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“BOLIVIA IS NOT FOR SALE”  
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Olivia Arigho-Stiles
January 20, 2026
Jacobin
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_ Bolivia’s new right-wing government was forced to abandon its
neoliberal reform package, pushed by executive decree, following the
largest mobilization of the nation’s labor movement in at least five
years. _

The victory of the COB shows that while the MAS may have been crushed
as an electoral force last year, its social movements have
recalibrated., Photo: Jorge Bernal /Agence France-Presse(AFP) //
Jacobin

 

"Fuerza, fuerza, fuerza, fuerza! Fuerza, compañeros!” bellowed a
man in a miner’s helmet into a megaphone_._ Marching through the
sun-drenched streets in the haze of noisy firecrackers, thousands of
miners, workers, peasants, civil society associations, and indigenous
organizations in Bolivia descended on the city of La Paz earlier this
month in the biggest social mobilization in at least five years.
Beyond the city, road blockades led by union locals brought transport
to a near standstill across the country. In the streets, the mantra
was “Bolivia no se vende” (Bolivia is not for sale).

The mass protests against the executive decree of newly elected
Rodrigo Paz’s conservative government lasted nearly a month. While
presented as the elimination of the fuel subsidy, which keeps gasoline
prices artificially low, Decree 5503 would have also privatized key
natural resources and implemented a wide range of austerity measures.

The impressive display of workers’ might, combined with an effective
negotiation strategy by the trade union confederation, the Central
Obrera Boliviana (COB), forced the government to back down. It
announced it would draft a new decree as per an agreement with the
unions that opposed the original decree. The fuel subsidy will not
return, but the range of other neoliberal policies will be abandoned.

“We can proudly say: ‘Duty fulfilled, Bolivian people. The
objective has been achieved, my comrades,’” COB leader Mario
Argollo declared after the negotiations.

The victory of the COB shows that while the Movement Toward Socialism
(MAS) may have been crushed as an electoral force last year after two
decades in power, its social movements have recalibrated in defiance
of right-wing domination.

Decree 5503

It’s telling that the fuel subsidy, a powder-keg issue of Bolivian
politics, proved to be one of the least contentious in Paz’s decree.
Given the country’s deepening economic crisis, actors across the
political spectrum seemed to agree that its time had passed.

The history of the fuel subsidy is long and controversial. It was
first introduced in 1997 by former dictator Hugo Banzer, during his
second democratic presidency, as a tool to curb inflation. Evo Morales
attempted unsuccessfully to cut the subsidy in 2010, an effort also
met with mass protest, and Luis Arce attempted again in 2024 by
proposing a referendum that ultimately never took place.

Prior to Decree 5503, issued in late December, a liter of diesel and
gasoline in Bolivia was sold at a subsidized price of $0.53, a policy
that cost the state $2 billion a year. Removing the subsidy is part of
a range of austerity measures designed to address Bolivia’s fiscal
deficit and the economic turmoil of dollar and gas shortages and
rising inflation over the past two years. Fuel prices will now
increase
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by 86 percent for gasoline and 162 percent for diesel.

When the announcement was made just before Christmas, unions
representing the _choferes_ (minibus drivers) and _transportista_
sector were initially up in arms. However, after the government
reached a backdoor deal with the transport sector unions, this left
only the COB and later the peasant union, the Confederación Sindical
Única de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia (CSUTCB), to oppose the
decree.

The vigor of labor’s response clearly took Paz by surprise.

Printed booklets of the decree were being sold on every street corner
in La Paz. A look at its fine print reveals the devil is truly in the
details. As the COB argued, the fuel subsidy was just the tip of the
iceberg. With 121 articles, the decree would in fact have ushered in a
range of radical neoliberal reforms, from allowing the Central Bank of
Bolivia to approve potentially high-risk financial programs to a
fast-track process for approving extractive projects by foreign
companies outside customary checks and balances. To sugarcoat the
decree, Paz also raised the minimum wage to 3,300 bolivianos per month
(US$480), although it only benefits those laboring in the formal
economy, around 17 percent of workers according to
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Organization.

