It was a show of power Tuesday as anti government protesters, who were in support of Bolivia’s deposed President Evo Morales, met with counterprotesters who confronted and inhibited their advance, a grim scenario that depicts the growing cesspool of sovereignty wars in a already tense Andean country.
His popular machismo against the current President Luis Arce has reached new extremes when hardened Morales decided to send the call to his followers to prepare for the ‘March to save Bolivia’ which involves a 190 km trek from Caracollo, a small rural village, to the city of La Paz in disrespect of his former political protege turned political rival’s governing powers.
Even a former coca grower like Morales had a significant support base among the poor and indigenous Bolivians notwithstanding the fact that he resigned in 2019 following widespread protests against his rigged elections.
The demo supporting him started smoothly on Tuesday morning but as the day advanced turned ugly when hundreds of counter demonstrators armed with cows gas bombs, stones and firecrackers occupied the expressway ready to combat the nearly 10000 marching protesters. Some of them burnt a giant Morales effigy.
Morales’s supporters, chanting slogans against the economic crisis of Bolivia and carrying varied Indigenous flags, rushed towards them and with the help of slingshots started throwing stones at them as policemen in trucks, motorcycles and others watched. Morales’ backers quite quickly turned the counter-demonstrators back. Their cries – “Evo, Bolivia wants you back” – cut through the din of the pro-Arce supporters who chant, “Evo, you turncoat, your days are over” who tell them.
In charge of keeping public order in Arce’s term, Eduardo Del Castillo, claimed to the media that 13 people suffered injuries as a result of the clashes, 3 of them policemen. Some of the pro-Morales demonstrators witnessed by an AP reporter attempted to beat up anti-Morales demonstrators some of whom were scattering into the hilly places on both sides of the highway and some even bare-handed chased after the anti-Morales demonstrators beating them.
Arce’s government load came back to accuse Morales of planning a coup. With wild metaphors, Del Castillo called Morales’ march a ‘death march’ and added that Bolivian democracy is under threat, the former Bolivian president aims to ‘annihilate people’s democracy and suicide Bolivians’. He refuted allegations that the police were brutal to the nonviolent demonstrators. Instead, he claimed that the officers were the first victims of violence.
Morales, for his part, said that plainclothes police were sent by the government to instigate vandalism against the protesters’ cars, adding that Arce’s administration “has no regard for the human rights and the laws of the country.”
The atmosphere remained relatively obstinate well into Tuesday evening inside a protest encampment at Panduro, which is situated in the mining region of Oruro, where the footsore marchers had chosen to sleep for the night.
“The government is the one that sent police officers to try to stop us, but we were united and defeated them,” said Yamile Cruz, head of Frutcas, a group of indigenous farmers living close to the world’s largest salt flat. “This march will retreat on its own, regardless of what the government wants.”
The street fighting of Tuesday intensified the divisions that are present at the very apex of the hierarchy of Bolivia’s governing party and seem destined to project the feuds between Morales and Arce to a different realm altogether. Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous President who presided over the rising commodity boom in Bolivia from 2006 to 2019, promises to take on Arec, who was once the economy minister when Morales was president during the presidential ellection next year.
Protesters at the march Tuesday demanded that Morales be allowed on the 2025 electoral ballot Despite the ruling of last year from Bolivian constitutional court that Arce insists disqualifies him. Morales has dismissed the court resolution as purely an act of politics.
“They not only want to disqualify me, they want to restrict political rights,” Morales told the reporters during an interview in the march. “Most importantly, we want the president and his government to listen to us and when there is any need, the call for change.”
Cracks in the governing Movement Toward Socialism or MAS began to appear first back in 2019 when Morales sought an illegal third term. He secured a controversial election that was marred with claims of ballot rigging which triggered wide spread rioting that led to 36 deaths and made Morales to step down and seek asylum in another country. Upon the victory of Arce, whom he supported in the 2020 elections, he made his return to politics.
The political rivalry has split Congress and boiled over an economic crisis that was caused by the depletion of Bolivia’s foreign exchange reserves. Protesters on Tuesday condemned Arce to a growing spiral and they flashback to when Morales was president doing good towards economies.
“We are starving,” said Felix Torres, a peasant protester from the highlands. “I never thought that in the 21st century I would see such a distressed country as Bolivia. This is absolutely not how you handle a country.”
