Fuel is becoming one of the scarcer commodities from Bolivia.
Long lines of vehicles snake for several kilometers in front of gas stations across the country.which was once the second largest producer of natural gas in South America. Some of the queues don’t let up for days.
As frustration mounts, drivers like Víctor García eat, sleep and socialize around their stopped trucks, hoping to buy a few liters of diesel.
“We don’t know what will happen, if we will be in a worse situation,” said García, 66, as the hours passed in El Alto, the red brick city on the Andean plateau.
The fuel crisis that Bolivia has suffered for months occurred after a monetary collapse that strangled the country’s dollar supply and is increasingly disrupting the economic activity and daily lives of millions of people, harming trade and agricultural production and skyrocketing food prices.
Public unrest has sent crowds into the streets in recent weeks, increasing pressure on the leftist president. Luis Arce to alleviate suffering before a tense presidential election next year.
“We want effective solutions to the shortage of fuel, dollars and rising food prices,” said Reinerio Vargas, vice chancellor of the Gabriel René Moreno state university in the eastern region of Santa Cruz, where hundreds of truck drivers and desperate residents packed into the main streets and squares on Tuesday to vent their anger at Arce’s inaction and called for the early elections scheduled for August 2025.
In a similar protest the Protesters shouted “Everything is expensive!” and “The people are hungry!” as they marched through the streets of La Paz last week.
Bolivians say that Arce’s image has been affected not only by the crisis but also because he insists that he does not exist.
“The fuel has already been purchased and we are working on normalizing distribution logistics,” said Economy Minister Marcelo Montenegro at a press conference on Tuesday.
Arce has repeatedly promised that his government will end fuel shortages and reduce prices for basic commodities. On November 10, he again promised to resolve the problem within 10 days. Meanwhile, the exchange rate on the parallel market has risen to almost 40% higher than the official rate.
Arce’s office did not respond to interview requests from The Associated Press.
“The lines are getting longer,” said driver Ramiro Morales, 38, who on Tuesday hesitated to leave his spot in a fuel line in El Alto because someone might cut him off. “People are tired.”
In a country that was once a leading economic player in South America, with a forward-thinking middle class and low inflation, Many Bolivians now live on the edge. Fuel shortages prevent farmers from getting their products to distribution centers and markets and food prices have skyrocketed.
Last week, in La Paz and neighboring El Alto, Bolivians lined up to buy rice after long-delayed shipments arrived from Santa Cruz, the country’s economic engine about 850 kilometers away.
With diesel shortages affecting everything from the operation of tractors to the supply of machinery parts, the shortage has hampered farmers at a crucial time of the year: planting season.
“Without diesel, there will be no food by 2025,” Klaus Frerking, vice president of the Eastern Agricultural Chamber (CAO), recently said. “The country’s food security will be at risk.”
The impact of the crisis in the countryside is felt in the cities. Producers say they are selling less. Prices of potatoes, onions and milk have risen and beef has doubled at El Alto’s main wholesale food market in the past month, vendors said, even outpacing the country’s inflation, which has risen since January. October registered 7.26%, one of the highest rates in the country in the last decade.
Faced with skyrocketing food costs, Bolivians have been reducing their consumption.
“You have to walk a lot to find cheaper food,” said Angela Mamani, 67, as she struggled to prepare food for her six grandchildren at the market on the streets of El Alto on Tuesday. He planned to buy vegetables, but realized he didn’t have enough money and went home empty-handed.
It’s a shocking change for a landlocked nation of 12 million inhabitants which was an economic success story in South America in the early 2000s, when a commodities boom generated tens of billions of dollars in revenue during the rule of the nation’s first indigenous president, former president Evo Morales, Arce’s former mentor and his current rival.
But when Bolivia’s natural gas boom ended, Its economic model failed. Now the nation spends about $56 million a week to import most of its gasoline and diesel from Argentina, Paraguay and Russia.
“There is now a dependency on imports following the decline of gas wells,” Minister Montenegro said, pledging that the government will continue to provide fuel subsidies that critics say it cannot afford.
This week the Arce government presented a 2025 budget with a 12% spending increase that sparked negative reactions from lawmakers and business leaders who said it meant more debt and more inflation.
The government plans to spend $2.9 billion on the purchase of fuel in 2025. Bolivia imports 86% of the diesel and 54% of the gasoline it consumes and subsidizes fuel by at least 50%.
While the ruling Movement Towards Socialism party is torn apart in the power struggle between Arce and Morales ahead of the 2025 elections. Arce, who is eligible to run, has not yet made his candidacy official. However, Morales did so in 2022, fracturing the ruling party between two sides.
“They deny that there are problems, they blame the external context, the conflicts. Everything except the exhaustion of the economic model,” said economic analyst Gonzalo Chávez.
Morales supporters blocked major highways and stranded commercial shipments for 24 days last month in part to protest Arce’s handling of the economy. The president said the blockades cost the government billions of dollars and blamed the protests for creating long lines for fuel.
But the hundreds of truckers waiting their turn at the pumps on Tuesday made it clear that, Although the lockdowns are now over, the situation remains grim.
“We need a change,” said Geanina García, a 31-year-old architect in the El Alto market. “People don’t live from politics, they live from the day, from what they generate and what they earn.”
(AP)
