On 29 July 2026, a Bolivian court issued another arrest warrant against former president Evo Morales of the party MAS (Movimiento al Socialismo). While the first concerned charges of aggravated human trafficking, the latest accuses Morales of terrorism and sedition in connection with the May–June 2026 protest wave. The protests paralysed much of the country as peasant federations, coca growers, mining cooperatives, and Indigenous organisations mobilised against the government. For more than fifty days, highways connecting the country’s major cities were occupied by protesters, exports collapsed, and violent confrontations occurred. Several people died after being trapped in the blockades, and others were wounded in clashes with security forces.

In the early 2000s, similar protests brought down two presidents and culminated in one of Latin America’s most ambitious constitutional projects: the 2009 Constitution establishing the Plurinational State of Bolivia.

Yet, the protests of 2026 produced an entirely different outcome. The government survived, and public opinion increasingly turned against the protesters. This reveals that Bolivia has entered a fundamentally different constitutional moment. Protest remains deeply embedded in Bolivia’s political culture but no longer articulates a shared project of constitutional renovation.

From Protest to Constitutional Transformation

During the late 1990s, Bolivia’s system of pacted democracy entered a profound crisis of legitimacy (Schorr, 2011; Whitehead, 2001). Economic liberalisation generated growing social discontent, while the traditional party system appeared increasingly incapable of representing large segments of society. At the same time, decentralisation reforms strengthened local political organisation.

A broad coalition emerged (Schorr, 2011; Postero, 2010). Peasant federations, coca growers, Indigenous organisations, urban neighbourhood organisations and labour unions increasingly coordinated their mobilisation. Although their immediate grievances differed, they converged around a common diagnosis: Bolivia’s political order itself had become fundamentally illegitimate.

Their shared solution was equally ambitious. Rather than seeking isolated policy reforms, these organisations demanded the refoundation of the state through a Constituent Assembly (Schilling-Vacaflor, 2011). Nationalisation of hydrocarbons, recognition of Indigenous peoples, and territorial autonomy became interconnected components of a broader political project. The Constitution served as the vehicle through which diverse grievances were translated into a shared vision of the future state.

The party MAS proved uniquely capable of transforming this mobilisation into electoral success. Originally founded as the political instrument of Bolivia’s principal peasant and Indigenous organisations, it combined sustained street mobilisations with growing participation in state institutions, until reaching the presidency.

Evo Morales’ victory in 2005 opened the constituent process that culminated in the adoption of the 2009 Constitution. Bolivia was redefined as a Plurinational State, constitutionally recognising Indigenous peoples as foundational political communities while expanding mechanisms of participation, territorial autonomy and social rights. More than a legal reform, the Constitution embodied a new social contract that promised to overcome Bolivia’s historic inequalities.

The implementation of this transformative project was sustained by an exceptional political economy. The coincidence of constitutional change with the global commodity boom generated unprecedented revenues from Bolivia’s hydrocarbons and mining sectors, enabling the MAS simultaneously to expand the state, redistribute wealth and incorporate historically excluded groups into the new political order. Constitutional change and economic prosperity reinforced one another.

The End of a Political Cycle

Two decades later, Bolivia confronted almost the opposite conditions.

The final years of the MAS were marked by the gradual erosion of the foundations that had sustained its political project. Natural gas production declined, fiscal revenues contracted, inflation accelerated, and shortages of fuel and foreign currency became chronic. At the same time, informal and illegal extractive economies, particularly gold mining, expanded dramatically, generating powerful actors operating beyond state control (Schorr, 2026).

The crisis was compounded by a bitter struggle within the MAS itself about party leadership and the next presidential candidacy, pitting former president Morales (2006-2019) and his supporters against sitting president Luis Arce (2020-2025) and his supporters (Anria 2025). This conflict exposed the absence of institutionalised mechanisms of political succession. Thus, what had started as a collective project of socio-economic and political transformation increasingly degenerated into a contest between rival caudillos.

In this context, the elections of 2025 marked the end of one of Latin America’s most durable political hegemonies. After governing almost continuously since 2006, the MAS was reduced to political marginality. The new president Rodrigo Paz from the centre-right, in contrast, inherited a country confronting a serious socio-economic crisis (Schorr, 2026).

