Six killed and hundreds injured in weeks of unrest, as supporters demand former president be allowed to run

Fatal clashes between police and supporters of former president Evo Morales have deepened Bolivia’s political and economic crisis, heightening tensions in the Andean country just two months before the presidential election.

Six people have been killed and more than 300 injured in weeks of unrest. The dead include four police officers, one of whom was reportedly killed by dynamite which had been strapped to his body.

Morales and current president are locked into a standoff for ruling party’s nomination in next year’s presidential contest

Supporters of Bolivia’s ex-president Evo Morales stormed a barracks in the central Chapare region and took about 20 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.

Ex-leader implicates former ally Luis Arce after his vehicle hit by gunfire amid rising unrest in country

Bolivia’s former leader Evo Morales has accused the government of his one-time ally Luis Arce of trying to kill him after his car was struck by bullets in an early-morning ambush on Sunday, threatening to ignite a political crisis in the Andean nation.

Morales, whose supporters have been organising road blockades for weeks to support the legally embattled former president, posted a video on Facebook that showed him in the front passenger seat and bullet holes in the car’s windshield.

Strike announced in Santa Cruz on Friday as Luis Fernando Camacho detained on ‘terrorism’ charge

Outside the office of the Civic Committee of Santa Cruz, a powerful umbrella organisation in Bolivia’s biggest and richest region, hundreds of people – some in Dior sunglasses, others with makeshift riot shields – were screaming for immediate action after the arrest of Luis Fernando Camacho, the region’s governor and a prominent leader of the national opposition.

After hours of deliberations, the committee announced a 24-hour civic strike on Friday, demanding Camacho’s release – with the implied threat of an indefinite strike that could cripple business and trade.

Prosecutors move against Jeanine Áñez and officials who backed ousting of former leader Evo Morales

Bolivia’s former interim president faces an arrest warrant for terrorism and sedition as prosecutors move against officials who backed the ousting of former leader Evo Morales, which his party – now back in power – considers a coup.

“The political persecution has begun,” said Jeanine Áñez, who headed a conservative administration that took power after Morales resigned in November 2019.

Tens of thousands of supporters greet Bolivian ex-president during his triumphant return to Chimoré

Tens of thousands of jubilant followers have welcomed Evo Morales back to the coca-growing region from which he fled into exile exactly one year ago after what they branded a racist rightwing coup.

“Evo, Evo, Evo,” chanted the people who had travelled from all over Bolivia to witness their leader’s triumphant return home in the jungle-flanked town of Chimoré.

Ex-president greeted with thousands of flag-waving supporters a day after new leftwing president, Luis Arce, sworn in

Thousands of flag-waving supporters have greeted Evo Morales at Bolivia’s southern border, as the country’s exiled former president began a triumphant homecoming that suggests his four-decade political career may be far from over.

“As long as capitalism and imperialism exist, the fight goes on,” Morales, 61, declared as he prepared to cross the international bridge between the Argentinian border town of La Quiaca and Villazón in Bolivia at about 10am local time.

Luis Arce to take power after landslide win for Movement for Socialism, but experts predict bumpy road ahead

Bolivia’s new president, Luis Arce, has vowed to rebuild his country’s battered economy, revive ties with leftwing neighbours and serve one term only, as he prepared to take office after October’s landslide election.

Speaking to the Guardian before his inauguration on Sunday, the UK-educated economist was cautious about characterising his victory as proof that Latin America’s leftwing “pink tide” of the early 2000s was bouncing back after a period of rightwing dominance. Since 2018 the left has returned to power in Mexico and Argentina, while a leftwing economist is well placed to win Ecuador’s presidential election in February.

On Friday authorities confirmed Mas’ candidate, Luis Arce, won the presidential election – overcoming the ‘worst’ moment of their 25-year history

Two agonising weeks had passed since Evo Morales was driven from Bolivia and in his vice-president’s recently vacated chambers one of their party’s rising stars sat, crestfallen and drained.

“It hurts,” confessed Eva Copa, the 32-year-old senate president from Morales’ Movement Towards Socialism (Mas), her voice breaking and tears filling her eyes as she pondered what some thought might prove a fatal blow to their pro-indigenous project. “What has happened will leave scars.”

The landslide vote for Luis Arce is reason for optimism, but Bolivia still requires major resources to contain Covid-19

On 18 October, the progressive candidate, Luis Arce, decisively won Bolivia’s presidential election, beating his nearest rival by about 20 points according to exit polls. His party, Movimiento al Socialismo (Mas), also apparently retained its majorities in both houses of congress.

It’s a remarkable turn of events. In November 2019 the Mas president, Evo Morales, was overthrown in a police-military coup that installed the rightwing evangelical Jeanine Áñez as president.

Exit polls for presidential election project win for Luis Arce as rival concedes defeat

Evo Morales’s leftwing party is celebrating a stunning political comeback after its candidate appeared to trounce rivals in Bolivia’s presidential election.

The official results of Sunday’s twice-postponed election had yet to be announced on Monday afternoon, but exit polls projected that Luis Arce, the candidate for Morales’s Movimiento al Socialismo (Mas), had secured more than 50% of the vote while his closest rival, the centrist former president Carlos Mesa, received about 30%.

A year after the country’s first indigenous president was controversially ousted, his party is well placed to win a rerun presidential election

David Ticona Mamani felt despair and foreboding when Evo Morales was forced from his Andean homeland last November amid civil unrest, electoral meltdown and what supporters of Bolivia’s first indigenous president called a racist, rightwing coup.

“I wept,” remembered the 56-year-old lawyer, a fervent supporter of Morales and his Movimiento al Socialismo (Mas).

Human Rights Watch report accuses administration of Jeanine Áñez of overseeing legal offensive against people linked to Morales

Bolivia’s rightwing caretaker government is abusing the justice system to wage a politically motivated witch-hunt against former president Evo Morales and his allies, a new report by Human Rights Watch claims.

The report accuses the US-backed administration of Jeanine Áñez – who became interim leader after Morales was forced into exile last November – of overseeing a legal offensive against more than 100 people linked to Bolivia’s first indigenous president.

Researchers enter row over legitimacy of ex-Bolivian president, who quit after violent protests

A row over the legitimacy of Bolivia’s longest-serving leader, Evo Morales, has been reignited after researchers in the US questioned allegations that fraud was used to help the country’s leader of 14 years win the last election.

Writing in the Washington Post, the researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s election data and science lab have entered what has become a fraught debate about Morales’s legacy and whether he was forced to step down due to an attempt to manipulate the vote or, rather, pushed out as part of a military coup.