It's been almost a year of electoral tension in Bolivia. The Constitutional Court's decision to bar Evo Morales from running for president in the first round of elections held on Aug. 17 led his supporters to carry out protests and roadblocks, which were not always peaceful.
On Oct. 19, Bolivians will elect their next president, choosing between Senator Rodrigo Paz Pereira of the Christian Democratic Party and former President Jorge "Tuto" Quiroga of Free Alliance, ending the Movement Toward Socialism party’s 20 years in power.
As can be the case during elections, the press becomes the target of various types of attacks, making coverage difficult. Bolivia was no exception. Violence led journalists to take measures such as wearing helmets and body armor while reporting.
“There has been a worrying increase in attacks on journalists covering political unrest associated with electoral demands,” Zulema Alanes, president of the National Association of Bolivian Journalists (ANPB, for its acronym in Spanish), told LatAm Journalism Review (LJR).
Ahead of the second round of voting, Alanes said the violence has not diminished in intensity, but rather has become more verbal, with some candidates discrediting journalists.
Although protests have subsided since the first round of elections, press organizations remain vigilant.
According to the ANPB, violations of press freedom are taking place in the digital world, especially when journalists debunk fake news.
“In the electoral context, the greatest concern has been the issue of disinformation and the dirty war,” Alanes said. “During that process, attacks have focused on journalists.”
In one of the most recent cases, attacks against Bolivia Verifica and Chequea Bolivia – the country's two fact-checking sites – stemmed from a scandal involving Juan Pablo Velasco, vice-presidential candidate for the Free Alliance party.
After an Argentine content creator's broadcast showed alleged racist tweets from Velasco written in 2015, fact-checkers began looking into the information. According to their checks, the posts were real and indeed belonged to Velasco's X account.
The candidate denied the messages were real and said they were part of a “dirty war” by his political opponents.
The journalists behind the fact-checking were attacked, Alanes said.
"There's a spirited reaction to demolishing the work we've done. There's a need to prove that we were wrong," Patricia Cusicanqui, editor in chief of Bolivia Verifica, said in an interview with ADICH Radio.
Cusicanqui said she understood the potential political use of these publications, but asked people to trust the impartial work of the fact-checker and to calm spirits.
“I call on citizens to lay down their weapons. I think we are very, very polarized, and Bolivia needs more than anything at this moment to build bridges of dialogue and reach consensus,” she said. “Our commitment is to continue working to guarantee democracy and human rights.”
In another case, immediately after the first round of elections, Christian Democratic Party vice presidential candidate Edman Lara accused press officers and media owners of manipulating polls. In several messages, Lara specifically attacked journalists Carlos Valverde and Vania Borja. He linked Borja to alleged corruption, mentioning her husband, a police officer.
Various journalistic associations protested Lara's remarks, calling them offensive, defamatory and threatening, especially against Valverde and Borja. They added that the exposure of journalists' families constitutes a form of harassment and intimidation of journalistic practice.
On Aug. 20, Lara apologized for these remarks while linking the reporters to "logias" (lodges). “Logias” in Bolivia refer to coordinated powers, usually economic, but also linked to criminal sectors, such as drug trafficking, Alanes explained.
In response to these statements, the Bolivian National Council of Journalistic Ethics (CNEP) demanded in a public letter that Lara clarify and support the accusations against journalists with evidence.
For the Circle of Women Journalists of La Paz (CMP), the electoral tensions that began to emerge at the beginning of 2025 were reminiscent of elections in 2019. Then, the political chaos (which included suspended elections and the flight of Evo Morales from Bolivia) led to the highest number of attacks against journalists up to that point. For the entire year, ANP recorded 162 general attacks on freedom of expression.
When CMP monitored attacks this year, it found 45 general violations of journalistic work as of June. Of these, 12 were against women journalists, 31 against men, and two were classified as threats to the press in general.
Alanes, from the ANPB, said 2019 was a year of "extreme conflict" due to the political crisis, and this was reflected in the large number of attacks on media outlets and journalists. While attacks in 2025 will not reach 2019 levels, the violence continues.
"In the current electoral context, attacks have decreased in number, but extreme levels of physical and verbal violence, including death threats, have continued," Alanes said.
CMP is particularly concerned by the number and kind of attacks against women journalists. Its monitoring this year confirmed historical data from ANPB that found three out of every ten attacks on journalists are committed against women.
"These attacks have a sexist, demeaning connotation that degrades the personal and professional integrity of journalists," Alanes said.
During this electoral period in particular, women journalists were physically attacked, threatened, harassed and censored, something CMP says “violates not only their personal well-being, but also press freedom and citizens' right to receive truthful and timely information.”
"We have seen that, in times of social unrest, aggression and misogyny are expressed not only through public servants, such as the police in this case, but also through so-called social movements. That is, civil society groups organized in demonstrations that also attack journalists in particular," Patricia Flores Palacios, president of the CMP, told LJR.
Flores and Alanes also agree that when violence is perpetrated against women journalists, it often has a sexual connotation, including groping and threats of rape.
On May 3, for example, journalist Ángela Ninoska Mamani and her son, cameraman Dahan Joaquín Vedia, were covering a demonstration related to the operation of garbage trucks near Cochabamba. When the protest turned violent, Mamani was beaten and robbed, and Vedia’s cameras were stolen Manani reported being pressured by police to reconcile with her attacker, who also threatened her with sexual violence.
Also in Cochabamba, on May 6, Paola Cadima, a Unitel journalist, was sexually assaulted by apparently intoxicated men who surrounded her and groped her while she was covering the garbage truck protest. Cadima fainted from the impact. The cameraman accompanying her, Juan Rojo Adrián, was physically assaulted by the same men.
These are just two of the cases recorded in the monitoring, and although they were not coverage of an electoral event, they are related to the context of protests and violence that took over the country in that period.
One of the issues that most concerns Alanes and Flores is the justice system's response to attacks against women journalists. In the case of sexual violence, in many cases, they don't even want to receive the complaint, Alanes said.
For this reason, the CMP recommends that authorities create a gender-sensitive protection mechanism and train judicial officials and other officials on gender issues. It also recommends ensuring safe reporting mechanisms and producing reports on gender-based violence against journalists that will inform the design of public policies to address the problem.
