Bolivia is experiencing one of the deepest social and political crises in decades. For weeks, the country has been rocked by strikes, roadblocks, popular marches, and violent clashes between protesters and government forces. On the front lines are miners' unions, peasant organizations, Aymara and Quechua indigenous communities, the Ponchos Rojos, teachers, transport workers, and sectors of the Bolivian Workers' Central (COB). ---- President Rodrigo Paz's government responded by deploying around 3,500 soldiers and police around La Paz to quell the demonstrations, leading to clashes, arrests, and numerous injuries. According to several international sources, miners' marches also confronted police with dynamite as the protesters attempted to reach the capital's political center. ( Reuters , AP News )
Social anger stems from a devastating economic crisis: rising inflation; shortages of fuel and essential goods; collapsing foreign exchange reserves; skyrocketing cost of living; and cuts in public fuel subsidies.
The Paz government, elected in 2025 on an openly neoliberal and pro-US platform, initiated privatizations, liberalizations, and a harsh austerity policy. It eliminated universal fuel subsidies, causing increases of up to 160% in the prices of gasoline, diesel, transportation, and food.
But one of the main detonators of the mobilization was the so-called Law 1720 , perceived by social movements as an attempt to dismantle the territorial and collective gains achieved during the governments of Evo Morales' Movement for Socialism.
According to unions and indigenous communities, Law 1720 would pave the way for the privatization of community lands, mortgage expropriations, and the sale of indigenous territories to foreign corporations to facilitate the expansion of mining and energy extractivism, and the destruction of indigenous and peasant autonomy.
This is why the struggle in Bolivia is not just economic: it is a struggle for land, for popular sovereignty and against a new neoliberal and neocolonial offensive (by the US right and their lackeys like Milei)
Particularly significant is the presence of the Ponchos Rojos, a historic Aymara organization that was already a protagonist in the popular mobilizations against neoliberalism and in the struggles that led to the rise of Morales in the 2000s. ( Reuters )
Popular organizations openly accuse the Paz government of seeking to transform Bolivia into an economic colony subordinated to the interests of the United States and multinational extractive corporations. It is no coincidence that the new government has reestablished relations with Israel, strengthened ties with Washington, and opened the country's strategic resources to foreign capital.
Even after the formal withdrawal of Law 1720, strikes continue. For Bolivian workers, the problem isn't a single law, but the entire economic model imposed by the government:
privatizations;
austerity;
repression;
sell-off of natural resources;
attack on collective and social rights.
For this reason, the general mobilization is calling for the government's resignation and is ready to escalate the conflict, which has been ongoing for about two weeks and began with the main access routes to the capital completely blocked.
As libertarian communists, we can only express our full internationalist solidarity with the struggles of workers, indigenous communities, and popular movements in Bolivia.
Their resistance once again demonstrates a fundamental truth: neoliberalism does not bring freedom, but impoverishment, repression, and colonial dependence. Faced with governments selling off territories, rights, and resources to multinationals, the response once again comes from popular self-organization, strikes, mutualism, and collective struggle.
The words spoken during the mobilizations by peasant and worker leaders perfectly summarize the meaning of the ongoing battle:
"Our life is collective, not individual. The land must be respected; it is not for sale."
And again:
"Perhaps we will discover that we don't need political leaders-we just need to organize for the common good."
In a continent marked by new neoliberal offensives, social repression, and extractivist devastation, the struggle of the Bolivian people speaks to all the exploited of the world.
Internationalist solidarity is not an abstract slogan: it means recognizing the struggles of Bolivian miners, indigenous farmers, and striking workers as the same battle against exploitation, authoritarianism, and capitalist domination that affects every country.
For this reason:
We stand with the Bolivian miners, with the indigenous communities, with the strikers, against repression and neoliberalism. Always.
http://www.alternativalibertaria.org
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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