The Bolivian Drug War was an armed conflict between the Mexican Santa Blanca Cartel and the Bolivian government that lasted for several months in 2017. Thousands of lives, including politicians, policemen, and civilians, were lost in a failed effort by the Bolivian government to crack down on organized crime, leading to the President of Bolivia concluding a ceasefire with the cartel and giving them effective control of the Bolivian countryside.
Background[]
Starting in 2006, Mexico was engulfed in armed conflict between government forces and the myriad militarized drug empires that ruled the country. Amidst the chaos, the young sicario Rodrigo Carlos Pérez Morales received a vision of the cult figure Santa Muerte and decided that it was his destiny to build a narco empire dedicated to her. Nicknamed "El Sueño" for this vision, Pérez relocated the dying Santa Blanca Cartel to Bolivia, the source of its cocaine, in 2008. Over the next several years, he built a cult following through the indoctrination of Bolivian peasants and Mexican sicarios into the cult of Santa Muerte, as well as through the assassination or intimidation of Bolivian cocaleros (coca farmers) and their union bosses. One by one, the leaders of rival drug cartels were taken out, while the coca union leader Rudolfo "El Yayo" Yana - already an enemy of the United States since its DEA worked to eradicate coca farming in Bolivia - went over to Santa Blanca and took his production skills with him.
At the time of Santa Blanca's arrival in the country, law enforcement was insufficiently prepared to prevent a military-style takeover of much of the countryside. Santa Blanca made displays of executed civilians to keep the rural peasantry in line, causing the emergence of the Maoist Kataris 26 revolutionary movement in 2013 as an indigenous resistance force. In 2017, the Bolivian government decided to crack down on the narco and communist violence by creating a military police unit, La Unidad, which would be dispatched to the provinces to crush Santa Blanca.
The ensuing crackdown backfired on the government. The strongest and most aggressive troops of Bolivia's military were dispatched to police rural villages, doing so with a heavy hand that alienated many peasants. Villages were turned into war zones and whole provinces into no man's lands, and Santa Blanca responded to government crackdowns by assassinating political and military figures. The spread of the cult of Santa Muerte by the excommunicated Cardinal Gustavo Serrano and DJ Perico generated a groundswell of resistance against government forces, and thousands died as La Unidad failed to restore order to the country.
Ultimately, the President of Bolivia was forced to come to an understanding with Santa Blanca that, as long as the group minimized their violence in Bolivia, law enforcement would not interfere with their actions. As a result, Santa Blanca was able to extend its influence into the Bolivian government itself, transforming the country into a narco-state. Major-General Juan Pablo Baro Rebolledo, the commander of La Unidad who had helped negotiate a peace with the narcos, helped run the cartel's security wing, while El Yayo's grandson Gonzalo Yana served as an emissary to the cartel's political allies.
The failure of the drug war transformed Bolivia into the epicenter of the pan-American drug trade, and the cartel's trafficking made them $2 billion a week. The American DEA agent Ricky Sandoval was dispatched to help shutter the cartel with the help of Kataris 26, and he infiltrated the cartel and even, unbeknownst to his handlers, bombed the US embassy in La Paz (wounding two USMC guards) with the hope that the United States would dispatch military forces to help his vain efforts to take down the cartel. After he arranged an unsuccessful Kataris 26 ambush of the cartel leadership in July 2019, he was captured, tortured, and executed by the cartel, leading the American government to dispatch the 5th Special Forces Group's four-man "Ghost Recon" team to Bolivia to work with Kataris 26 to avenge Sandoval and take down the cartel for good.