A Petition to Stop Government Violence Against Campesino and Indigenous Masses in Bolivia

A Petition to Stop Government Violence Against Campesino and Indigenous Masses in Bolivia sign below

We, the undersigned, are outraged by the escalation of state violence and the criminalization of dissent aimed at members and leaders of Bolivia’s historic anti-imperialist and Indigenous movements—those who from 2006 to 2019 achieved a significant measure of sovereignty and began to build plurinational democracy.

The justice Indigenous Bolivians experienced in the realms of art, health, education, and a dramatic lessening of poverty, were understood as a path to a dignified future by those who suffer oppression across the hemisphere.

The U.S.-backed coup of 2019 aimed to end all that. In 2020, the coup regime was forced out by peaceful popular mobilizations.

Since then, the record of the current government has been opaque. While even leftist news outlets have portrayed the situation in Bolivia as the struggle between Evo Morales and Luis Arce, tracking the Indigenous masses reveals that the repression suffered in Bolivia today is an assault on the social movements.

It is also a calculated attempt to block Evo Morales, Bolivia’s first Indigenous president, from running again for office. The Constitution permits his candidacy, as do Inter-American Commission rulings that similarly allow the candidacy of presidents such as Lula in Brazil. The lawfare of U.S. design, and fake news of the mainstream press, deny that truth.

Morales represents a political instrument rooted in the will of the Indigenous and campesino majorities. The persecution of his allies and the dismantling of grassroots organizations are part of a broader strategy aimed at preventing a return of popular and Indigenous power.

When Evo Morales was president, the redistribution of wealth and practice of Indigenous dignity were palpable threats to the economic and cultural hegemony of the United States. Today, the Indigenous say their most dangerous enemy is the United States.

We call for an immediate end to the killings, persecution, and arbitrary detention and torture of campesinos and Indigenous protesters who continue to support the anti-imperialist platform championed by former president Evo Morales and Bolivia’s historic social movements.

Our demands:

1.  The Luis Arce government must free falsely imprisoned leaders of Bolivia’s grassroots organizations and remove all charges against them – Ramiro Cucho of the ancestral ayllus united in Conamaq, Ponciano Santos who heads the many millions united in CSUTCB, the national union of campesinos and Indigenous, Enrique Mamani, the highest leader of the Interculturales union that represents Indigenous who migrated from the high Andes to lower regions, and Franco García, the youth leader who heads the organization of the urban barrios that is loyal to the project of Evo Morales in the city of Cochabamba. Two of them have been removed from jail to house arrest on condition they remain silent, and one of them went underground when told they were being returned to prison.

2.  Hundreds of members of their organizations have been incarcerated, mostly accused of terrorism – solely for exercising their right to organize and mobilize peacefully. We demand their immediate release. Joining marches and participating in blockades are activities protected under the Bolivian Constitution and the Inter-American human rights system.

3.  Women have filed charges against the police for rape after campesino blockades were attacked by police in November of 2024. Hundreds of civilians were arrested then beaten, the police planted evidence on them, and key leaders were kidnapped who later appeared in jail.  The women said many more suffered rapes but chose not to file charges “to protect their families.” Nadia Cruz , former Human Rights Defender and, until she resigned, a vice minister in president Arce’s administration, reported the crime and the resulting injuries without reference to the blockades. Women protestors routinely report sexual violence and intimidation at the hands of police.We demand an end to impunity for these attacks against women.

4.  Paramilitary groups, which continue to operate with impunity and terrorize protesters, must be dismantled. They operate in defiance of the guidelines set by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (CIDH/IACHR). According to paramilitaries (link supplied by Radio Kawsachun Coca) from the rightwing bastion of the city of Santa Cruz who attacked protesters at the end of a massive march to La Paz in 2024, the executive hired them and had them flown to La Paz in a military aircraft. In Cochabamba, the Andean Information Network warned, “Here the para-police Resistencia Juvenil Cochala coordinates directly with the police,” in grievous defiance of international human rights directives.

