Bolivia is gripped by its worst political crisis in years, with President Rodrigo Paz — just six months into office — facing mounting calls to resign as road blockades strangle the capital, La Paz, and violence intensifies in the streets of the Andean city.

What began in early May as a convergence of sector-specific grievances — demands for wage increases, compensation for vehicles damaged by contaminated fuel, and opposition to a land-classification law critics said favoured large landowners — has since escalated into a broad-based revolt. Although the government made concessions, repealing the land law and offering financial bonuses to teachers, Indigenous groups from the highland regions pushed further, erecting barricades around La Paz from May 6. The blockades have cut off supplies of food, medicine and fuel, emptied supermarket shelves and disrupted public transport. Bolivia's national industry chamber estimates the economic losses from nearly three weeks of road blockades at $600 million, with some economists suggesting the true figure, accounting for the country's large informal sector, may already be approaching $1 billion. Sectors including tourism, agribusiness and retail could take between three and twelve months to recover.

At the heart of the crisis lies a sense of political betrayal. Paz, a centrist senator who won the 2025 election with 55 percent of the vote — including strong support from working-class and Indigenous voters — came to power after the Movement for Socialism (MAS), which had governed Bolivia for nearly two decades, collapsed amid corruption and economic mismanagement, receiving just 3 percent of the vote. Yet many of those who backed Paz now feel excluded: his cabinet has been dominated by business elites, he eliminated a tax on large fortunes, approved laws favouring agribusiness, and re-established diplomatic ties with the United States and Israel after years of estrangement — moves that stand in sharp contrast to his campaign rhetoric. "Rodrigo Paz won with a very different agenda, and halfway through, he carried out a political and strategic shift," political analyst Luciana Jauregui told Al Jazeera. "Popular sectors perceive not only exclusion, but also an outright betrayal."

Paz has sought to ease tensions by firing his unpopular labour minister, announcing a cabinet reshuffle and proposing a socioeconomic forum to give protest groups a greater voice. But analysts say he has repeatedly sought dialogue only after situations have already escalated, giving an impression of improvisation rather than strategy — and emboldening other groups to press their own demands. The government has ruled out declaring a state of emergency. Meanwhile, former president Evo Morales — who governed Bolivia from 2006 to 2019, becoming its first Indigenous president, before resigning amid controversy over an illegal bid for a fourth term — has mobilised supporters for a march on La Paz, demanding Paz's resignation and the suspension of judicial proceedings against himself. Morales faces an arrest warrant on charges of trafficking a minor. The Paz administration has accused him of orchestrating a destabilisation campaign financed by drug trafficking, claims Washington has echoed: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared that "criminals and drug traffickers" would not be allowed to topple elected leaders in the hemisphere, while his deputy described the unrest as a coup "financed by a sinister alliance of politics and organised crime." Analysts in Bolivia, however, are more cautious, with one political scientist describing Morales as largely isolated and as benefiting politically from the crisis rather than driving it.

With fresh protests expected in the days ahead, Bolivia faces a deepening dilemma. The country is already enduring annual inflation of 14 percent — its worst economic crisis since the 1980s — and the prolonged unrest risks deterring the foreign investment that Paz had identified as central to his recovery strategy. Aymara and Quechua Indigenous people make up roughly two-thirds of Bolivia's population, and their systematic exclusion from the new administration has proved politically combustible. Whether Paz can stabilise his government without either capitulating entirely to the protesters' demands or triggering a sharper confrontation remains deeply uncertain.