Pyrotechnics and tear gas: Bolivia plunges into a state of emergency after six weeks of peasant revolt

BarcelonaFireworks and tear gas have filled the streets of Bolivia for days, where protesters and police have been clashing for a month and a half. Just six months after coming to power, Bolivia's first right-wing president in twenty years has already encountered his first major crisis. Rodrigo Paz, of moderate ideological leaning, took office in November after almost two decades of governments from the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), founded by former president Evo Morales, and has now run into the biggest protests in years in the Andean country.

Unions and organizations of workers and indigenous peoples have been paralyzing cities and roads for six weeks with protests against austerity policies and other reforms that the new president intends to promote. For now, nothing suggests that the gatherings will subside, and the government is preparing to repress them more harshly.

Feeling of betrayal among indigenous peoplesCongress, in an attempt to curb the mobilizations, has approved a law regulating the state of exception and allowing the army to act to repress and control protests. But far from calming the situation, the law has added more fuel to the fire. Protesters complain about the repression and consider that the norm "weakens democratic guarantees and the protection of human rights," as stated by former president Evo Morales, who supports the protests, even though he has not initiated them.

Feeling of betrayal among indigenous peoples

By now, few protesters are seeking dialogue with Paz. Many Bolivians had placed their hope for change in the new president, which has not yet been fulfilled. Unlike Jorge Quiroga, the conservative right-wing candidate who reached the second round along with Paz, the current president had presented himself in the elections promising gradual reforms and boasting of being a moderate candidate who could steer the country without drastic measures and without resorting to international organizations, as his rival proposed at the polls.

His promises had convinced several indigenous peoples, including the majority of Aymaras and part of the Quechuas, the two main groups in Bolivia, who for many years had supported the Movement towards Socialism. During the last electoral campaign, however, they mostly publicly supported Paz, convinced that his approach was the right one to straighten out the country, and they became one of the main electoral bases and popular support for the new executive.

", summarized Caricari in the interview with CLACSO.

Gas and the International Monetary Fund

To solve some of the economic problems the country is going through, Paz has turned to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), with whom he has negotiated a credit program worth 5,000 million dollars. During the campaign, the current president made it explicitly clear that he would not seek financing from the IMF, and following this change of heart and some public statements he has made, protesters fear an approach to the US. "This generates a lot of suspicion in the country, taking into account the US's intention to co-opt governments to implement policies aligned with its interests", Caricari summarized in the interview with CLACSO.

The declining gas industry also plays an important role in the protests. In the last decade, the exploration of new deposits has been drastically reduced, and the production and export of hydrocarbons, one of the main economic engines of the country during the governments of Evo Morales, have plummeted. Bolivia has difficulties finding new deposits, and the authorities themselves have pointed out that it is not unthinkable that the country may have to import gas. This scenario, added to the feeling of a lack of proposals to address the situation and the distribution of poor-quality gasoline in February, which damaged thousands of vehicles, is another of the factors generating discontent.

Behind the protests there is also an ideological rejection of the model of country that the executive is trying to promote. Paz has defined his proposal for Bolivia as a "capitalism for everyone", a model based on the reduction of taxes and tariffs, with an exchange system with maximums and minimums and more agile access to bank credits. Although he has defended that there must be "clear rules" for production and that the State must "help" in this task, his project contrasts with the intervention in the economy that previous executives promoted, and the protesters have repeatedly expressed their concern about a weakening of the state in favor of the private sector. Whether with concrete measures or achieving Paz's resignation, the protests seek, in summary, to contain a shift to the right in the country.