Bolivia put soldiers and police on the highway through Yapacaní, in Santa Cruz, on Tuesday to stop a farm blockade over diesel prices — then a deputy minister sat down with the same farmers and talked about tearing the price decree up. EFE, from the town, said the road toward Cochabamba stayed open. Defence Minister Ernesto Justiniano said the overnight deployment was “to prevent the blockade, protect the highway and, above all, avoid clashes.” A 90-day state of emergency, declared on 20 June after weeks of protests demanding President Rodrigo Paz resign, is still in force until 20 September. People can march and meet, Justiniano said. They cannot block roads.
Supreme Decree 5676, issued 17 August, set a reference price of 18 bolivianos a litre (about $1.55) for industry, companies, and other “large consumers,” against 9.80 bolivianos (about $0.84) for public transport and anyone using less than 5,000 litres a month. MercoPress put the increase at 83.7 percent. Producers in Yapacaní, a rice area on the east–west corridor about 131 kilometres from Santa Cruz de la Sierra, say supply has dropped by half. Interior Vice Minister Hernán Paredes and a YPFB official met the Intercultural Federation of Agricultural Producers. Farm leader Juan Cáceres told EFE that Paredes committed to work “so that in 48 hours” the decree would be annulled. “And if this decree is not repealed, the organisations … will unify to see the path to take on mobilisation,” Cáceres said.
Paredes, speaking to EFE, said he shared the farmers’ view that the rule “has not met its original objectives,” because subsidised diesel is still being diverted and is not reaching small producers. He told local media the cabinet wanted the decree repealed, modified, or replaced, and that it “cannot stay as it is.” He talked about letting more sectors import fuel, about YPFB refineries running at 18 to 20 percent of capacity, and about sending tankers to test distribution near the fields. He did not name a new price or a date. As of Wednesday, MercoPress reported, the decree was still on the books and at least ten organisations — mining cooperatives, transport workers, market traders, and coca growers among them — were already defying the emergency rules. Groups aligned with former president Evo Morales were due to meet in the Trópico de Cochabamba to decide on their own measures.
Long lines at service stations have been a fact of life for weeks. The state of emergency was supposed to keep the roads open. Yapacaní is where that promise and the diesel decree met.
Sources: MercoPress; EFE via ABC Color.
