On the 24th of May during a student protest in El Alto, Bolivia the student Jonathan Quispe was shot dead by the police.
When the protest was under attack by the firing of tear gas, Quispe started running away with a group of protesters. While running away and thus posing no threat to anyone he was shot dead by the police.
The unusual projectile the police used to murder him is often referenced to as a "marble" (a round glass bullet). The fired glass projectile perforated his heart and lung causing his death.
A process followed soon after, where the state started to make excuses to cover up this murder. The lies and explanations told by the authorities were a typical cover up with two goals in mind: wash off their guilt and blame and persecute the protesters for the killing. They even went as far as to say, they would persecute all protesters who were using "cardboard tubes" (tubes used to fire fireworks during protests) for they had a suspect, a protester, who had apparently fired the marble from a bridge.
Of course, the story did not add up. First of all, no demonstrator could have shot that kind of projectile in a deadly way and secondly, there was not even a bridge near the place the killing took place!
Under such blatant lies the Bolivian state found itself having to admit it had actually been one of their officers. The way the investigations took place and the way the ministers and forensic "scientists" handled the case, made the uproar to come all the bigger.
On a side note, stories of shootings with marbles have becoming abundant in Bolivia. In another instance a farmer was shot and he had to go through intense therapy to be able to regain his health again. In most cases the victims did not survive the shootings and the cases surrounding such shootings have never been solved. The shooters remained unknown, the cases remained unsolved and the victims remained dead or scarred for life.
Jonathan Quispe's death in broad daylight only goes to show the rising repression of the Bolivian state. While it shows the state's growing ruthlessness on one side, on the other that same repression is bringing forth anger and rage against the government. Protests have already erupted and many are calling for Evo Morales (the current president of Bolivia) to resign. This ongoing repression will only feed the masses' hatred against their oppressors and it will bring forth their fall.
