In Bolivia, the political crisis leads to the taking hostage of 200 soldiers

More than a thousand supporters of former President of Bolivia Evo Morales (2006-2019) stormed on Friday 1^is November, three barracks of the Cacique Juan Maraza military regiment, located in its political stronghold in Chapare, a province in the department of Cochabamba, in the center of the country.

“The lives of my instructors and soldiers are in danger”declared a soldier on site, surrounded by people armed with sticks, in a video broadcast by the local press. More than 200 soldiers were reportedly held hostage and demonstrators were also reported to have “seized weapons of war and ammunition”according to a press release from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs published on X the day after the attack.

This invasion comes after the arrest of 66 people during a joint operation by the police and the armed forces aimed at freeing a bridge in Parotani, a key axis linking Cochabamba to the administrative capital, La Paz, which was occupied by the supporters of Mr. Morales. Since October 14, thousands of people have blocked around twenty roads in the country following the opening of an investigation targeting Mr. Morales for “rape, smuggling and trafficking in human beings” due to a relationship he allegedly had with a 15-year-old girl while he was in power.

Mr. Morales’s defenders assure that he is the victim of “judicial persecution” led by President Luis Arce, his former economy minister in power since 2020, to ban him from running in the 2025 presidential election for the Movement for Socialism party, of which the two men are part and are competing for leadership . The former president is prohibited from participating in the vote by a decision of the Constitutional Court dating from 2023.

“The government humiliated us”

The anger of the demonstrators has recently been exacerbated by the accusations of Evo Morales, who assures that the government tried to assassinate him on October 27. According to the former coca farmer, “elite state agents” allegedly opened fire on the car in which he was going to a radio show in Cochabamba. The next day, however, Interior Minister Eduardo del Castillo said that Mr. Morales had “staged” the events, specifying that the shootings occurred while he was trying to escape a police check as part of the fight against drug trafficking in the Chapare region.

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