LA PAZ, Bolivia — The images coming out of La Paz tell a story of raw desperation: miners hurling dynamite sticks at riot police, tear gas drifting over demonstrators outside the presidential palace, highways blockaded for weeks, supermarket shelves emptied, hospitals running low on oxygen. Bolivia is living through what many analysts are calling the worst economic crisis in a generation — and its newly elected president, Rodrigo Paz, is fighting for his political survival just six months into office.
But beneath the genuine economic pain of ordinary Bolivians lies something more calculated. The Paz government, backed by an increasingly alarmed international community, is sounding the alarm: what looks like a spontaneous uprising is, at least in part, an orchestrated attempt by former president Evo Morales to topple a democratically elected government and claw his way back to power. And according to Bolivia's Minister of the Presidency, José Luis Lupo, the hands pulling the strings are not all Bolivian.
