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The Internationalist
  June 2026

Down with the Puppet Government of Rodrigo Paz!
Free All the Arrestees!

For International Workers Mobilization Against the Police State in Bolivia!

JUNE 20 – At 1:00 a.m. today, Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz declared a national emergency (a “state of exception”), ordering a “mandatory lockdown” of the population and suspending freedom of movement throughout the country. All traffic blockades are outlawed, indiscriminate arrests by the police and armed forces are authorized, all demonstrations are prohibited, and a de facto nighttime curfew is imposed. This is the repressive government’s response to 50 days of rebellion by workers, peasants, indigenous people and city dwellers demanding Paz’s ouster for imposing an economic austerity plan and handing over national resources to the imperialists. This crackdown paves the way for a bloodbath. An international workers’ mobilization against Rodrigo Paz’s police state is urgently needed!

The handshake of betrayal. Mario Argollo of the Bolivian Workers Federation sealed the agreement with puppet president Rodrigo Paz, on July 19. The next day Paz declared a national emergency.  (Photo: EFE)

The go-ahead for this military-police onslaught by the rightist government – compounded by the actions of fascistic paramilitary gangs – was given by the betrayal of Mario Argollo, executive secretary of the Bolivian Workers Confederation (COB), who signed a shameful agreement with Paz yesterday. Having called for an indefinite national work stoppage on May 1, the COB leadership and the union federations of miners and factory workers never actually carried out the shutdown. The labor bureaucrats limited themselves to supporting the roadblocks initiated by the peasant and indigenous peoples’ unions – who were threatened with the theft of their lands by the reactionary government acting on the orders of the racist agro-industrial millionaires of Santa Cruz1 – and by urban workers devastated by the skyrocketing price of fuel.

Right now, the protesters should launch a blockade: come down from El Alto2 to surround the Legislative Assembly in La Paz and demand that it reject the state of emergency! A real, effective general strike continues to be urgently needed, mobilizing rank-and-file workers – especially the miners – to repudiate the leadership’s sabotage. It is also urgent to fraternize with the soldiers – many of whom are indigenous – and to form soldiers’ committees alongside councils of workers, peasants, and indigenous people. Extend protests in defense of Cuba and the Bolivian rebels throughout Latin America, and take the battle to the imperialist centers, where the pirates of the Caribbean in Washington and the vultures on Wall Street are salivating to get their hands on Bolivia’s lithium.3

Against the capitalist governments – both that of the puppet Rodrigo Paz, who would hand over Bolivia’s riches to the imperialists, and those of his nationalist-populist predecessors of the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), Evo Morales and Luis Arce – the League for the Fourth International seeks to forge the core of a genuinely Leninist and Trotskyist proletarian vanguard party. We fight for a workers, peasants and indigenous peoples government and for the spread of socialist revolution throughout Latin America and into to the imperialist heartlands.

Imperialists, hands off Bolivia! Down with Rodrigo Paz’s police state!

Legue for the Fourth International
20 June 2026

  1. 1. The department of Santa Cruz, in the lowlands of eastern Bolivia, is dominated by wealthy large landowners – now become agro-industrial capitalists – historically opposed to the indigenous population of the Altiplano (highlands).
  2. 2. El Alto is a city of 1 million, overwhelmingly indigenous people, situated at an elevation of 13,620 feet above sea level, almost 2,000 feet above Bolivia’s political capital, La Paz, which is itself the highest capital city in the world.
  3. 3. In its Andean highlands, Bolivia has the largest deposits in the world of lithium, a key component for batteries to power electric vehicles and renewable energy storage.