LA PAZ: Supporters of Bolivia’s ex-president Evo Morales stormed a barracks in central Chapare province and took ‘around 200 soldiers hostage’, military sources said on Friday, marking a dramatic escalation in their standoff with the state.

The hostage situation comes nearly three weeks after backers of Morales — the country’s first Indigenous leader — began blocking roads to prevent his arrest on what he calls trumped-up rape charges aimed at thwarting his political comeback. Morales, 65, was in office from 2006 to 2019, when he resigned under a cloud after elections marked by fraud.

Bolivia’s armed forces said on Friday in a statement that “irregular armed groups” had “kidnapped military personnel” and seized weapons and ammunition in Chapare. A military source said that “about 200” soldiers were taken hostage. In a video broadcast by Bolivian media, 16 soldiers were seen surrounded by protesters holding pointed sticks aloft.

“The Cacique Maraza Regiment has been taken over by Tipnis activists. They have cut off our water, electricity and are keeping us hostage,” a uniformed man is heard saying in the video.

Morales meanwhile told reporters in Chapare that he would go on a hunger strike “until the government comes... to the negotiating table. Later however, he called on his supporters to consider temporarily suspending the roadblocks to “avoid bloodshed.”

‘Persecution’ and price hikes

Despite being barred from running again, Morales wants to challenge President Luis Arce, his former ally-turned-rival, for the nomination of the left-wing MAS party in the country’s August 2025 elections.

Days after he led a march of thousands of mainly Indigenous Bolivians on the capital La Paz to protest Arce’s policies, prosecutors announced he was under investigation for rape, human trafficking and human smuggling over his alleged relationship with a 15-year-old girl in 2015.

Morales, who is accused of fathering a daughter with the girl, has called the accusations “a lie” and said an earlier investigation was closed in 2020 for lack of evidence. On Wednesday, Arce demanded an “immediate” end to the roadblocks and said the government would “exercise its constitutional powers to safeguard the interests of the Bolivian people” if the protesters did not comply. His warning was interpreted by some Bolivians as a threat to use the military to end the blockade, which has caused widespread food and fuel shortages and prompted prices of basic goods to skyrocket. “If he sends in the military, we are ready to fight,” Carlos Flores, a 45-year-old agronomist who was part of a group blocking a bridge near Cochabamba, said.

Arce announced on Friday that the government had “taken the first step” with the “unblocking” of roads to the west of the central city of Cochabamba, without elaborating.

Chapare is where Morales claimed he was the victim of an assassination attempt last week that he blamed on state agents. In a video he shared on social media, he is seen travelling in a pick-up truck riddled with bullet holes near the city of Cochabamba.

The government said police fired on the vehicle after coming under fire from Morales’s convoy at a checkpoint set up to combat drug trafficking in Chapare, one of the country’s main coca-growing regions. Coca is the raw material for cocaine.

Morales, a former coca grower, was extremely popular until he tried to bypass the constitution and seek a fourth term. His supporters initially demanded an end to what they called his “judicial persecution.” But the protest movement has snowballed into a wider anti-government revolt marked by calls for Arce to resign.

Published in Dawn, November 3rd, 2024