His government quickly implemented politically costly reforms. Most controversial was the elimination of fuel subsidies. It also restored relations with international financial institutions, re-established diplomatic ties with the United States and sought to attract foreign investment to stabilise the economy. Although these measures appeared tailor-made to provoke social resistance, the government retained surprisingly high levels of support during its first months in office. Most Bolivians attributed the country’s crisis to the preceding MAS administrations rather than to the new government. Nevertheless, several social actors, particularly organisations aligned with the former governing party, challenged the new administration from the outset.

Why the Old Playbook No Longer Worked

The immediate trigger for the protests in May and June 2026 was the Land Reform Law 1720, adopted in April 2026 but repealed only a few weeks later in response to mounting social opposition. Critics argued that the reform threatened constitutional protections traditionally afforded to small peasant property. Rural unions and Indigenous organisations responded with marches and road blockades, while Evo Morales and other leaders sought to transform this sectoral conflict into a nationwide anti-government mobilisation. Within days, coca growers, mining cooperatives, peasant federations and Indigenous organisations had joined the protests, and demands shifted from opposition to a specific reform to calls for President Paz’s resignation.

The similarities with the mobilisation cycle of the early 2000s were unmistakable. Yet four crucial differences explain why the outcome was so different.

The first difference concerned political legitimacy. Unlike the constituent mobilisation of the early 2000s, the protest coalition never acquired broad societal support. The former allies of the MAS no longer embodied democratic renewal or political inclusion. Instead, many Bolivians associated them with economic collapse, institutional deterioration and the exhaustion of a once-transformative political project.

Evo Morales himself had undergone a similar transformation in the public imagination. Whereas he had once symbolised political renewal and the inclusion of historically marginalised sectors, he was now widely perceived as a politician primarily concerned with regaining power and shielding himself from mounting legal challenges. Rather than inspiring hope, his prominent role in the protests reinforced the perception that the mobilisation served particular interests. Consequently, public frustration increasingly targeted those maintaining the blockades rather than the government itself. Instead of generating solidarity, the protests generated demands for the restoration of public order, even by means of “mano dura” (heavy hand).

The second difference was the absence of a shared constitutional horizon. The coalition that mobilised between 2000 and 2005 was united by an ambitious project of state transformation. Constitutional reform was the master frame that integrated diverse grievances into a common political project.

Nothing comparable exists in 2026. The different demands overlapped tactically but never evolved into a coherent project capable of mobilising society beyond the immediately affected sectors. Beyond demanding the president’s resignation, the movement articulated neither a common diagnosis of Bolivia’s crises nor a shared vision for overcoming them.

The third difference was the underlying political economy. The constituent process unfolded during the commodity super-cycle, when expanding fiscal revenues made redistribution politically feasible. The current crisis unfolds under conditions of scarcity. Hydrocarbon revenues have largely disappeared, state resources have contracted and informal extraction increasingly escapes effective public regulation. Bolivia is no longer debating how to redistribute expanding wealth but how to manage decline.

Finally, the government also responded differently than its predecessors in the early 2000s. Rather than relying immediately on repression, Paz prioritised negotiations while simultaneously preparing legislation for a possible state of emergency, amid growing public demands for stronger government action to end the blockades. By avoiding the spectacular confrontations that had fuelled earlier protest cycles, the government denied the movement an opportunity to broaden support and unite different sectors under a coherent discourse.

Bolivia’s Post-Constituent Era

The failure of the 2026 protest wave therefore reflects more than the organisational decline of the MAS or the fading influence of Evo Morales. It signals the exhaustion of the constituent moment inaugurated at the beginning of the century.

Twenty-five years ago, massive protests including road blockades expressed constituent power: they challenged the legitimacy of the existing order and articulated an alternative constitutional project. Contemporary conflicts unfold within rather than against this constitutional order. Protest remains Bolivia’s dominant political language, reflecting both the organisational strength of civil society and the continuing weaknesses of representative institutions. But today’s mobilisation revolves primarily around distributive conflicts, regulatory disputes and struggles over increasingly scarce resources rather than competing political and constitutional visions.

The end of the protest wave in June hardly means that Bolivia has entered a period of political stability. The country remains deeply unsettled, struggling with economic crisis, political scandal, and persistent social tensions. The latest arrest warrant against Morales has so far remained unenforced, much like the earlier one. The former president has entrenched himself in the Chapare, his longstanding political stronghold, where he remains protected by loyal and highly mobilised coca-grower unions. His continued capacity to resist state authority illustrates both the limits of the post-MAS order and the persistent potential for renewed mass mobilisation. Whether future protests can coalesce around a broader collective political project remains an open question.