Browse Cases

On 14 October 2007, citizens of El Alto, Bolivia demanded that all bars and brothels facilitating sex work be located at least 3,200 feet away from schools, because they believed that the establishments were facilitating crime in the area. They then began a three-day rampage of the bars and brothels in the impoverished red-lights district of El Alto. These El Alto citizens, primarily parents and students, burned or destroyed at least 50 brothels, burned sex workers’ belongings, and beat sex workers.

In 2006, President Evo Morales passed the National Plan for Equality and Equal Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities. The plan included legal measures to ensure equal access for people with disabilities in the areas of health, education, economic rights, personal and social capacity-building, and institutional and organizational development. It also guaranteed increased financial support totaling $6 million annually, but the money never made it to the people to whom increased subsidies were promised.

On Sunday 26 December Bolivia’s government abruptly ended a six-year freeze on fuel prices, raising the price of gasoline by 73% and diesel by 83%.  Vice president Alvaro Garcia said this change in policy was necessary because the subsidy cost US$380 million a year- 2% of Bolivia’s gross domestic national product and US$150 million of the gasoline was smuggled into other countries and sold at higher prices.  The cost of the subsidies was projected to increase to over US$1 billion in 2011.

After a two year stalemate following the 1979 and 1980 elections, the Bolivian parliament elected the winner of the 1980 popular vote, Hernán Siles Zuazo, president on 10 October, 1982.

Hernán Siles Zuazo took office in 1956 during a politically and economically unstable time in Bolivia and throughout Central America. There had been a succession of violent revolutions in the region.  This was Siles’ first time as elected president, although he had previously had a brief stint as acting president while he was vice president.   

Since the Nationalist Revolutionary Movement Party (MNR) overthrew the military junta in April 1952, Bolivia underwent major reformations in its political and institutional structures and economic policies. Aside from establishing universal suffrage, the government nationalized the tin mine business. It also set up the Mining Corporation of Bolivia (COMIBOL), a semi-governmental company, to take control of the mines. Because the miners made up a large part in the revolution and the tin mine was the most lucrative business in Bolivia, miners were granted great political power.

Bolivia’s transition to a democratic government began in 1978 when then military dictator Hugo Banzer Suarez stepped down after international and internal pressure for Bolivia to hold democratic elections. While the Democratic Popular Union (Unidad Democratica y Popular, UDP), led by Hernan Siles Zuazo, won the 1978 elections, Juan Pereda Asbum, Banzer’s chosen successor, launched a military coup and declared the elections invalid.

In July 2007 the Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of Bolivia, which goes by the Spanish acronym CIDOB (La Confederación de Pueblos Indígenas de Bolivia), launched their Sixth Indigenous March campaign.

CIDOB is a national organization representing most of Bolivia’s eastern lowland indigenous groups. Included under the CIDOB banner were regional Amazonian indigenous groups, Guaranís, Guarayos, and others.

In December 2010, Bolivian president Evo Morales announced that the government would be unable to continue subsidizing fuel prices. In addition to changes in the cost of fuel, which increased by more than 80% without subsidies, the price of food and other commodities also skyrocketed in the same period. Morales reinstated the fuel subsidies after a week of widespread protest, but the price of food remained high. 

Since taking office in 2005, Bolivian President Evo Morales had an increasingly tenuous relationship with the domestic media. On multiple occasions he accused newspapers of being the mouthpieces of the opposition, particularly if they criticized a state policy. The growing polarization between Morales’ Movement for Socialism Party (MAS) and the opposition parties was often reflected in the “media war” between state-owned news outlets and privately owned companies. Parties on both sides perpetuated the war by threatening journalists across the political spectrum.

On August 15, 2011, some 1000 indigenous peoples from the Isiboro Secure Park (known by its Spanish Acronym TIPNIS) in Bolivia began their protest march against a highway project through the park and their traditional homes.  The 500km march from the Amazonian town of Trinidad to La Paz was organized by many indigenous leaders, including Fernando Vargas, president of TIPNIS Native Communities, and Rosario Barradas of the Conference of Indigenous People.

Social protest has played an important role in Bolivia's recent political history. Ever since the national revolution of 1952, civil society has found success in turning to forms of mass participatory direct action for meaningful social change, largely responsible for the removal of unpopular Presidential administrations from office.

Bolivia contains significant natural resources, but also has a long history of exploitation by foreign powers.  One of these resources is natural gas.  Just like the precious metals from Potosí, however, the gas was mostly exported (partially due to low demand within Bolivia) as a raw material, meaning very little wealth stayed in Bolivia, and the wealth that did remain was concentrated in a few, mostly white, hands.  In protest of this policy tens of thousands of Bolivian activists, who mostly came from indigenous backgrounds, worked toward the nationalization of the nation’

The 1977-1978 economic justice and human rights campaign in Bolivia stemmed from tensions that began with the 1952 Bolivian Revolution, which left the Nationalist Revolutionary Movement in power. This group implemented a nationalization of the tin mines, agrarian reforms, and universal franchises. These policies and reforms lasted until 1964, when a military coup led to the regime of General Barrientos. This regime clashed with miners and broke down worker power and cultivated the peasantry.

Throughout the 90s, Bolivia came under increasing pressure from the World Bank to privatize public goods in order to fulfill loan conditionality. In September 1999, in response to this pressure, the Bolivian government auctioned off the municipal water system ‘SEMAPA’ of Cochabamba, a city of 800,000 residents. When the auction drew only one bidder, the government signed water resources over in a 40-year concession to Aguas del Tunari, a foreign-led consortium of private investors dominated by the Bechtel Corporation.