Bolivian transport workers began a 24-hour strike in La Paz on Wednesday to protest President Luis Arce’s handling of crippling fuel shortages, deepening the turmoil in the capital.
“There’s no fuel. We can no longer work,” Juan Mamani, a 53-year-old bus driver, said at a blockade in the south of the city.
“Some people slept in line all night” to buy gasoline, he added.
Nineteen roadblocks were reported on the city’s main avenues, police commander Gunther Agudo told local television.
Only a few private vehicles and taxis were seen circulating in the center of La Paz.
According to union leader Santos Escalante, police arrested two bus drivers.
The government has blamed the fuel shortages on more than a week of roadblocks by supporters of former president Evo Morales, who is under investigation for allegedly abusing a minor during his time in office.
Those protests have been concentrated in city of Cochabamba, Morales’s political stronghold.
Hundreds of tanker trucks have been immobilized and gas stations are struggling to restock.
Morales says he is the victim of judicial persecution orchestrated by the government of Arce, his former ally and now rival for the ruling party’s candidacy for the 2025 presidential election.
Bolivia’s first Indigenous leader who held office from 2006 to 2019, Morales is under investigation for rape and human trafficking related to an alleged relationship with a 15-year-old girl, whom he is accused of fathering a daughter with in 2016.
Since last year, the Andean country has reduced its fuel imports because of falling revenues from the sale of gas, its main source of foreign currency until 2020.
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