AT 11.40PM ON October 22nd, two days after Bolivia’s presidential and congressional elections, Paul Handal met a dozen neighbours on the street in Villa Fraterna, an upper-middle-class neighbourhood of Santa Cruz, the country’s biggest city. Suspicions were mounting that the president, Evo Morales, was trying to avoid a run-off vote by fraudulent means. Opposition leaders had called a general strike to demand one. Mr Handal and his neighbours dragged trees and tyres to an intersection to build a barricade.
“We thought it would last a day or two,” says Mr Handal, who owns a motorsports consultancy. Then the tribunal declared Mr Morales the winner and more evidence of irregularities surfaced. Over the following fortnight more than 100 people signed up to man the intersection in Villa Fraterna. “This is the second time Evo robbed us of our vote,” says Mr Handal, who is at the barricade from 7am to 7pm every day. The first was when Mr Morales decided to run for a fourth term, in defiance of a referendum vote in 2016. “My vote counts,” the protesters daubed in white on the walls of a dried-out canal. In the evenings families bring tables and chairs to play cards and listen to the radio. Vendors from a nearby favela bring food carts. Catholic and evangelical groups take turns leading prayers.
Such scenes are occurring across...
