Bolivia had been in recession for five years by the time Sanchez de Lozada took the podium on the evening of 9 February 2003. Unemployment stood at 7.7 percent, GDP growth had measured just 2.5 percent against a projected eight, and external debt had reached 54.2 percent of GDP. The fiscal deficit had ballooned from 3.3 percent of national income in 1997 to 8.7 percent in 2002. The International Monetary Fund demanded it be cut to 5.5 percent -- a reduction requiring $250 million in budget cuts, roughly eight percent of the national budget. Bolivia countered with 6.5 percent. The IMF refused. Without a long-term lending agreement, Bolivia would lose not only Fund loans but millions in foreign aid from Denmark, Germany, and Sweden. The president's austerity plan included a progressive salary tax, the impuestazo, that began at incomes above 880 bolivianos per month -- about $116. For nurses, police officers, and teachers, the tax worked out to an additional two dollars a month, enough to buy food for three days. It was, in absolute terms, a tiny amount. In a country where those two dollars mattered, it was an outrage.

Opposition was near-universal. Evo Morales, then a deputy and cocalero union leader, denounced the tax as an attempt to "unload the economic crisis on the backs of the people." The Bolivian Workers' Center declared a general strike. But the most consequential opposition came from inside the state itself. The National Police Corps earned 880 bolivianos a month -- the exact threshold where the tax began. The largely Aymara force resolved to resist, led by Major Vargas of the Special Security Group, a unit with a history of what the government called seditious activity, including participation in the Cochabamba Water War three years earlier. On the morning of 12 February, the police demanded a forty percent wage increase and modification of the tax to affect only those earning above $660 per month. The government called the bill non-negotiable. A ceasefire was brokered: the military would withdraw from the plaza, the police would stop demonstrating. Then, around two in the afternoon, someone fired.

From the roof of the Foreign Ministry, police units fired tear gas and live ammunition at soldiers below. The soldiers returned fire. A police officer walking outside was shot in the leg; another was shot in the head and killed instantly. Police occupied Radio Nueva America's building, seizing floors six through ten and firing on military units from above. An infantry captain on the roof of the Palacio Quemado was shot dead. From inside the palace, Vice President Carlos Mesa watched and later described it simply: "What I saw was hell." By 1:30 in the afternoon, the military told Sanchez de Lozada they could no longer guarantee his safety. The president left the palace in an armored car -- not, as newspapers reported, smuggled out in an ambulance. At 3:30, the ombudsman called Mesa requesting the tax be withdrawn. An hour later, the president suspended the bill on national television. It made no difference. By then, seven buildings were on fire. The Vice Presidency burned while staff rescued archives from the Library of Congress. Mobs destroyed the headquarters of the ruling party so thoroughly that the early-twentieth-century building collapsed, leaving only its exterior walls.

On 13 February, the violence spread. In El Alto, looters overwhelmed guards at the Customs Service and stormed a Coca-Cola plant, breaking down brick walls while Air Force troops fired into the crowd, killing four. Ronald Collanqui, a twenty-eight-year-old handyman, was shot by a police sniper who mistook him for a combatant. Ana Colque, a twenty-four-year-old nursing student, was killed while trying to give Collanqui first aid. By evening, the government brokered a deal with the police -- bonds, compensation, equipment funds -- and twenty-two thousand officers returned to the streets. The riots subsided. Nineteen people were charged for the deaths. A trial was formally installed in 2008. More than twenty hearings were suspended or postponed. As of the most recent records, the trial has never actually begun. Within eight months of Black February, Sanchez de Lozada resigned and fled the country amid a fresh wave of unrest. The IMF denied responsibility, issued regrets, and continued negotiations. Economist Carlos Villegas assigned blame to both the government's stubbornness and the Fund's insistence on policies it had been warned would provoke exactly what they provoked.