Oruro Small Borrowers mobilization
Borrowers frustrated with high interest rates and other pernicious terms organized in cities across the country as part of the Asociación Nacional de Deudores y Pequeños Prestatarios (ANADDOP). They began a national march for debt forgiveness on April 3. 2001, in Caracollo, the traditional site for marches on La Paz. Observers counted their number at more than 5,000 people, largely women, elders, and rural residents (La Razón 2001).
On April 4 around 4pm, in the Vila Vila region, they were confronted by the Grupo Especial de Seguridad of the Bolivian National Police. La Razón reports that marchers were surrounded by the GES and punched and kicked. They were then rounded up into buses and returned to Oruro’s Camacho Regiment and onwards to their ponits of origin Agencia de Noticias Fides (2024c). According to some reports, some were then imprisoned and friends and family had to beg for their release.
The Association “denounced that three of its members died in circumstances linked to the mobilizations it carried out \[denunció que tres de sus miembros murieron en circunstancias vinculadas con las mobilizaciones que emprendían\]” in 2001 (Llorenti 2009, 217). Though the police denied any undue use of violence, La Patria reported on the death of 57-year-old protester Catalina vda. de Villarroel, whose death on April 5 was linked by the her comrades to teargassing “in the mouth” and other aggression on April 3. An autopsy was scheduled in response. Police claimed that her death was from a cardiorespiratory attack, which in itself would not in itself rule out tear gas as the cause (La Patria 2001).
Despite these losses, the organization regrouped and arrived in La Paz by mid- to late April, where they began a series of downtown mobilizations (Agencia de Noticias Fides 2024a, 2024b). An agreement was signed with the government and private banks in July, but the organization had to restart mobilization in September to demand its fulfillment (Agencia de Noticias Fides - Bolivia 2024).