Updated: 13 May 2026
If you're trying to move overland through Bolivia this week and hitting bloqueos, here's the short version: fly, don't drive. The protests are tied to one piece of agrarian legislation — Law No. 1720 (originally Bill 157) — and on 13 May 2026 the Chamber of Deputies sanctioned its abrogation and sent the repeal to the Executive. The political trigger is gone. The roads are not clear yet.
Don't take a bus right now
Bolivian road authority figures cited by EFE: 25 route cuts, mostly in La Paz department, with around 5,000 heavy trucks stranded between La Paz, Cochabamba, and Oruro (SWI swissinfo.ch).
The UK FCDO names specific corridors to avoid until further notice: La Paz–Copacabana, La Paz–Oruro, La Paz–Uyuni via Oruro, and La Paz–Rurrenabaque. The La Paz interprovincial transport union started an indefinite strike on 6 May. Flights are operating normally (GOV.UK).
Bolivia's tourism ministry flagged Uyuni, Copacabana, and Torotoro as the worst-hit destinations and estimates losses of up to Bs 25 million per day in tourism (Los Tiempos).
The hazard is getting stuck at altitude without food, water, or fuel, being forced to walk past a blockade, or ending up between protesters and police. Canada's advisory notes protesters sometimes use dynamite and police sometimes use tear gas (Travel.gc.ca). The U.S. State Department keeps Bolivia at Level 2 with Do Not Travel to Chapare Province (Travel.state.gov).
What to do:
- Domestic flights only between cities. No buses, no private road transfers on the La Paz–Uyuni, La Paz–Copacabana, La Paz–Oruro, La Paz–Rurrenabaque, Cochabamba-via-Chapare, or Peru/Chile border corridors.
- Keep hotels and tours on refundable rates. Confirm with a local operator the same day you plan to move.
- Single-city stays in La Paz, Sucre, or Santa Cruz are workable. Multi-city overland itineraries are not, until things clear.
What Law 1720 actually did
It let Bolivia's agrarian reform agency, INRA, convert a titled small agricultural property into a medium property. The mechanics:
- Owner requests the change voluntarily, in writing, with a sworn declaration.
- INRA has up to 10 business days to process.
- Free of charge.
- The parcel's Economic Social Function (FES) gets reviewed only after 10 years.
The government's pitch was credit access. Small rural plots in Bolivia carry strong legal protections that make them unusable as collateral; reclassifying them as medium property would make them mortgageable, in theory replacing expensive informal lending with bank loans. Officials stressed the law applied only to titled private small properties, excluding communal Indigenous lands and TCO/TIOC territories (ABI).
Why this set the country on fire
Bolivia's Constitution gives small property a specific protection: it is indivisible family patrimony, exempt from agrarian property tax, and unseizable — inembargable — meaning it cannot be taken to satisfy a debt (CPE, Cuarta Parte, Título II, Capítulo Noveno).
That inembargable status is the load-bearing piece. Reclassify the plot as medium property and the protection lapses. The plot can be mortgaged; default and the lender forecloses. Critics' mechanism: small farmers reclassify to borrow, debt service goes sideways, titles consolidate. Voluntary on paper, pressured in practice by the cost of credit.
The Indigenous angle is second-order. Law 1720's direct target was titled private small property, but ODPIB and CEJIS argued it would still bleed into Indigenous territories in Beni, Pando, and Santa Cruz via land trafficking through reclassification, agribusiness expansion at the borders of Indigenous land, and the absence of prior consultation (ODPIB).
The repeal, and why roads stay closed anyway
On 13 May 2026 the Chamber of Deputies sanctioned the abrogation and sent it to the Executive. The Senate's version added transitional language calling for a new land framework within 60 days, with explicit carve-outs for community lands, Indigenous-originario-campesino territories, and natural reserves (Cámara de Diputados; El País; background: El País, April).
Blockades won't lift uniformly. Marchers stand down department by department, union by union. Plan the next several days as if the corridors above are still cut, and re-check daily.