Soldiers and bulldozers cleared Bolivia’s roadblocks Saturday under a 90-day emergency, as Paz’s government weighs a crackdown on the opposition.
Jun 21, 2026
Bolivian soldiers and bulldozers moved to tear down anti-government roadblocks on Saturday after US-backed President Rodrigo Paz declared a 90-day state of emergency, escalating a crackdown on protests that have paralyzed the country for more than six weeks.
In a predawn televised address, Paz warned protesters they would face “the full force of the law.” Hours later, AFP reporters in El Alto saw squads of soldiers and armed police moving through the city in convoy as bulldozers cleared roadblocks built from rubble, logs, and debris.
“Everything has been difficult here in El Alto during these 50-some days, work, free movement,” shopkeeper Carla Butron told AFP.
In La Paz, military police and navy personnel guarded the presidential palace, while police tactical units were stationed in the main squares.
The 90-day state of emergency curbs the right to protest and authorizes the military to be deployed domestically. Paz said the measure was meant to end Bolivians being “held hostage by blockades that prevent them from working, studying, receiving medical care, getting supplies and bringing food to their homes,” he said in a social media post.
Deal with major union leaves holdouts unresolved
Earlier in the week, Paz struck a deal with the Bolivian Workers’ Central, the country’s largest union, which agreed to end its protests in exchange for a promise not to privatize state companies and to hold further talks. But more than 40 major roadblocks remain, with Indigenous groups vowing to continue.
“We want him gone. We don’t want him to be the one governing,” 42-year-old Aymara leader Lidia Callisaya told AFP.
Paz has accused whom he described as “narcoterrorists,” and in particular former President Evo Morales, of driving the road-blocking protests. Morales, who led Bolivia from 2006 to 2019, is currently in hiding in the Chapare region, his political stronghold, where thousands of Indigenous supporters have blocked attempts to arrest him.
Interior Minister Marco Antonio Oviedo declined to rule out a security operation to capture Morales, saying that security forces “will carry out whatever operations are necessary at the appropriate time.”
Morales, speaking to AFP from hiding, accused Paz’s government of being “utterly submissive” to the United States. He has earlier framed the protests as resistance to a government aligned with US interests rather than a campaign of destabilization.
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