce himself is not Indigenous, Bolivia has a large Indigenous population that has been key to the MAS party’s dominance.)
Mr. Morales has maintained on X that he is still “the first option of the people to save Bolivia.”
But many Bolivians are tired of the drawn-out political duel, saying it’s doing nothing to alleviate their hardships.
“I think the average Bolivian just feels like these leaders have forgotten about the average person, that they’re more focused on holding on to power,” said Gustavo Flores-Macías, a professor of government at Cornell University who focuses on Latin American politics.
What triggered the protests?
Mr. Morales rose to power in 2006, a socialist who lifted hundreds of thousands of people out of poverty — thanks largely to a boom in energy production — and prioritized Indigenous and rural populations in a country that had been run for centuries by a largely white urban elite.
At the same time, he was also criticized for persecuting opponents, harassing journalists and stacking the judiciary in his favor. He also ignored constitutional rules that his own government had rewritten barring him from running for a third and then a fourth term.
When he fled the country during a disputed election in 2019 — amid accusations of fraud — he tapped Mr. Arce, his finance minister and protégé, to run in 2020.
But after he won, Mr. Arce shrugged off his role as Mr. Morales’s heir and instead sought to govern on his own terms.
That set off a power struggle with Mr. Morales, who returned to Bolivia the day after Mr. Arce was sworn in, with the intention of returning to power.
While Mr. Morales is less popular than he once was, several recent polls show he still commands far more support than Mr. Arce.
But now he faces the possibility of imprisonment after prosecutors in October charged him with statutory rape, accusing him of impregnating a 15-year-old girl in 2016, when he was president.
Mr. Morales claims the charges are politically motivated, and he rallied supporters in his home province of Chapare to protest.
Several key highways pass through the rural region, and weeks of demonstrations made them impassable, blocking shipments of fuel and food across the country of 12 million.
The blockades kept Josué Espinoza, 28, a truck driver hauling cement, stuck on the road for 23 days. Nearby residents gave him and other trapped truckers food.
Some eventually left on foot to find alternate transportation. “The people got desperate because they had to pay their bills at the bank and there was nothing to eat,” he said, referring to truckers who abandoned their vehicles.
But Mr. Espinoza, fearful his truck might get stolen, stayed and slept in his vehicle.
Why else are people upset?
Fuel shortages, rising prices and a lack of access to U.S. dollars and imported goods have also provoked fury.
When Mr. Arce served in the Morales administration, he was widely credited as the key person behind what was seen as the country’s economic miracle, buoyed by a commodities boom driven by a thriving natural gas industry.
But then the boom went bust, prices fell and production slowed. Now Mr. Arce’s government struggles to import fuel.
Silvia Choque, 36, a vegetable seller in the city of Santa Cruz, said she earns half as much as she used to.
“I have enough just to eat, but you can’t save,” she said.
Many Bolivians say the political turmoil hampers any meaningful progress on tackling the economic crisis.
“The internal dispute within’’ the ruling party, Ms. Rocha said, “has made people feel like there is not a government.”
While the blockades have been cleared, other protests have popped up by Bolivians frustrated over a fractured government and a justice system that is often weaponized to pursue political enemies.
What has the government said?
Mr. Arce, in speeches, has criticized Mr. Morales for calling for protests, blaming him for the country’s political turmoil because of his “electoral political obsession and a personal ambition for power.”
But Mr. Morales sees the court’s decision barring him from running as antidemocratic, said Adriana Salvatierra, an ally of Mr. Morales and a former Senate president.
“We cannot conceive that two judges decide who participates and who does not participate in the elections,” she said. “For us, it is a matter of defense of democracy.” (Two judges signed the rulings against Mr. Morales: One removed his control of the MAS and the other disqualified him as a candidate for president.)
In October Mr. Morales said that gunmen had fired bullets at his car and blamed the government for what he called an “assassination attempt.” Government officials deny this and say Mr. Morales’s security team failed to stop at a police checkpoint, fired at the police and ran over an officer.
What does this mean for the 2025 elections?
While Mr. Arce hasn’t yet stated his intention to run for re-election, it’s widely assumed that he will be on the ballot. Mr. Morales, despite his protestations, remains banned.
Many experts say the splintering of the country’s main party could mean a transformation of the political landscape.
For now, no opposition candidate or party has the same broad support as the MAS party. But Carlos Saavedra, a Bolivian political analyst, said the electoral outlook was fluid, with the outcome hard to predict.
“You are going to have many candidates fighting for small fragments of power,” he said. “I see an ultra-fragmented and ultra-polarized election.”
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