The government of President Luis Arce announced on Monday that it is unable to secure enough U.S. dollars to import fuel, an issue that has led to a diesel shortage during Bolivia’s most important grain harvest, sparking protests in the agricultural sector.

“We do not have the necessary foreign currency (U.S. dollars) for fuel imports,” said Minister of Hydrocarbons Alejandro Gallardo during a press conference.

On Monday, long lines of vehicles, trucks, buses, and tractors continued to form across Bolivian cities. However, the agricultural sector—currently in the middle of grain harvesting, including soybeans and rice, the country’s second-largest export after mining—is the most affected.

Roadblocks were reported on key routes leading to Santa Cruz, Bolivia’s agricultural capital, with frustrated sectors threatening to expand the protests to other regions.

At least two members of a Gulf Clan group, accused of the murder of social leader Jaime Gallego, died this Sunday in an operation carried out by the Colombian Army in a rural area of the municipality of Anorí, in the department of Antioquia (northwest).

The Seventh Division of the Army detailed in a statement that during the operation two members of the Gulf Clan, the main criminal gang in the country, were killed, as well as “war material, stewardship, communications, explosives and ammunition” was seized.

“This is a sustained operation that seeks to hit the Jorge Mario Valle Structure of the GAO (organized armed group) Clan del Golfo, responsible for the murder of social leader Jaime Gallego. Currently, this military operation is in development,” the information added.

Gallego, a defender of human rights and traditional miners of Antioquia, who had been missing for a week, was murdered, according to social organizations on Sunday.

“With deep pain and indignation we have learned that the social leader and defender of human rights Jaime Gallego, known as ‘Mongo’, was cowardly murdered,” said the Corporation for Peace and Social Development (Corpades) in its X account.

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Gallego had been missing since March 3 when he was last seen along with his escort Didier Berrío, of the National Protection Unit (UNP), whose whereabouts are “unknown.”

The social leader was found “lifeless at 2:00 in the morning on the sidewalk (hamlet) El Jabón, in the municipality of Vegachí, with gunshots,” the information added.

According to the Institute of Studies for Development and Peace (Indepaz), with the death of Gallego, 33 social leaders have been murdered so far this year in Colombia.

Gallego was the founder of the Mesa Minera of the municipalities of Segovia and Remedios (Antioquia), where there are disputes between different illegal armed groups over gold deposits, and in 2023 he was a candidate for mayor of Segovia for the Historical Pact, party of President Gustavo Petro.

Last August, Petro authorized the opening of a “socio-legal conversation space” with the Gulf Clan, heir to the paramilitary United Self-Defense of Colombia (AUC) and the country’s main criminal gang.

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The objective of this space is to set the terms of submission to justice according to the precepts allowed by law, but the process has not yet begun.

Unlike other negotiating tables installed such as those that the Government has with the guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (ELN), with a faction of the FARC dissidents of the Central General Staff (EMC) and with a split group of the Second Marquetalia, it is a space for socio-legal conversations.

This happens because the Government does not recognize the Gulf Clan, self-proclaimed Gaitanista Army of Colombia (EGC), political status.

The president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, led this Sunday a public assembly in the Zócalo of Mexico City, attended by thousands of people, in which she assured that her country will continue to collaborate to prevent drugs, and especially fentanyl, from reaching the United States.

In addition, she said she was convinced that “the relationship between Mexico and the United States must be good, of respect and that dialogue will always prevail.”

“I tell the American people that we have and will not have any intention of harming them and that we are determined to collaborate with them in all areas. Especially given the concern they have about the serious problem of synthetic drug consumption,” he said.

“For humanitarian reasons, Mexico will continue to collaborate to prevent fentanyl from reaching young Americans (…) Not only do we not want that drug to reach young people in the United States, but it does not reach anywhere in the world or young Mexicans,” he added.

He said that “it is essential to attend to the consumption of narcotics from the root of the addiction.”

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Sheinbaum specified that, according to the United States Customs and Border Protection, between October 2024 and January 2025 the crossing of fentanyl from Mexico to the United States decreased by 50% and from January to February 2025 by another 41%.

He also pointed out that just as there is a strategy to prevent the crossing of drugs to the United States, “we have proposed to the Government of the United States that it must be implemented so that high-powered weapons stop arriving in our country.”

In what she called an “Informative Assembly”, the Mexican president explained to her thousands of supporters, governors of the country’s states, businessmen and politicians, the agreement reached last Thursday with her American counterpart, Donald Trump, to pause for a month the threat of tariffs on Mexican products.

“We must thank the willingness of the president of the United States to dialogue with Mexico. There are some people who are not interested in a good relationship between our peoples and governments, but I am sure that with information and respectful dialogue we can always achieve a relationship of respect. So far it has been like this,” he said.

He said that being neighboring countries “we have the responsibility to collaborate and coordinate,” Sheinbaum recalled that last Tuesday, March 4, Trump imposed taxes of 25% on exports from Mexico to the United States, but after a call on Thursday, the measure was postponed to April 2.

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“We are optimistic because that day, April 2, the United States Government has announced that it will impose reciprocal tariffs on all countries of the world, if any country charges you for its exports, the United States will do it too, that’s what they have said,” he explained.

“Nothing more than Mexico is not in that area, because for 30 years we have signed two trade treaties, with which it is established that we do not have tariffs with them, nor do they with us, that is, reciprocal tariffs would not have to be applied because there are practically no tariffs from Mexico to the United States.”

The trade agreements to which Sheinbaum referred are the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and the current Treaty between Mexico, the United States and Canada (T-MEC).

He recalled that since the signing of the T-MEC “it was conceived that this was the only option to successfully face the competition that means the economic and commercial advance of Asian countries.”

“Our proposal has even been that we not only integrate North America, but also from now on the economic and commercial integration of the entire continent, becoming the most powerful region in the world without exclusions, with prosperity and with respect for freedom, independence and sovereignty of all peoples and nations,” said Sheinbaum.

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The Mexican president said that we must “always have dialogue as the option and so far it has given results (…) we are not extremists, but we are very clear that there are inalienable principles. We cannot give in to our sovereignty.”

He recalled that Mexico and the United States share a border of 3,180 kilometers (…) we cooperate in commercial, economic, friendship and we have families on both sides of the border. Our peoples contribute culturally on both sides of the border.”

He said that about 38 million Mexicans live in the United States, of which two-thirds are born in the United States.

He also pointed out that Mexico has developed a strategy to address the migratory phenomenon “without violating human rights starting with the right to life” and that the most humane way to address this phenomenon is by promoting development to prevent people from migrating out of necessity.

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