While the press presented the issue as limited to fuel subsidies, the
COB argued that the decree would champion private interests over the
public good and was nothing less than a threat to Bolivian democracy
itself.

Kawi Kastaya, a veteran union leader from El Alto, explained to
_Jacobin_:

If the political constitution of the state stipulates that the
legislative assembly is responsible for making laws, then they are the
ones who must draft them to address the issue of subsidies or to allow
any institution to exploit natural resources. So, regarding the
decree, the president has decided to violate that part of the
state’s political constitution. That’s why many representatives of
social organizations have spoken out.

Indeed, in a Facebook post, economist Gonzalo Colque from the NGO
Fundación Tierra notes that the decree was designed to enable the
capture of the state by “opportunistic minorities.”

Former peasant union leader and Aymara community activist Roberto
Pacosillo Hilari, speaking to _Jacobin_, concurred that the decree
represented a disturbing overreach of executive power: “It is not
democratic. . . . No government is authorized to rule by decrees.”
He expressed particular concern about the risk to Bolivia’s natural
resources through exploitation by foreign companies, which could have
been expanded through the decree. “All activity, such as mining, has
an environmental impact,” he warned.

The COB — an umbrella labor organization dominated by the miners’
union, the Federación Sindical de Trabajadores Mineros de Bolivia,
and currently led by Mario Argollo — has long been a powerful force
in Bolivia, playing a pivotal role in the 1952 National Revolution,
for example. But many doubted that it still had the political clout to
mount an effective challenge to neoliberal reform. Bruised from the
collapse of the MAS in the recent election and plagued by protracted
infighting and corruption allegations, could the COB assemble its
unions on the streets?

The vigor of the COB’s response clearly took Paz by surprise.
According to Kastaya, “If there hadn’t been the agreement [earlier
this month], Bolivia would have been practically paralyzed, given the
fact that more organizations were joining, transportation and others.
So that’s why, out of fear, [Paz] stepped back.”

Both the COB and peasant union, the CSUTCB, have a long history of
struggling for human rights, from the dictatorships of the 1970s until
the return to democracy in 1982. In 2020, the COB and CSUTCB mobilized
to successfully demand that Jeanine Áñez hold elections after a year
of unelected far-right rule following the coup against former
president Morales.

Neoliberalism Returns to Bolivia

Decree 5503 reflects the neoliberal mission of the Paz government and
a commitment to deepening the extractive model at the expense of
workers, peasants, and indigenous peoples — a commitment that
won’t disappear with the defeat of the decree.

The Paz government has also expressed its intention to deepen its
relations with the United States following the MAS’s expulsion of
the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the
Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) for meddling in Bolivia’s
affairs. As the United States expands its imperialist assault on Latin
America, Paz’s government has bent over backward to accommodate
Donald Trump’s new imperial world order. Earlier this month, the
Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) arrived in Bolivia and announced
it would offer the country a $4.5 billion support package, six times
larger than the bank’s previous allocation. The money will support
agribusiness and mining, among other sectors, according to
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the bank.

Local footage also suggests the DEA is flying drones and helicopters
over the Chapare region, where former president Morales is under the
protection of his coca-growing supporters.

At the same time, the Paz government has reneged on its commitment to
protect the Tariquía National Reserve of Flora and Fauna, a
biodiverse reserve in the east of the country where local indigenous
and peasant groups have long resisted oil-drilling initiatives. Amid
the protests, the police forcibly penetrated a checkpoint in the
Quebrada Las Vacas area to allow the Brazilian petrol giant Petrobras
to access the site of the planned Domo Oso X-3 (DMO-X3) exploratory
well.

Environmental defender and peasant Nelly Coca told the local press
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We thought that with this government there would be a change for us;
we had hope that they would respect Tariquía. When he was a senator,
[Rodrigo Paz] came to my house, and we signed an agreement stating
that he would not allow the oil companies to enter, that he would
defend the reserve. However, he is the first to send the security
forces to detain us and trample all over us.

