Police yesterday turned away demonstrators from Plaza Murillo. They were demanding increased government assistance for the disabled, from Bs.1,000 per month (approximately US$130) to Bs.3,000. According to La Razón, the demonstrators then attacked the police, using crutches, wheelchairs, and fireworks. The government has also alleged that the anti-Morales opposition has infiltrated the group, in an [...]

At least 634 families have been affected by flooding from the Acre and Tahuamanu rivers in the Cobija and Bolpebra municipalities, in Pando department. The Bolivian government has declared the area a disaster zone and declared a departmental emergency. Due to the severity of the situation, with the Acre River still rising and potentially threatening [...]

After ten hours of dialogue, the delegation from Tarija walked out of negotiations with the representatives of Chuquisaca department and the Bolivian government, rejecting the accord that would share revenues from the Margarita gas fields between the Tarija and Chuquisaca departments. At the root of the conflict is the hiring of a U.S. company, Gaffney [...]

Bolivian President Evo Morales issued a decree yesterday morning that will enforce an eight-hour workday in the health sector, despite protests from health-care workers, who say that the shift from a six-hour workday would be too demanding. At a press conference, the new health minister, Juan Carlos Calvimontes, asked health-care workers to comply with the [...]

Civic leaders in Tarija have called for a strike and blockade of international routes linking that department to border crossings to Paraguay and Argentina. Preliminary reports confirm that the international bridge at Bermejo, linking to Aguas Blancas in Argentina, is closed, and the capital city of Tarija is undergoing a general strike in the city [...]

The Bolivian government will install an industrial pant to produce mate–or tea–based on the coca leaf to be used by physicians in the treatment of diabetes and obesity. Germain Loza, the deputy minister of Coca and Integral Development, said that the project will produce mate from the dried leaves of the coca plant, which will [...]

The legislative processes pushed by the ruling Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party in the assembly will not be as easily achieved as they were in the last two years (2010-11) of President Evo Morales’s second term, due to divisions in the party that will prevent it from a two-thirds majority in the congress: an anti-Moralas [...]

Yesterday, the defense team for Rubén Costas, the embattled governor of Santa Cruz department, presented a new legal appeal in order for him to evade being convicted for contempt of court. Richard Cardozo, Costas’ lawyer, appeared in front of the Seventh Criminal Court in La Paz in order to present a new appeal, the so-called [...]

Yesterday, the legal director of the Bolivian Interior Ministry, Fernando Rivera, said that the Hungarian Elöd Tóásó was legally detained in the terrorism case that resulted in the deaths of three of his alleged conspirators in April 2009. Rivera’s statement is in contrast with the contents of a letter from the UN, which recommended Tóásó’s [...]

Argentine ex-military officer Luis Enrique Baraldini was extradited to Argentina on Christmas day, after authorities detained him in Santa Cruz. He was turned over to Argentine authorities at the border town of Bermejo. Baraldini, 71, was wanted in Argentina for crimes against humanity committed during that country’s dirty war in the 70s and 80s, in [...]