BOLIVIA: Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz declared a state of emergency across the Latin American country on Saturday after more than six weeks of protests and road blockades.
"After exhausting all avenues of dialogue, reaching agreements with those whose demands were legitimate, and identifying those who used violence in an attempt to destabilize Bolivia, we made the decision to declare a state of emergency across the entire national territory," Paz said in a televised speech.
The unrest has spread across much of the country.
In a plaza on Bolivia’s high plateau, a stone thrown in anger slammed into a stage.
Hundreds of Aymara farmers in red ponchos lost their patience as they demand that their leaders toughen protests aimed at ousting centrist, US-backed President Rodrigo Paz.
"Resign, damn it!" the crowd shouted, mixing Aymara with Spanish in the small town of Tilata, southwest of La Paz.
"We want him gone. We don’t want him to be the one governing," Lidia Callisaya, a 42-year-old local leader, told AFP under the blazing sun at 3,950 meters (12,960 ft) above sea level. "We're not going to stop blocking until this inept government leaves."
To get here, vehicles fly a wiphala, the flag of Andean peoples, as a kind of passkey to bypass roadblocks made of stones, logs, and rubble, in a protest that has been going on around much of Bolivia for more than 40 days.
In Ingavi province, where the town is located, some of the most critical road seizures are taking place, blocking the supply of food, medicine, and fuel to the main cities of this country of 11 million inhabitants.
"We're going to radicalize the blockade points. Not a single product comes in or goes out! We're the ones who feed the city," said a leader on the stage, cheered by the farmers.
Although the farmers organize most of the roadblocks, workers, miners, transport workers, and teachers have also joined street protests to reject a neoliberal turn under Paz, who in November put an end to 20 years of socialist rule under Evo Morales and Luis Arce.
They are also demanding a way out of the country’s worst economic crisis in four decades.
'Always fought' -
The cabildo -- as this open-air assembly is dubbed -- is guarded by dozens of Indigenous people with cheeks bulging from the coca leaves they chew. They carry whips slung across their chests and their hats bear papers that read "Union police."
It is just one of 20 such meetings that must be held in each province of La Paz before the departmental union makes a final decision on the direction of the protest.
But for now, the trend is clear: The people are calling for intensifying the blockades and rejecting Paz's calls for dialogue.
"The government is trying to wear us down," Vicente Salazar, the leader of all Indigenous farmers in La Paz, told AFP. "There has been a response (to the farmers' demands), but it's nothing but promises that people don't believe."
"The people have risen up and have demanded, as an ultimatum, the president's resignation," he adds.
Although the number of roadblocks across the country has fallen from around 100 to about 50 over the past two weeks, according to the state-run Bolivian Road Administration, shortages persist in cities.
In La Paz, the seat of government, and in El Alto, many food prices have doubled, oxygen is running short in hospitals and drivers are sleeping in their vehicles as they wait to refuel.
On the roads of Ingavi, up to the border with Peru, peasant farmers have remained in camps for weeks.
Paz's administration says those calling for his resignation are "narco-terrorists," linking them to former president Morales, who is a fugitive in a case involving alleged trafficking of a minor, a charge he denies.
"As Indigenous people, as women in polleras, we are persecuted by the government... They called us vandals, terrorists," says Marlen Quiroga, a 43-year-old lawyer and campesina leader wearing a green pollera, the traditional Andean skirt.
"We are not Evistas, we are Indigenous," says Quiroga, referring to supporters of Morales. "Since our ancestors’ time, we have always fought."
