Calm returned to the streets of La Paz on Thursday, hours after a failed military coup against President Luis Arce that plunged the country into uncertainty and political chaos.
Traffic was normal on the streets of the Bolivian capital, supermarkets were preparing to open their doors and queues had dissipated at fuel stations.
Supporters of the president held a vigil all night outside the police station where General Juan José Zúñiga, leader of the military uprising that failed when it found no support in other military units, is being held.
Television channels reported tranquility at the gates of the city’s main barracks early Thursday. In the same way, the land terminals reported normality in trips to the interior of the country.
“Traffic police have reported complete normality on the roads,” said Amelia Ruiz, a bus ticket seller in La Paz.
In the neighbouring city of El Alto, residents took to the streets of one of the neighbourhoods to protest against the “coup d’état”.
Doubt still seemed to float in the streets about what happened on Wednesday afternoon when, commanding tanks and armed soldiers Zúñiga, the dismissed general commander of the Armed Forces stormed the presidential palace in La Paz in what the government called a “failed coup d’état.”
Before being arrested by the police at the gates of the main barracks of the Armed Forces in La Paz, Zúñiga told the media that President Arce himself had commissioned her to “do something” to raise the popularity of the president affected by an economic crisis, strong disputes in the ruling party and a growing climate of social unrest.
Several of President Arce’s ministers, including María Nela Prado, Minister of the Presidency and Arce’s right-hand man, rejected Zúñiga’s versions of an alleged self-coup. “They were seeking to decapitate the government and attack the president,” said the minister at the end of the hectic day on Wednesday.
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