Vengeance in a Post-MAS Bolivia

Since Paz took power in November 2025, he has been committed to
quashing the MAS and the social movements that brought it to power
back in 2005. The indigenous _wiphala_ flag was swiftly removed from
the official presidential sash as soon as Paz took power.

Paz is seeking to introduce a law regulating blockades, a time-honored
form of Bolivian protest and a cornerstone of campesino mobilization.

Former president Arce currently languishes in jail alongside ex-MAS
politician Lidia Patty, from the indigenous Kallawaya nation, facing
charges of corruption relating to the Fondo Indígena, a Morales-era
expenditure program that redistributed funds to Bolivia’s poorest
indigenous communities. Although the program had long been plagued by
accusations of improper expenditure, the fact that the majority-white
government has focused its attention on a program that redistributed
funds to indigenous groups, overseen by indigenous peoples themselves,
is a clear message.

Meanwhile, Áñez, the short-lived dictator who seized power in 2019
during the coup against former president Morales, was immediately
released from prison along with twelve others accused of involvement
in the massacre of unarmed civilian protesters in Senkata and Sacaba
during the coup. Over thirty-five people died in the violence that
followed her seizure of power in 2019, according to Amnesty
International
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The charge against Áñez was annulled based on supposed violations of
due process during her trial. As it stands, no one has been held
accountable for these acts of state violence, a worrying indication of
impunity.

The recent mobilization by popular sectors, however, exposes Paz’s
shaky hold on power. “The Paz government surely thought it had
power, legitimacy obtained from the elections,” says Kastaya. “But
the majority of the population voted for his vice president, Mr
Lara.”

A bizarre political dynamic has emerged in Bolivia in which Vice
President Edmand Lara, elected on the same ticket as Paz last year,
has mounted an increasingly vocal opposition to Paz. An ex-police
officer from Cochabamba with a loyal TikTok following and a
salt-of-the-earth demeanor, Lara is favored by the rural peasant
sector and the urban working class. His popular persona contrasts with
Paz’s urbane background in the white elite. Paz comes from a long
line of politicians, with his father, Jaime Paz Zamora, serving as
president between 1989 and 1993.

In response, Paz has sidelined Lara and issued another decree,
weakening the vice president’s authority by ensuring he cannot wield
executive power when the president is abroad.

A Backlash Brewing?

During tthe protests, the right-wing-controlled media in Bolivia began
drip-feeding a stream of anti-COB stories, alluding to the inflated
salaries of COB officials and their involvement in alleged MAS-era
corruption. Paz has issued warnings against the use of dynamite in
protests, despite no evidence of its use in the recent marches.

Although this did little to dent support for the COB in resisting the
decree, an authoritarian right-wing discourse around blockades has
gained traction among the urban middle classes. Paz’s government is
seeking to introduce a law regulating blockades, a time-honored form
of Bolivian protest and a cornerstone of campesino mobilization in the
landlocked country. A proposed bill includes penalties of up to twenty
years in prison for those who organize or participate in blockades,
which would deal a major blow to the right to protest.

The CSUTCB has said
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resist efforts by representatives in the right-wing-dominated
legislature to outlaw blockades.

Recent weeks have seen, in the post-MAS climate, a reenergized COB
emerge as an emboldened instrument of workers’ power in defiance of
the authoritarian government. Paz knows that he is now on the back
foot, with the COB winning an important victory for democracy and
workers’ rights in Bolivia by overturning Decree 5503. But whether
this heralds a new cycle of class struggle in one of Latin America’s
poorest countries remains to be seen.

_[OLIVIA ARIGHO-STILES is a postdoctoral researcher of Bolivian
indigenous movements and environmental politics at the University of
Manchester, UK. She is based in La Paz, Bolivia.]_

_Jacobin‘s winter issue, “Municipal Socialism,” is out now.
__Follow this link to get a discounted subscription to our beautiful
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* Bolivia
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* Latin America
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* Evo Morales
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* Neoliberalism
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* Movement Towards Socialism
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* MAS
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* Labor Movement
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* Central Obrera Boliviana
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* Decree 5503
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* Bolivia no se vende
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