Bolivian president declares state of emergency and deploys military to quell anti-government protests | Bolivia

Bolivia’s president declared a state of emergency on Saturday and deployed soldiers and bulldozers to tear down anti-government barricades paralyzing the country.

For more than six weeks, unions, indigenous groups and coca farmers have marched in cities and blocked roads across the country with rubble, logs and rubble in protest against the conservative government.

There were severe shortages of fuel, food and medicine in major cities, the economy lost billions of dollars, and protests threatened to topple Bolivia’s first non-socialist government in two decades.

In a televised speech before dawn on Saturday, President Rodrigo Paz warned protesters they would face “the full force of the law” as he moved to end the crisis.

He declared a 90-day state of emergency, restricting the right to protest and allowing the military to be deployed domestically.

Hours after his speech, AFP reporters in the city of El Alto saw soldiers and armed police moving in convoy as bulldozers moved to clear barricades.

Some citizens applauded as they passed. A man gave a bag of bread to a police officer sitting in the back of the pickup truck.

“I’m very happy,” shopkeeper Carla Butron, 39, told AFP.

“During these 50-odd days, everything was difficult in El Alto – work, free movement.”

In nearby La Paz, military police and navy personnel guarded the presidential palace and police tactical units were deployed in main squares.

“Bolivians cannot continue to be held hostage by blockades that prevent them from working, studying, receiving medical care, buying supplies and bringing food home,” Paz said in a social media post.

“The purpose of this state of emergency is not to eliminate normality, but to reestablish it.”

Protesters are calling for Paz to abandon liberal economic reforms and resign less than a year after being elected.

The 58-year-old worker has signaled he is ready to negotiate and earlier this week agreed to a deal with one of the country’s leading unions to end the crisis.

The Bolivian Workers Center union agreed to end the protests in exchange for promises not to privatize state companies and to hold further talks.

But some Indigenous groups have vowed to keep fighting, and more than 40 major roadblocks remain.

“We want him to go. We don’t want him to rule,” 42-year-old Aymara leader Lidia Callisaya told AFP recently.

But some Bolivians are ready to see this disruption end.

Truck driver Erland Richard Segovia, 49, en route to La Paz, was hoping to reach Santa Cruz, further east.

“They left us on the road, we have to wait. Now we see that at least the traffic is starting to return to normal,” he said.

Paz blamed “narco terrorists,” particularly former president Evo Morales, for being behind the road blockade protests.

Morales, a leftist firebrand, Indigenous leader and former coca farmer, was president from 2006 to 2019.

He is in hiding while facing allegations of trafficking minors, which he denies.

Its stronghold is the Chapare region in central Bolivia, which is currently a potential flashpoint.

He is protected by thousands of Indigenous supporters who have so far prevented police from arresting him.

Interior Minister Marco Antonio Oviedo on Saturday refused to rule out the possibility of an operation to capture the former leader.

The security forces “will carry out whatever operations are necessary at the appropriate time,” he said, adding that Morales must face the law.

Morales recently told AFP that he was reluctant to hide that Bolivians were rebelling against a conservative government that was “completely subservient” to the United States.