Bolivia Gripped by Widespread Protests as Workers Call for Reform

Author: Vera Rousseff

May 13, 2026

HRRC affirms the right of workers in Bolivia to peacefully protest and demand reform from their government. We call on the government of President Rodrigo Paz to protect indigenous lands from corporate land-grabbing and to ensure that officials adequately respond to workers’ demands for economic and policy reforms.

Bolivian workers on strike [Image credit: Luis Gandarillas/Epa]

On Monday, May 11, workers in Bolivia organized a nationwide strike and set up roadblocks in major cities as they called for the resignation of President Rodrigo Paz. Monday’s demonstrations were the latest in a series of protests that have continued over the past week, with multiple workers’ groups calling for a variety of policy reforms.

When Paz and his center-right government took office last year—replacing decades of socialist leadership—they inherited what Paz referred to as an “economic, financial, energy, and social emergency.” Bolivia was experiencing its worst economic crisis in decades, marked by high inflation and low foreign currency reserves. Now, after six months in office, Bolivian workers are expressing dissatisfaction with his government’s policies. Over the past week, protesters have called for reform on a variety of issues, including fuel costs, education policy, and land rights.

In December of last year, Paz cut a long-standing fuel subsidy that had frozen fuel prices at 2006 levels. The removal of the subsidy has resulted in a 163% increase in the price of diesel and an 86% increase in the price of premium petrol, placing significant financial pressure on transit workers, whose vehicles have reportedly been damaged because they have been forced to use lower-quality fuel. In recent days, transit strikes have interrupted public transportation in major cities across Bolivia and protesters have set up dozens of roadblocks, calling for government compensation and shorter lines at fuel stations.

At the same time, teachers are calling for education reforms, demanding that the state guarantee and fund a “single free public education system.” Video footage from May 6 shows Bolivian police firing tear gas at protesting teachers.

A third protest movement aims to counter the new Law 1720, which critics say would undermine peasant and indigenous land rights and allow transnational agribusinesses to purchase more territory. “This law weakens the property rights of peasants and indigenous communities, especially those resisting on the agricultural frontier,” said Aymara lawyer Roger Adan Chambi, a specialist in indigenous land law. “Structural insecurity and the lack of basic services will, in the future, force them to mortgage or sell their plots, facilitating dispossession and the transfer of land to corporations.” Last week, land workers and indigenous representatives arrived in the capital city of La Paz after arduous marching for more than twenty days in an effort to defend their lands.

Although Bolivians are calling for Paz to resign, it is unclear who would replace him. In last year’s general elections, the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party suffered a historic defeat after ruling the country for nearly two decades, losing votes to center-right and other right-wing parties, including Paz’s Christian Democratic Party. MAS leader and former Bolivian president Evo Morales, who once enjoyed immense popularity as the country’s first indigenous leader, is now embroiled in scandal. He is currently being tried for human trafficking after allegedly fathering a child with a 15-year-old girl while he was president. On Monday, Morales was declared in contempt of court after failing to appear at the start of his trial. Morales has denied the accusations, and his supporters warn that his arrest could lead to further turmoil in the country.

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Glossary

• Agribusiness: an industry engaged in the producing operations of a farm, the manufacture and distribution of farm equipment and supplies, and the processing, storage, and distribution of farm commodities.

• Arduously: difficult, needing a lot of effort and energy.

• Center-right (also known as right-of-center): having, supporting, or showing conservative views.

• Compensation: money that is paid to someone in exchange for something that has been lost or damaged or for some problem.

• Contempt of court: an act of disobedience or disrespect towards the judicial branch of the government, or an interference with its orderly process.

• Dispossession: the fact of having property, especially buildings or land, taken away from you, or the act of taking property away from a person or group.

• Embroiled: involved in an argument or a difficult situation.

• Foreign currency reserves: assets held by a country's central bank in foreign currencies, bonds, and other securities.

• Human trafficking: the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of people through force, fraud or deception, with the aim of exploiting them for profit.

• Indigenous: used to refer to the people who originally lived in a place, rather than people who moved there from somewhere else, or to things that relate to these people.

• Inflation: a general, continuous increase in prices.

• Land-grabbing: the act of taking an area of land by force, for military or economic reasons.

• Peasant: rural producers who work small plots, with the family constituting most or all of the labor, and often do not own land.

• Premium petrol: a 91- or higher octane gasoline designed to fuel high-performance engines.

• Socialist: a supporter of socialism or member of a socialist political party. Socialism is a political and economic system wherein property and resources are owned in common or by the state.

• Strike: to refuse to continue working because of an argument with an employer about working conditions, pay levels, or job cuts.

• Structural insecurity: the systemic and historically embedded arrangements—political, economic, and spatial—that produce and normalize the precarity of life for racialized, colonized, and marginalized communities.

• Subsidy: money given by a government or an organization to reduce the cost of producing food, a product, etc. and to help to keep prices low.

• Transnational: involving several nations.

• Turmoil: a state of confusion, uncertainty, or disorder.

• Undermine: to make someone less confident, less powerful, or less likely to succeed, or to make something weaker, often gradually.