It’s 11pm on a Friday night in Cochabamba bus terminal. Around me, my friends are sprawled on the concrete of the traffic apron, wrapped in blankets, passing a bottle of singani and waiting for a bus that will never come. We are trying to travel to Oruro for its famous Carnaval celebrations, but like hundreds of others, we are stuck. This is because lorry drivers are protesting the way Bolivians like best: by blocking roads. In this case, they have blocked almost every major road in the country.
The bus station is lined with families ignominiously bedded down on cardboard. One woman is slouched in a corner, sewing sequins onto an elaborate dancing costume by hand. ‘We’ve been here for four days,’ says another, her face a mixture of desperation and stoicism.
Many Bolivians do not have bank accounts. When they travel, they take the money they think they will need – so an unexpected delay like this can leave them without money for accommodation or food. There is no option but to stay in the terminal until the blockades lift.
Roadblocks, or bloqueos as they are known here, are everyday events. They happen for all kinds of reasons, from bitter industrial disputes to groups of concerned neighbours protesting plans to build on the local basketball court.
The smallest roadblocks can be a few stones and tyres in the road while the people who put them there lounge on the grass playing cards. The largest can involve violent confrontations with riot police. In August 2016, protesting miners who had blocked a highway kidnapped and murdered the country’s vice-interior minister Rodolfo Illanes. Miners were also killed in the protests.
Bolivia has a long history of mining, and one upshot of this is that people set off dynamite and firecrackers during protests. The first time I heard these explosions in the street, all the birds in the trees took flight and I stared around in alarm, thinking it must be a shooting. Later, I learned that the sound of dynamite is a good way of knowing there’s a roadblock nearby.
In La Paz, I sat on a roadblock set up by people with disabilities, just one of many actions over several months in 2016 to demand a monthly state benefit of 500 Bolivianos ($70). While some passers-by shouted taunts, others were warm and supportive. We let through vehicles such as ambulances and school buses, but a growing queue was honking at us in frustration, unable to pass.
At one point, we heard dynamite charges in the distance. ‘Is that us?’ asked one of my companions. ‘No, I think that’s the factory workers,’ replied another, whooping at the next big boom. Given the culture of protest here, it is common for more than one group to be protesting at once. On that day, in addition to us, textile-factory workers were marching against a factory closure, and the freight transport drivers had blocked roads in neighbouring El Alto.
In Bolivia, people show a sanguine acceptance of this disruption, commenting that people have the right to protest. This is a far cry from London, where I lived beforehand, and where the smallest strikes appeared to spark vehement debate about whether industrial action should be allowed at all.
As that long Friday night drew on, it became apparent that the bloqueos would not lift in time for us to travel; there would be no Carnaval de Oruro for us. Still, we were the lucky ones, with beds to return to. As we sat there, we saw a group of people form, heard shouts and loud, rousing voices in debate. People kept joining until it was a crowd, a mob, and eventually, fists in the air, they stormed out through the station, chanting ‘We want to travel! We want to travel!’ and ‘Let’s block the avenue!’
I watched from behind the chain-link fence as they poured out onto the wide avenue in front of the bus terminal. A scooter with a passenger clutching a small dog squeezed past unmolested, but a minibus which tried to speed through before the throng made the way impassable was kicked and punched until it veered in a sharp U-turn and drove off in search of a different route. The crowd cheered.
This is my favourite roadblock to date: a roadblock in protest at roadblocks.
