After nearly two months of paralysis, Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz signed a state-of-emergency decree in the early hours of Saturday, ordering police and soldiers onto the highways to break up the road blockades that have strangled the country since early May. The move came just hours after his government clinched a peace accord with the nation's largest labor confederation — but with the most aggressive blockading group flatly rejecting that deal and vowing to dig in, the decree lands on a country that is far from pacified.
What Paz Signed, and What It Does
Paz enacted the measure around 1:30 a.m. on Saturday, framing it as a way to free the roads rather than to crush dissent. He declared the emergency across the entire national territory and instructed the police and armed forces to retake the highways and safeguard the population, stressing that Bolivians could no longer be held hostage by blockades preventing them from working, studying, or reaching medical care. According to the presidency, the order does not suspend constitutional rights but prohibits road blockades and the use of weapons, explosives, and other violent implements, while authorizing temporary military support for the police to protect strategic routes and guarantee supplies.
The decree carries national scope but applies its toughest restrictions selectively. El Deber reported that while the blanket ban on blockades covers urban, rural, departmental and international roads alike, any limits on vehicle and pedestrian movement will be imposed only in specific zones and time windows defined by the ministries of Government and Defense, and the measure will run for 90 days. Defense Minister Ernesto Justiniano stressed that no curfew had been put in place anywhere in the country, adding that a joint police-military command would assess sensitive areas case by case — though, as the decree's underlying framework makes clear, localized curfews remain a tool the government may reach for inside designated restriction zones. Under the framework law that enables it, the Plurinational Legislative Assembly must review and rule on the president's decision within 72 hours of its issuance.
The COB Deal That Preceded It
The decree did not come out of nowhere. Hours earlier, the government had signed a pacification agreement with the Bolivian Workers' Center (COB), the country's dominant union federation. COB executive secretary Mario Argollo announced on Friday that the confederation was lifting its pressure measures nationwide after reaching the accord. The deal was built around eight points responding to the workers' list of demands, and Argollo then publicly called on the remaining blockaders to stand down. The decree, in other words, was aimed less at the COB — which had just agreed to demobilize — than at the holdouts who refused to follow.
The Unions Split: What the COB and Túpac Katari Resolved
This is where the conflict fractured rather than closed. The COB resolved to make peace: it signed the accord, ordered its affiliates to lift the blockades, and set a 90-day window for the government to deliver on what was promised. Argollo pushed back hard against accusations that he had sold out, rejecting the "traitor" label and appealing to the peasant sectors and the Túpac Katari federation to join the pacification process, saying he did not want to be cast as the villain.
The Túpac Katari peasant federation resolved to do the opposite. The federation formally distanced itself from the COB-government accord, declaring that the understandings did not reflect the decisions of its grassroots or answer the demands of the peasant sector, and it ratified the continuation and expansion of blockades across the La Paz region. One of its representatives, Severo Marca, accused Argollo of betrayal, said the federation had stopped participating once the COB began meeting with the government, and noted that the group would convene its own national assembly on Sunday, according to El Deber. The federation, which holds heavy sway in La Paz, intends to keep the capital's chokehold in place even as Argollo's influence is concentrated further south in Oruro. Coca growers loyal to former president Evo Morales, based in Cochabamba, have likewise kept up their protests and continue to demand Paz's resignation.
The First Hours: Early Results
The decree's initial effects were immediate but partial. Bolivia woke on Saturday to 44 blockade points still active across four of its nine regions, with La Paz concentrating 19 road cuts, followed by Cochabamba with 12, Oruro with 11, and Santa Cruz with two, according to the state highway agency. From the early morning, police officers and heavy machinery began removing blockade material in various parts of the country, with operations deployed to clear roads in El Alto, one of the hardest-hit cities alongside La Paz reports El Tiempo. The concentration of remaining blockades in La Paz underscores the central problem: the group still holding the line is precisely the one the COB deal failed to bring on board.
What to Expect Moving Forward
The coming days will test whether the decree can deliver what seven weeks of unrest and last-ditch talks could not. The legislature's 72-hour review window means lawmakers — including Vice President and Assembly head Edmand Lara, who has feuded openly with Paz — will soon have to formally validate or challenge the measure. With the Túpac Katari assembly set for Sunday and Morales's coca growers unmoved, the immediate flashpoint is whether military-backed clearing operations around La Paz can reopen the capital without triggering the kind of deadly confrontations seen earlier in the crisis, which by current official counts has left at least 16 people dead — 13 of them because road closures cut them off from timely medical care, a toll that several outlets, including Infobae, reported the same day. Paz, for his part, has insisted the door to negotiation remains open to any sector willing to talk in good faith, even as he signals he is finally prepared to use force to end the longest and most damaging blockade Bolivia has faced in years.
