Bolivia: The righteous anger of ‘the wretched of the earth’
Bolivian workers march to La Paz, Bolivia, May 2026.
This article was written by Carlos Aznárez, editor of Resumen Latinoamericano, and published May 22 at lahaine.org. The headline quotes from a famous book by Franz Fanon about the most oppressed and colonial peoples. Aznárez underlines that the uprising in Bolivia shows that “the fight for rights that have been taken away is won through struggle.” Translation: John Catalinotto
Thousands upon thousands of Bolivians are running through the streets of La Paz waving wiphalas and shouting, “He must go!” referring to the right-wing President Rodrigo Paz, a tool executing Trump’s orders. In six months of bad governance, the Bolivian people — who have no patience for political opportunism or the deceitful call to “give it time” — have marched, blocked the main highways and shown the rest of the peoples of South America that when there is a just cause, uprisings yield results.
When analyzing this Bolivian uprising against the established regime, we must take into account the long history of frustrations, mistreatment, sellout policies and coups d’état that the country’s rulers have unleashed for years against the most vulnerable people. Bolivia is one of the Latin American countries that still retains the most pockets of slavery.
Now Bolivia is regressing almost to the Middle Ages. A large portion of those sites, which were denounced and shut down during Evo Morales’s government, belong mostly to those corrupt businessmen who, in Santa Cruz [Bolivia’s largest city and industrial center] as well as in Beni or Tarija, are today [demagogically] calling for the “maintenance of democratic order.”
The Bolivian bourgeoisie is used to imposing its policies of dispossession at gunpoint and through the imprisonment of those they consider “rebellious.” What is happening in Bolivia today frightens and unnerves them. The racist views they make no effort to hide led them to believe — just as their Spanish conqueror ancestors did — that “the Indians” are not worthy of inclusion in “their” white societies. These rulers are influenced by the Croatian Nazis who, at the end of World War II, decided to settle in certain areas of the country and build fiefdoms where discrimination is commonplace.
Hence, this insurrection, which was born of rebellion against a law — Law 1720 regarding land — which allowed small agricultural properties to be converted into medium-sized ones to be used as collateral for bank loans. In other words, it allows land property to be concentrated in the hands of a few of the usual suspects. They do not even use it for production but to create large estates.
That was the trigger of the uprising. And that is where the first protests emerged. The uprising continued to grow, even though the government of President Rodrigo Paz retreated and repealed the law.
However, the regime’s political and business backers immediately made no secret of their displeasure [at the law’s repeal], and what should have been resolved through urgent agrarian legislation began to be shelved. Added to this is the fuel shortage, which has been dragging on since the time of former President Luis Arce, who is now in prison.
Indigenous people and workers block roads and strike
These two factors lit the fuse and brought the peasant and Indigenous people together with a call to action from the Bolivian Workers’ Confederation (COB), leading to launching the first roadblocks and an indefinite national strike.
It was then that the major highways began to fill with large stones, cement blocks and trash containers, as is often the case when mass uprisings start in Bolivia, and the barricades began to burn. Day and night, communities held well-organized vigils, its participants enduring intense cold, yet maintaining their morale intact. They know what they are fighting for, and the Bolivian landscape began to be colored by the many hues of men’s ponchos and women’s skirts — ever-present and as tough as steel in the heat of battle.
Rodrigo Paz, like any frightened bourgeois, could come up with no better tactic than to send the Bolivian Army out onto the streets to start firing indiscriminately. One need only watch the videos showing drunken captains, in field uniforms, haranguing a troop full of faces as Indigenous as those they would be repressing hours later and telling them that “for the sake of the homeland, we’re going to teach these filthy ones a lesson.”
But the threats of “discipline” by fire and sword were not enough – nor were the four peasants who were murdered – to stop what at this point is a new Fuenteovejuna [uprising against a tyrant, as presented in theatre]. For every bullet fired, thousands of stones, Molotov cocktails, sticks and whatever else was at hand were hurled back at those “warriors” of capitalism. There were epic scenes where hundreds of “red ponchos” break through the police cordon protected by fences, forcing the officers to flee and even disarming several of them.
Then, as always happens, the usual “fire extinguishers” appear: the racist, pre-conciliar church, the so-called defenders of the people and the well-known NGOs that insist that “dialogue” is necessary, that “violence leads nowhere,” that “democracy is in danger,” that etc., etc.
With these little speeches of convenience, they are actually trying to save the skin of a cornered government that receives direct orders from the U.S. Embassy in La Paz.
Whenever the people resort to self-defense and respond to the violence of those in power with similar but unequal responses, there is a chorus of opportunists and supporters of the powers that be who want to buy time for the regime to rearm and offer to negotiate.
When this ploy does not succeed, and the insurgents are not fooled by the siren songs, they are invariably labeled “terrorists” and treated accordingly. Hence the regime issued an arrest warrant for the COB’s top leader, Mario Argollo and other labor and peasant leaders. If they are unlucky enough to be captured, they will face charges of “public incitement to commit a crime and the possible crime of terrorism.”
Not to mention the persecution Evo Morales (president of Bolivia, 2006 -2019) has been suffering for years — they dare not arrest him, because they know there are thousands of peasants ready to defend him. [During Morales’ presidency the Bolivian Constitution was changed to increase representation of Indigenous peoples and much of the worst poverty was eliminated.]
Fight for rights can be won through struggle
This is the state of affairs in Bolivia. There is an insurrection in full swing, with an open-ended outcome, but with an undeniable demonstration that for the peoples of the continent and the entire Third World, “the fight for rights that have been snatched away is won through struggle.”
Through the courageous actions of its people, Bolivia is charting a path for those who are enduring fascist, plundering and repressive governments, who face U.S. troops besieging or even occupying their territories, which do not dare confront the masses. And they do not do so, because there is almost always a leadership that is willing to make deals, accommodating and easily bought off, which holds back or softens the necessary and just rebellions.
Many of these obstacles, entangled in the bourgeois politicking of “democracies rigorously controlled by the U.S.,” also exist in Bolivia, but standing against them is a brave people who do not cower. It is a people who know — because they experienced it very recently, with Evo [as president] in the Palacio del Quemado — what it means to have a government that defends their gains.
It was a government that may have made mistakes but, thanks to its countless successes, brought about a kind of resurrection for those who for centuries were condemned to exclusion. People who, like the Palestinians on October 7, 2023, felt compelled to shout, “Enough of this oppression, damn it!”
