Armored vehicles slammed into the doors of Bolivia's government building on Wednesday as President Luis Arce said the country was facing an attempted coup and called on people to mobilize.
In a video of President Arce surrounded by his ministers at the palace, he said: “The country is facing an attempted coup. We stand firm in Casa Grande and will face any coup attempt. We need the unity of the Bolivian people.”
Bolivian television footage showed President Arce confronting Juan Jose Zuniga, the army commander believed to be leading the rebellion, in a palace corridor.
“I am your commanding officer. I order my soldiers to withdraw. This insubordination will not be tolerated,” Arce said.
Bolivian President Luis Arce (Juan Calita/AP)
Zúñiga said he recognized Arce as commander in chief “for now.”
Zuniga did not explicitly say he was leading a coup but said the military was trying to “restore democracy and release political prisoners” as explosions rang out behind him at the palace.
In a message to his X account, Arce said “democracy must be respected.”
Bolivian television stations showed two tanks and several men in military uniforms in front of the government building in La Paz.
“We cannot tolerate another coup attempt to take the lives of Bolivian people,” the president said in a video message to media from inside the palace, surrounded by government officials.
Military police gather outside the main entrance to the presidential palace in Plaza Murillo in La Paz. (Juan Calita/AP)
Video showed troops setting up a blockade outside the government palace.
He said the mutinous soldiers were “tarnishing the uniform” of the army and vowed to respect democracy.
“I am ordering all those who have been mobilized to return to their units,” said the newly appointed Army commander, Gen. Jose Wilson Sanchez.
“Nobody wants to see the kind of things we see on the streets.”
Soon after, troops and armored vehicles began to withdraw from Bolivia's presidential palace.
The leadership of Bolivia's largest labor union condemned the action and declared an indefinite strike of social labor organizations in La Paz to defend the government.
Former President Evo Morales also condemned the military's actions in Murillo Square outside the palace in a message from X, calling it a “coup in progress.”
A senior Bolivian official, Minister of the Presidency, Maria Nela Prada, called it an “attempted coup.”
“The people are on alert to protect our democracy,” she told local television station Red Uno.
The incident sparked a wave of outrage from other regional leaders, including the Organization of American States, President Gabriel Boric of neighboring Chile, the leader of Honduras and a former leader of Bolivia.
Bolivia, a country of 12 million people, has seen intensifying protests in recent months over a steep economic decline that has turned the country from one of the continent's fastest-growing countries two decades ago into one of its most vulnerable.
Cracks are also visible at the highest levels of the ruling party, with Arce and his one-time ally, former president and leftist icon Morales, fighting over the future of the splintering Bolivian Socialist Movement (MAS), known by its Spanish acronym, ahead of 2025 elections.
