Several recent threads have covered the travel situation in Bolivia from different standpoints.
At the moment there are no roadblocks or strikes, and none are annnounced for the immediate future.
January is the height of the rainy season. Landslides can interrupt traffic on the roads to Yungas, from Cochabamba to Santa Cruz (sometimes for several days in this case), and between Sucre and Santa Cruz/Cochabamba. Muddy patches on other unpaved roads can affect ´bus traffic. Bad weather can also affect flights to and from Sucre and Rurrenabaque.
Standard travel advice for Bolivia is to allow enough time for the unexpected.
As you mention, there were more problems than usual – even for Bolivia - a couple of months back and up to the first half of December. But the traditional pattern did not apply. In the past, protests have tended to centre on La Paz and El Alto, and on the roads between Oruro and Cochabamba and Potosí. During 2007, the foci of protest have shifted to Santa Cruz, Cochabamba, Tarija and Trinidad. Most of the stoppages (“Paros cívicos”) have been convened by regional authorities and civic organizations to bolster their demands for greater regional autonomy and to protest against proposals to redistribute tax revenues away from the regional administrations to central government and municipal authorities. There have been counter-protests by supporters of the national government and by sectors of society who feel excluded from the autonomy proposals.
Despite fiery rhetoric on all sides, the only situation - since a nasty affair in Cochabamba last January - to escalate into a major confrontation was in the once peaceful backwater of Sucre, where the Constituent Assembly was meeting. Sucre demanded that the new constitution provide for the return of government and Congress to the “historic capital”. The government reacted with singular clumsiness, The regional opposition in Santa Cruz seized the opportunity to throw some fuel on the fire. A series of stoppages, blockages and demonstrations flared up into confrontation with the police, in which three people were shot and most of the police installations in Sucre were trashed and burnt.
The Constituent Assembly has now dissolved. The city of Sucre is quiet. “Capitalía plena” is still very much a standing issue and the occasional 24-hour “paro cívico” is possible, but there is no longer any obvious reason for violence there.
The duel of insults between Government in La Paz and regional leaders in Santa Cruz died down before Christmas. Today it is reported that, after some procedural posturing, the President and the five dissident regional leaders have finally agreed to meet to discuss their differences here in La Paz on 10 January. Whether this meeting will produce more results than previous meetings is open to doubt, but presumably meanwhile there will be no confrontations.
And Carnival this year is during the first week of February. It would be bad form to start political action which might interfere with the important task of preparing for the revelries.
So on the whole I think nothing much is likely to happen during the time you expect to be in Bolivia (unless the 10 January meeting should suddenly be postponed or cancelled). This does not rule out the possibility of the odd protest by some village on the Altiplano deciding to back up its demand for a new school or whatever by blocking one of the main roads, but such strictly local protests are usually resolved fairly quickly.
To get an update on events before you travel, here are some Bolivian links:
www.la-razon.com
www.laprensa.com.bo
www.erbol.com.bo
Also check the travel advisories of the State Department (which in my view tend to err a bit too far on the side of caution) and of the UK Foreign Office.
