The economic crisis pushes the patience of Bolivians to the limit

Fuel is becoming one of Bolivia’s scarcest commodities.

Long lines of vehicles snake for miles in front of gas stations across Bolivia, once South America’s second-largest producer of natural gas. Some of the queues don’t let up for days.

As frustration mounts, drivers like Víctor García eat, sleep and socialize around their stopped trucks, hoping to buy a few liters of diesel.

“We don’t know what will happen, if we will be in a worse situation,” said García, 66, as the hours passed in El Alto, the red brick city on the Andean plateau.

The fuel crisis that Bolivia has suffered for months It followed a currency collapse that strangled the country’s dollar supply and is increasingly disrupting economic activity and the daily lives of millions of people, damaging trade and agricultural production and sending food prices soaring.

Public unrest has sent crowds into the streets in recent weeks, increasing pressure on leftist President Luis Arce to ease the suffering before a tense presidential election next year.

“We want effective solutions to the shortage of fuel, dollars and rising food prices“said Reinerio Vargas, vice chancellor of the Gabriel René Moreno state university in the eastern region of Santa Cruz, where hundreds of truck drivers and desperate residents filled the main streets and squares on Tuesday to vent their anger at Arce’s inaction and called for overtaking of the elections scheduled for August 2025.

At a similar protest, protesters shouted “Everything is expensive!” and “The people are hungry!” as they marched through the streets of La Paz last week.

Bolivians say that Arce’s image has been affected not only by the crisis but also because he insists that he does not exist.

“The fuel has already been purchased and we are working on normalizing distribution logistics,” said Economy Minister Marcelo Montenegro at a press conference on Tuesday.

Arce has repeatedly promised that his government will end fuel shortages and reduce prices of basic products. On November 10, he again promised to resolve the problem within 10 days. Meanwhile, the exchange rate on the parallel market has risen to almost 40% higher than the official rate.

Arce’s office did not respond to interview requests from The Associated Press.

“The lines are getting longer,” said driver Ramiro Morales, 38, who on Tuesday hesitated to leave his spot in a fuel line in El Alto because someone might cut him off. “People are tired.”

In a country that was once a leading economic player in South America, with a forward-thinking middle class and low inflation, many Bolivians now live on the edge. Fuel shortages prevent farmers from getting their products to distribution centers and markets and food prices have skyrocketed.

Last week, in La Paz and neighboring El Alto, Bolivians lined up to buy rice after long-delayed shipments arrived from Santa Cruz, the country’s economic engine about 850 kilometers away.

Since the diesel shortage Affecting everything from the operation of tractors to the supply of machinery parts, the shortage has hampered farmers at a crucial time of the year: planting season.

“Without diesel, there will be no food by 2025,” Klaus Frerking, vice president of the Eastern Agricultural Chamber (CAO), recently said. “The country’s food security will be at risk.”

The impact of the crisis in the countryside is felt in the cities. Producers say they are selling less. Prices of potatoes, onions and milk have risen and beef has doubled at El Alto’s main wholesale food market in the past month, vendors said, even outpacing the country’s inflation, which has risen since January. October registered 7.26%, one of the highest rates in the country in the last decade.

Faced with skyrocketing food costs, Bolivians have been reducing their consumption.

“You have to walk a lot to find cheaper food,” said Angela Mamani, 67, as she struggled to prepare food for her six grandchildren at the market on the streets of El Alto on Tuesday. He planned to buy vegetables, but realized he didn’t have enough money and went home empty-handed.

It’s a shocking turnaround for a landlocked nation of 12 million that was an economic success story in South America in the early 2000s, when a commodities boom generated tens of thousands of dollars in income. million dollars during the government of the nation’s first indigenous president, former President Evo Morales, Arce’s former mentor and current rival.

But when Bolivia’s natural gas boom ended, its economic model failed. Now the nation spends about $56 million a week to import most of its gasoline and diesel from Argentina, Paraguay and Russia.

“There is now a dependence on imports following the decline of gas wells,” Minister Montenegro said, pledging that the government will continue to provide fuel subsidies that critics say it cannot afford.

This week Arce’s government presented a 2025 budget with a 12% spending increase that sparked backlash from lawmakers and business leaders who said it meant more debt and more inflation.

The government plans to spend $2.9 billion on the purchase of fuel in 2025. Bolivia imports 86% of the diesel and 5.4% of the gasoline it consumes and subsidizes fuel by at least 50%.

While the ruling Movement Towards Socialism party is torn apart in the power struggle between Arce and Morales ahead of the 2025 elections. Arce, who is eligible to run, has not yet made his candidacy official. However, Morales did so in 2022, fracturing the ruling party between two sides.

“They deny that there are problems, they blame the external context, the conflicts. Everything except the exhaustion of the economic model,” said economic analyst Gonzalo Chávez.

The Morales supporters blocked main roads for 24 days and left commercial shipments stranded last month in part in protest against Arce’s handling of the economy. The president said the blockades cost the government billions of dollars and blamed the protests for creating long lines for fuel.

But the hundreds of truckers waiting their turn at the pumps Tuesday made it clear that, although the blockades have ended, the situation remains grim.

“We need a change,” said Geanina García, a 31-year-old architect in the El Alto market. “People don’t live from politics, they live from the day, from what they generate and what they earn.”

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