Bolivia's Paz blames 'narco-terrorists' for crippling protests: sabotage of a new government, or a leader failing a desperate economy?
Bolivia is gripped by crippling protests as President Rodrigo Paz's young, US-backed government struggles with a deep economic crisis. Paz has blamed 'narco-terrorists' for the unrest, and his government says it will wear the protests down through dialogue rather than send in the armed forces, passing a law to regulate states of exception. Protesters tell a different story: many are demanding the fledgling government actually fix the economy, and some are calling on Paz to step down.
The summary above is a neutral framing. Below, each side reports the same story in its own words — judge for yourself.
Paz's government has opted to wear down the protests rather than confront them: the president promulgated a law regulating states of exception and has held off deploying the armed forces. 'The new Bolivia will be built with dialogue, without violence,' presidential spokesman Jose Luis Galvez said. Officials also cast much of the unrest as the work of 'narco-terrorists' sabotaging a young administration, framing restraint plus a crackdown on criminal networks as the responsible path through the crisis.
On the streets, the grievance is economic, not criminal. Protesters are demanding that Paz's US-backed government tackle a deep economic crisis, while others are demanding he step down altogether. To them, branding the protests 'narco-terrorism' dodges the real failure: a fledgling administration that, in their view, has not delivered relief, leaving ordinary Bolivians to bear the cost of shortages and rising prices.
