Andean Information Network reports from Cochabamba

Presenter: Democracy Now! calls it the most important people’s uprising in the world right now.  Over 70 unions joined by grassroots and Indigenous groups are blocking all roads into Bolivia’s administrative capital, La Paz, and demanding the resignation of President Rodrigo Paz. 

A generation after Evo Morales was elected as Bolivia’s first Indigenous president, and launched programs to lift more than a third of the Bolivian people out of extreme poverty, those gains are now slipping away. Bolivia is bankrupt and faces food, fuel, and medicine shortages. 

How did we get here? To start, Evo’s party, Movimiento Al Socialismo (MAS), didn’t have a candidate in the October 2025 runoff election. Speaking on Drop Site News from the Andean Information Network, Kathryn Ledebur:

Kathryn Ledebur (Andean Information Network): There was a splintering of the left, of the MAS party, and they were systematically and illegally blocked by the electoral tribunal. So what we have is an election last year that didn’t have all the political forces represented.

And what we saw was an exclusion of the great majority of grassroots voters, Indigenous peoples, social movements who ended up voting for Rodrigo Paz, the current president, because his vice president, Edmand Lara, had a populist line and they perceived him as the least of the electoral evils.

But what we saw upon the election of Paz is almost no grassroots representation in the Congress, and a government that isolated the vice president, that has no plan for governance.

They’ve been corrupt. They have not implemented key policies. The government is bankrupt. And grassroots sectors across Bolivia have marched to La Paz. These are Indigenous communities from the 20 provinces of La Paz, largely Aymara communities; the National Labor Union; teachers; miners; and a group of Evo Morales followers that are marching from the Chapare.

The economic crisis continues, and they eliminated—in an effort to receive foreign loans—the fuel subsidies. So from one day to the next, the week before Christmas, prices doubled and tripled for Bolivian consumers.

Presenter: The unions called for a general strike and shut down La Paz, the nation’s administrative capital. Kathryn Ledebur:

Kathryn Ledebur (Andean Information Network): La Paz is in a bowl and because of the mountain passes, it’s very easy to block off the entrance. This has been a situation that’s been going on now for weeks. So the city has been shut down and the government hasn’t shown an ability to negotiate with broad sectors.

Presenter: With the latest from the Institute  for Public Accuracy, Robin Bloomgarden: 

Robin Bloomgarden: Bolivia government demonizing protesters. This is from Kathryn Ledebur in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Ledebur is director of the Andean Information Network. 

She was just interviewed on the newsmagazine “The World.” She said: The chaotic Paz administration continues to give mixed messages on dialogue as it politically persecutes protest leaders and moves closer to the Bolivian equivalent of martial law. 

The right, the government and the privileged Bolivians continue to stigmatize social movements as bloodthirsty vandals linked to drug trafficking, although they are on the streets to guarantee subsistence and to force Paz’s resignation. The far right and right wing parastate groups that enjoy impunity push Paz closer to repression, creating the potential for an escalation and massification of human rights violations.

Presenter: Speaking to “The World,” Kathryn Ledebur:

Kathryn Ledebur (Andean Information Network): Bolivia’s largest labor union, the Centrale Obrero Boliviano, is demanding a wage increase. Transportation sectors are worried about the high price of fuel, long lines and scarcity of gasoline and diesel, and months of contaminated gasoline, which has ruined many of the engines of cars throughout the country.

Presenter: Speaking to Drop Site News:

Kathryn Ledebur (Andean Information Network): The government is really allowing the para-state groups to operate again or to get revved up. There was a march in La Paz where they tore the Wiphala, the Indigenous flag. You have the Unión Juvenil Cruceñista whipping MAS union leaders while they’re giving a protest.

So they’re allowing the conflict to unravel and hoping that there will be violence. Or at least they have no other viable strategy. So it’s not clear what’s going to happen now.

Presenter: With the second Trump administration on a self-declared revenge tour, Bolivians also fear the U.S. will seize Evo Morales. In 2008, he told the Drug Enforcement Agency to leave the country. Now the DEA is back.  Speaking to Drop Site News, Kathryn Ledebur:

Kathryn Ledebur (Andean Information Network): The DEA is back in Bolivia, they’ve been here since Dec. 6, and they’re flying things in from Lima. We’ve had the extradition of a major drug trafficker—not the extradition. The DEA just picked him up and took him away. No extradition process. 

We’re very worried that it could be a precedent for some sort of operation against Morales. As a result, the Chapare coca-growing region has been completely shut down by coca growers, and protecting the coca grower MAS headquarters in Lauca Eñe.

So what they’ve done is there are farmers surrounding the airport near the MAS headquarters. They’ve covered all the landing strips because there was a past attempt two years ago to shoot Evo Morales, and they had flown into that airport.

They’ve also surrounded the Ninth Army Division in the Chapare and especially—and at some anti-drug checkpoints. They’re very, very concerned, especially after what happened in Venezuela—the extraction of Maduro without any legal proceedings and a very, very violent invasion.

There’s a lot of pressure from the U.S., and we see kind of dark figures in U.S. politics, like Erik Prince, the former head of Blackwater, weighing in; the State Department weighing in; you know, kind of rolling back into a time that you and I know well, where the U.S. really called the shots. And that’s so different from how it had been for most of the last 20 years.

Presenter: Speaking on Democracy Now!, Kathryn Ledebur:

Kathryn Ledebur (Andean Information Network): Remember that Bolivia is a country where for 19 years, Indigenous people and social movements enjoyed equal rights and political inclusion. With the election of right-wing government, Rodrigo Paz (even though he was elected as a last-ditch alternative by many of the protesting sectors), what we see is a return to the neoliberal policy, to these austerity shock measures and the removal of fuel subsidies, and it’s generated a great deal of poverty, especially for Bolivia’s working class and subsistence farmers.

It’s been brewing for a very long time, but there’s a huge break between what Paz promised and what he’s done in practice, which is select a white upper-middle-class cabinet with only two women, reject any genuine dialogue, reject interaction with the Bolivian social movements, or even have any empathy for people and what they’re going through day to day as they try to feed their families.

You know, it’s not enough to put on a poncho for your campaign and then forget about your electorate.

Presenter: We asked how people can help her spread the word about what’s happening in Bolivia. Kathryn Ledebur:

Kathryn Ledebur (Andean Information Network): What we need is really good, committed people. And I know that in Eugene there are so many.

I’m the director of the Andean Information Network. I’m happy to have more followers, take donations. We’re a very small grassroots organization and we’ve been here since 1992, and we’re really working hard to kind of get the word out on Bolivia in English and to elevate the voices of social movements and grassroots leaders.

Presenter:  This story originated with The Institute for Public Accuracy and Robin Bloomgarden. You can hear complete interviews  with Kathryn Ledebur on Democracy Now!, The World, and Drop Site News, about the most important people’s uprising in the world right now.

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