From Fuel Crisis to Calls for Resignation
40-Plus Days of Blockades Shake Bolivia

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The protests that began in Bolivia in early May have not stopped as June arrives. They started as a labor-union push for higher wages and a response to the fuel crisis. Within six weeks they had hardened into a political demand: the president must resign. Road blockades spread to six of the nine departments, and in early June congress passed a law allowing the military to clear them.

How the demands shifted

The first calls came from the Bolivian Workers' Center (COB) and from peasant and Indigenous organizations. They raised three demands: a 20% wage increase, better fuel supply, and repeal of Law 1720, tied to land reform. But as the protests dragged on the voices grew, and the central call became the resignation of President Rodrigo Paz Pereira himself. Paz's government is only a little over six months old. The weight of depleted foreign reserves and fuel shortages had been piling up before he took office. Half a year passed, and the weight was still there.

When blockades stopped health care

At their peak, roughly 90 blockade points were counted across the country. The health department of La Paz declared a hospital emergency over shortages of oxygen, medicine, food and fuel. As many as seven people are reported to have died because the blockades kept them from timely care. In rural areas where health care is already thin, cutting a road becomes, directly, a matter of life and death.

The army moves, and Morales is named

With congressional approval, President Paz ordered the army to open the roads. The violent ones will not win, he said. In the same breath he named former president Evo Morales (in office 2006-2019) as the man behind those driving the blockades, and claimed they were bankrolled with drug-trafficking proceeds from the Chapare region. Morales denies it. Even so, questions about his ties to the MAS (Movement Toward Socialism) base will not go away. The structural problems of scarce foreign currency and fuel met the distrust of a government barely sworn in. Once that happened, the anger in the streets slipped the reins.

The army can open the roads, but no fuel is moving down them yet. No one has put forward a way to fill an economy that has run empty.

※ This article is the author’s commentary based on public information. Please confirm the latest figures, dates and procedures with governments and primary sources. Quotations are kept minimal and sources are cited.