Rubio Baselessly Smears Bolivia’s Protesters as “Criminals and Drug Traffickers”

In the midst of a wave of mass protests in Bolivia, Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote on X that the United States “stands squarely in support of Bolivia’s legitimate constitutional government,” smearing the protesters as “criminals and drug traffickers” who he would not allow to “overthrow democratically elected leaders in our hemisphere.”

Rubio’s comments on Bolivia came after three weeks of protest in La Paz, Bolivia, as Indigenous groups and workers erected road blockades across the city, demanding the resignation of President Rodrigo Paz. The protests then spread across the country, led by union members, miners, transport workers, peasants and Indigenous people.

President Rodrigo Paz has only been in office six months. When Paz, a pro-business conservative and Trump ally, took office, he ended nearly two decades of an Indigenous left-wing coalition government and promised “capitalism for all.” He also ended two decades of fuel subsidies, promising “economic shock therapy,” free market regulations, and restored relations with the U.S.

An earlier wave of protests had taken shape in December 2025, after Paz lifted fuel subsidies and began his efforts to transform the economy. The lifting of fuel subsidies “provoked an immediate economic shock,” with the price of gasoline rising by 86 percent and diesel by 160 percent. Protests and marches lasted for 24 days before this initial wave of demonstrations died down.

The latest wave of protests began on May 6 against Paz’s free market policies and more recent land reform policy favoring agribusiness. The movement soon declared a general strike, calling for Paz to resign.

Rubio’s comments can only be called a case of projection, as the U.S. has been the primary force overthrowing and intervening militarily in countries across Central and South America since the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. The U.S. backed the overthrow of Guatemala’s democratically elected president in 1954, forcibly installed a government in Grenada in 1984, supported right-wing forces in Nicaragua to fight its left-wing leader in the 1980s, and orchestrated the violent overthrow of Chile’s democratically elected Salvador Allende in 1973 – and this is only to name a few.

More recently, the U.S. backed a coup in Honduras against the country’s democratically elected president in 2009. A U.S.-backed coup also overthrew progressive leftist Evo Morales, who served as Bolivia’s first Indigenous president until 2019. Washington’s chosen successor attempted to assume the presidency permanently, but was forced to step aside due to low support.

Just this year, Rubio himself “was central to masterminding” the kidnapping and overthrow of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Rubio “traded Venezuelan democracy for oil” after pushing for Maduro’s overthrow since at least 2018. After Maduro’s kidnapping, Rubio asserted that the U.S. would continue its control over Venezuela by controlling its oil, and by holding the threat of additional military action over Venezuela. He continues to push for military intervention to overthrow Cuba’s government, too.

The Trump administration has used the language of “criminals and drug traffickers” as a justification for its latest interventions across Latin America. Trump and the Department of the Treasury have accused Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s government of “narco-terrorism” and used the accusations to excuse their attacks on vessels in Latin America, which have killed nearly 200 people. The Trump administration used similar claims against Maduro to justify their intervention and kidnapping of the Venezuelan leader.