March for Bolivia's ex-President Morales turns violent, as political crisis escalates

CARACOLLO, Bolivia -- Thousands of anti-government demonstrators marching in support of Bolivia’s former President Evo Morales clashed on Tuesday with counterprotesters blocking their way, a stark sign of an escalating power struggle in the volatile Andean nation.

In his most brazen show of force yet against current President Luis Arce, Morales sent word to his followers to mobilize what he called a “March to Save Bolivia,” a 190-kilometer (118 mile)-trek from the small village of Caracollo to the capital, La Paz, denouncing the government of his protege-turned-bitter rival.

Morales, a former coca grower, has retained significant support among poor and Indigenous Bolivians despite his resignation in 2019 amid mass protests over his disrupted re-election.

The march in solidarity with him began peacefully Tuesday morning, but turned violent hours later when hundreds of counterprotesters, armed with tear gas bombs, stones and firecrackers, spread across the highway waiting to confront the nearly 10,000 marchers. Some of them set a giant effigy of Morales on fire.

The Morales supporters, raising multi-colored Indigenous flags and chanting against Bolivia's economic crisis, surged toward them, using slingshots to pelt their adversaries with rocks as police in pickup trucks and on motorbikes looked on. Morales' followers soon forced the counterprotesters to retreat, their shouts — “Evo, Bolivia wants you back!” — drowning out the pro-Arce activists who chanted, “Evo, you traitor, your time has passed.”

A top official in Arce's government, Eduardo Del Castillo, told reporters that 13 people were injured in the scuffles, including three police officers. Associated Press reporters saw some pro-Morales marchers chasing the counterdemonstrators into the rolling Andean highlands on either side of the highway, beating them with sticks, pushing them to the ground and kicking them.

Arce and his ministers accused Morales of trying to orchestrate a coup. Using exaggerated, apocalyptic rhetoric, Del Castillo denounced Morales’ protest as a “death march” and said that the former president seeks “to destroy democracy in Bolivia and end the lives of Bolivians.” He denied that police used force against peaceful protesters, insisting that officers were attacked first.

Morales, for his part, claimed that the government sent plainclothes police officers to stir up trouble and vandalize protesters' vehicles, saying that Arce's government “has lost respect for human rights and laws in the country.”

The mood was largely defiant late Tuesday at a protest encampment in Panduro, in the mining state of Oruro, where the road weary marchers spent the night.

“The government is the one that sent police officers to try to stop us, but we were united and defeated them,” said Yamile Cruz, leader of Frutcas, a group of Indigenous farmers on the edge of the world’s largest salt flat. “This march will not retreat despite the government's intentions.”

Tuesday's mayhem deepened the rift at the top of Bolivia’s governing party, threatening to take the political feud between Morales and Arce into a dramatic new phase. Morales, Bolivia's first Indigenous President who oversaw the country's commodities boom from 2006 to 2019, seeks to run against Arce, his former economy minister, in next year's presidential election.

Protesters at the march Tuesday demanded that Morales be allowed on the 2025 electoral ballot despite a ruling by Bolivia’s constitutional court last year that Arce insists disqualifies him. Morales has dismissed the court resolution as politically motivated.

“They not only want to disqualify me, they want to restrict political rights,” Morales told reporters at the march. “Above all, we want the president and his government to heed our demands.”

Cracks in the governing Movement Toward Socialism, or MAS, first opened in 2019, when Morales ran for an unconstitutional third term. He won a contested vote plagued by allegations of fraud, setting off mass protests that caused 36 deaths and prompted Morales to resign and flee the country. He returned and launched his political comeback after Arce, his choice candidate at the time, won the 2020 election.

The political rivalry has divided Congress and exacerbated an economic crisis stemming from the depletion of Bolivia’s foreign-exchange reserves. Protesters on Tuesday decried Arce's failure to halt the spiral and recalled Morales' tenure as one of economic growth and social uplift.

“We are suffering from hunger," said Felix Torres, a peasant protester from the highlands. “This is not how you govern.”

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Associated Press writer Isabel DeBre in Buenos Aires, Argentina, contributed to this report.