June 1, 2026

“The following report comes from Resumen Latinoamerica, citing an interview with former Bolivian President Evo Morales Ayma, posted on May 28, 2026. He highlighted the resolve of the sectors mobilized against the neoliberal measures adopted by Rodrigo Paz’s right-wing government since it came to power. 

Morales asserts that the current Executive, headed by Rodrigo Paz, “is a government totally subservient to the United States.”

In an interview with an international news agency, former President Evo Morales Ayma asserted that the protests that have been shaking Bolivia for the past month constitute a rebellion against a government that is subservient to the United States.

The former socialist president, who governed the Andean country between 2006 and 2019, made the statements from the coca-growing region of Chapare, his political stronghold in the center of Bolivian territory. He highlighted the firmness of the sectors mobilized against the neoliberal measures adopted by the right-wing government of Rodrigo Paz since he came to power.

He emphasized that the demonstrations — in which miners, transporters, teachers, farmers, Indigenous people and other sectors participate — defend the economy of workers and families, democracy, the Constitution and natural resources.

President Rodrigo Paz accuses Morales of being behind the protests, which demand his resignation amid the worst economic crisis Bolivia has faced in four decades.

In response, Morales said: “It is a government completely subservient (to the United States). I realize that the time has come to define who is in charge: the empire or the people.”

“This rebellion, I am absolutely convinced, is against the neoliberal model and against the neocolonial state ,” Morales added. Paz, who ended 20 years of leftist governments — those led by Morales and Luis Arce (2020-2025) — is considered a new Latin American ally of the United States, which expressed its support for him and warned that Bolivia is facing an attempted “coup d’état.”

Morales, 66, is being protected by thousands of farmers who are preventing the police from executing an arrest warrant against him for alleged child trafficking, which he denies. “I would like to join the demonstrations, but this trafficking case prevents me from doing so,” the coca growers’ leader stated.

He also denounced an alleged plan by the United States, supported by the Paz government, to carry out a military operation with the support of the [Drug Enforcement Administration] DEA and the U.S. Southern Command in order to arrest him.

Morales denied instigating the protests, although his supporters are participating in road blockades in Cochabamba. The marches in the administrative capital, La Paz, have led to shortages of food, medicine and fuel. “Hunger is driving this mobilization,” insisted the man who was Bolivia’s first Indigenous president.

On Tuesday [May 26], the Bolivian Congress repealed a law that would have allowed Paz to declare states of emergency and control demonstrations with the military without parliamentary approval. Morales warned that if he did so, “I doubt the people” would back down.

Barred from running in the 2025 presidential elections by a ruling from the Constitutional Court, Morales is proposing that the current government call elections within 90 days and asserted that he has no “eagerness” to be a candidate again. “Now is not my time. But I do have an obligation to support the political movement I lead,” he concluded.