From Fuel Crisis to Calls for Resignation
53 Days of Blockades That Shook Bolivia

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[Update — July 20, 2026] After this piece was published, the crisis wound down in about two weeks. On June 19 the government reached an agreement with the Bolivian Workers' Center (COB), and the next day President Paz declared a 90-day state of exception nationwide by Supreme Decree 5636, temporarily restricting mass gatherings and banning road blockades (congress approved it in the early hours of June 21). All blockade points were cleared by June 23, ending the movement after 53 days. Paz did not resign. On July 2, criminal complaints for inciting the blockades were accepted against former president Morales and COB leader Mario Argollo, among others. What follows is the piece written on June 8, updated to reflect what has since been established.

The protests that began in Bolivia in early May did not stop as June arrived. 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 took office on November 8, 2025, so his government was only seven months old. The weight of depleted foreign reserves and fuel shortages had been piling up before he took office. Half a year and more 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. By early June, at least six people were reported to have died because the blockades kept them from timely care; counts taken after the blockades ended put the figure at 14. 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 blockades came undone after 53 days. But no one has yet 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.