Bolivia is “getting worse and worse”: on the barricades with Morales supporters

At a stop on the road leading into the central Bolivian city of Cochabamba, a group of coca-chewing demonstrators occupy a barricade of tree trunks.

For more than two weeks, supporters of former President Evo Morales have been blocking roads across the country, especially in Cochabamba, his political stronghold, to prevent his potential arrest on rape charges.

The checkpoints are the latest escalation in the increasingly tense political atmosphere in the South American country.

The standoff between Morales, who stepped down in 2019 but is now seeking a comeback, and his successor Luis Arce escalated further on Sunday after Morales accused government agents of trying to kill him.

Video posted on social media showed the pickup truck he was riding in riddled with bullet holes and the driver’s head bleeding.

The government says police opened fire on Morales’ car after he passed through a checkpoint and after police came under fire from a vehicle in his convoy.

Wider anti-government movement

“How could they attack him? Here in Cochabamba we will not allow such a situation. We will intensify our mobilization,” Jose Loaiza, a 40-year-old wheat farmer who was among the protesters at the stop, told AFP. indignantly.

Supporters of Bolivia’s first indigenous president, who ruled from 2006 to 2019, say the 65-year-old is the victim of “judicial persecution.”

Over the past few weeks, protests have morphed into a broader anti-government uprising, and tensions with security forces have reached boiling point.

On Tuesday, 12 police were wounded in clashes with protesters near the central town of Mayrana, the second such incident in four days as security forces try to clear roads.

Bolivia’s 12 million people are suffering from fuel shortages and rising food prices since the government cut oil imports last year to offset falling natural gas exports.

Annual inflation was 6.2 percent in September, the highest level since July 2014.

The roadblocks have worsened food and fuel shortages across the country and caused economic growth to plummet. economy deeper into confusion.

The Ministry of Economy estimates losses in the transport sector alone at millions of dollars.

“Our pockets are empty”

“Our income is not enough to pay for all the increased prices of goods: rice, sugar, vegetable oil,” a woman from Sipe Sipe, a village near Cochabamba, who asked not to be named, told AFP.

“Our pockets are empty and we cannot feed our children,” she said.

Near Sipe Sipe, demonstrators lined up to pass heavy stones collected from a dry riverbed and block the bridge above.

The poster of Arce was smeared with black paint.

“The country is getting worse and worse,” said Grover Torrico, a truck driver.

“We block (roads) to get what we need: food, fuel, dollars,” he added.

Morales, a former coca producer, was extremely popular until he tried to overtake constitution and run for a fourth term.

Despite being barred from running again, he wants to challenge his rival-turned-minister Arce for the leftist MAS party’s nomination in the country’s August 2025 presidential election.

Days after he led thousands of mostly indigenous Bolivians in the capital La Paz to protest Arce’s policies, prosecutors announced he was under investigation on suspicion of rape, human trafficking and people smuggling from… for his alleged relationship with a 15-year-old girl in 2015. .

Morales is accused of fathering a daughter with a girl.

Morales called the allegations “lies” and directly accused Arce of attempting to assassinate him in order to prevent his return to power.

“We want President Luis Arce to resign. He must call new elections,” Loaiza said.

He vowed that Arce would suffer the same fate as former President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, who fled the country in October 2003 after ordering a crackdown on bloody protests against his free-market policies that saw dozens People were killed.

“We have already sent Sanchez de Lozada. What to stop? us are you doing the same with Arce? – he asked.

Source: AFP