On its surface, the crisis convulsing Bolivia reads as a familiar Latin American story: a population squeezed by fuel shortages, inflation, and a dollar crunch rises up against an austerity-minded president. But a closer look at the timing, the geography, and above all the motive behind the month-long blockades raises a harder question that Bolivia's government and its allies in Washington are now asking out loud — whether the country's powerful cocaine-trafficking networks have a stake in bringing President Rodrigo Paz down.
