Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz declared a 90-day state of emergency in a predawn televised address on Saturday, deploying soldiers, armed police and bulldozers to dismantle the roadblocks that have paralysed the country for more than six weeks. The measure curbs the right to protest and grants broader powers to use the military domestically — a significant step in a crisis that has seen major cities suffer acute shortages of fuel, food and medicine, cost the economy billions of dollars, and threatened to topple Bolivia's first non-socialist government in two decades.

The protests, which began at the end of April, were initially triggered by a land reform proposal that critics said would make it easier for large landowners to acquire small properties. They expanded rapidly after Paz moved to cut long-standing fuel subsidies and proposed constitutional changes designed to open the economy to private investment — measures that demonstrators argue would undermine state control of natural resources. Unions, Indigenous groups, coca farmers and miners have since joined the movement, blocking highways into the cities of La Paz and El Alto — which together are home to around two million people — with rubble, logs and debris. Paz has since scrapped the original land reform and reshuffled his cabinet, but those concessions failed to end the unrest. Earlier this week, he struck a deal with the Bolivian Workers' Central, the country's main union confederation, in exchange for a pledge not to privatise state companies and to hold further talks. However, several Indigenous groups have vowed to continue, and more than 40 major roadblocks remained in place as of Saturday.

Hours after his address, soldiers and police were seen moving in convoys through El Alto as bulldozers cleared barricades. Some residents applauded the troops. Bolivia's Congress is legally required to approve or reject the state of emergency within 72 hours of its declaration. Paz has repeatedly accused former president Evo Morales — a leftist firebrand and Indigenous leader who governed Bolivia from 2006 to 2019 — of orchestrating the unrest. Morales, who is currently in hiding while facing charges of alleged trafficking of a minor that he denies, told AFP he was not behind the protests but that Bolivians were rebelling against a government he described as "utterly submissive" to the United States. Bolivia's interior minister did not rule out an operation to arrest Morales, whose stronghold in the Chapare region of central Bolivia remains a potential flashpoint.

The crisis speaks to deep fault lines in Bolivian society. Bolivia, a landlocked South American nation with a large Indigenous population and a history of political instability, has long depended on state subsidies and public control of key industries. Paz, a centre-right politician elected last October, says economic reform is necessary to address a serious fiscal deficit, but large segments of the population view those reforms as an assault on rights hard-won during years of left-wing governance. Whether the state of emergency will resolve the standoff — or deepen it — depends largely on whether remaining protest groups can be brought to the negotiating table.