Indigenous communities demand that Morales be allowed to run as presidential candidate in the 2025 elections.

On Sunday, Bolivian President Luis Arce called former President Evo Morales (2006-2019) to a dialogue just hours before a massive Indigenous march is set to arrive in La Paz on Monday. The Indigenous communities demand that Morales be allowed to run as the candidate for the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) in the 2025 elections.

“They’ve talked about civil war and bloodshed in the streets. This goes beyond our norms of peaceful coexistence and even masks a political position of sedition that no government would tolerate. Until now, our government has responded to these provocations with a call for dialogue,” Arce stated, accompanied by Vice President David Choquehuanca.

In recent hours, the Office of the Ombudsman issued an invitation to Arce and Morales, urging both parties to sit down and talk before the march reaches La Paz. Arce said he is willing to engage in discussions, while Morales has yet to respond.

On Sunday afternoon, the march, led by the former Bolivian president, arrived in the community of Achica Arriba, 35 kilometers from La Paz, with the intention of entering the government headquarters on Monday. Simultaneously, tensions arose in the city of El Alto between Morales supporters and those backing Arce, who were holding a meeting to stop the former president’s march.

“The persistence of your positions and your refusal to dialogue make us see that you are driven only by a political obsession for electoral power and a personal ambition for power, disguised as a nonexistent concern for the people’s problems,” Arce said, addressing Morales.

The Indigenous organizations’ march began on Tuesday in the town of Caracollo, in the Andean region of Oruro, demanding Morales’ eligibility as a candidate for the 2025 elections. Moreales’ supporters argue that the march is meant to “save the country” from issues like the shortage of dollars and fuel, as well as the rising prices of basic goods.

They also demand that the resolutions from a MAS congress held last year—unrecognized by the Electoral Tribunal—be respected, including the decision to nominate Morales as the candidate for next year.

Arce believes that the march is aimed at getting the Senate president Andronico Rodriguez, who is close to the MAS leader, to assume the presidency of the country so that he can enable Morales’ candidacy.

Morales and Arce have been estranged since the end of 2021 due to differences in state administration, which deepened with the need to renew MAS’s national leadership, still under the former president’s control. Factions loyal to both leaders have been unable to reach an agreement on this issue.