Some of the Cochabamba paramilitaries –called “motoqueros”– have gone through trials and are now in the same jails where organizers are unjustly imprisoned. “This place is enough to make one weep,” said Franco García, a youth leader jailed on trumped-up charges in Cochabamba’s penitentiary.

Organizers in Cochabamba allege links between the motoqueros, the police, and prostitution rings allegedly run by Cochabamba’s mayor whose earnings pay for the beatings of political prisoners.

Cochabamba’s mayor Manfred Reyes Villa was in the army as a youth when his father was minister of defense during a dictatorship. He was the military attache in Washington for five years, then the godfather of the Cochabamba paramilitaries. He just lost his bid for president , winning  under 7% of the vote.

5.  An end to the use of torture and inhumane treatment against detained protesters and campesino leaders. Enrique Mamani’s co-organizers say that after his imprisonment, “he was brutally beaten almost to the point of death.” Franco García was released to house arrest recently. The detail of his torture by the police was made public before that point. His release from the penitentiary is contingent on his silence.

He has a message for his companions in struggle, and in effect, his words are a path to resist the torture: “Stay strong. Don’t give in. You have to take it.”

On April 24, 2025, the global nonprofit Ipas Bolivia or Partners for Reproductive Justice (it describes itself as part of a network operating in over 20 countries, and not funded by the United States) – reported on torture in Bolivia: “The map of torture, according to ITEI [The Institute for Research and Therapy of the Consequences of Torture and State Violence], has clear coordinates: it occurs in police custody, in prisons, in the FELCC (Anti-Crime Police), in military barracks, in the Condor School [that trains the Special Forces].” 

6.  A halt to U.S. interference in Bolivia’s internal affairs, including its embassy’s support for right-wing politicians and actors associated with the 2019 coup and the massacres of Indigenous protesters that caused at least 36 deaths. [For Bolivia in the broader context, see La Jornada.] Every U.S. administration has promoted neoliberal measures and IMF structural adjustment policies that contradict the express will of the Bolivian majorities. We reject the political exclusion of Indigenous and campesino movements from meaningful participation in Bolivia’s democratic process.

The U.S. embassy ignores the incarceration and murder of activists: witness the embassy’s silence on hundreds of unjust detentions of Indigenous protestors –most recently in June– and the torture and murder in March of this year of Jhonny Cruz, the highest-ranking youth leader of the campesino and Indigenous CSUTCB, by plainclothes police. Official U.S. reports echo the lies of Bolivia’s mainstream media. One example is the state repression in Arque and Llallagua in June that took the lives of 3 police officers and 6 civilians, with rightwing paramilitary involvement, that to this day has not received systematic investigation. More campesino victims are reported to be buried in unmarked graves. Surveillance and threats against campesinos in Llallagua, Potosí are pervasive. It must be noted, Evo Morales has not supported any of the recent blockades, but he recognizes the right of the social movements to choose to pursue that course of action. Morales promotes marches, which attract millions of protestors.

7. The clear choice of millions of people --in a nation of under twelve million-- is Evo Morales for president. In the August 17^th elections, two in every five voters joined the null vote campaign to register their anger over the exclusion of Evo from the ballot . 

The struggle for a Bolivia governed by and for its Indigenous, campesino, and working-class majority is a fight that echoes across the hemisphere. We reject the actions of U.S. imperialism and call on our elected officials, civil society, and fellow teachers and organizers to denounce the ongoing repression in Bolivia and to stand with those fighting for dignity, popular and Indigenous sovereignty, and justice.

Sincerely,

Cristian Padilla Romero, Professor, Atlanta, and ABD, Yale University

Tanalís Padilla, Professor of History, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge

Anayansi Alatorre Romo, Educator, Atlanta

Sara Roschdi, Organizer, University of California Labor Center, Mexico City/Los Angeles

Melanie González, Social Worker, Greater Los Angeles

Jeanette Charles, UCLA doctoral candidate, Afro-Atlantic, Latin America and Caribbean

Cindy Forster, Professor of History, Scripps College, Claremont Consortium, Greater Los Angeles