Bolivia: Thousands of Indigenous-led protesters filled the streets of this capital on Tuesday, challenging the Bolivian president and leaders of the country's eastern business elite amid persistent rumours of a possible military coup.
President Carlos Mesa, a political independent with few friends in Congress, vowed to stay in power to the end of his term despite a rising tide of protest.
Leaders of the protest, who are based mostly in the Aymara Indigenous-dominated suburb of El Alto, had declared an indefinite general strike in the capital the day before to demand the nationalisation of Bolivia's petroleum and gas reserves. They say revenues from the country's most lucrative resource should help its poorest residents.
On Tuesday, police battled protesters in the city centre with tear gas and water cannons while crowds blocked some routes into the capital.
"We have the right to defend our natural gas, our natural resources," said Maria Validviezo, a 37-year-old mother of seven who marched from a village outside the city. "We live from our land. Our children can only study up to the fifth grade and then they're left to their own devices."
Some of the Indigenous leaders have threatened to storm congress if lawmakers approve a referendum that would allow the country's oil-rich eastern provinces to declare greater political autonomy from the rest of Bolivia. Civic and business leaders in the province of Santa Cruz want more control over the oil wealth produced there. Indigenous protesters have opposed the autonomy movement and called instead for a constituent assembly to rewrite the nation's constitution, in part to recognise the traditional authority of Indigenous leaders and institutions.
In a scathing editorial in the Santa Cruz newspaper El Mundo, publisher Ronald Mendez accused a host of Indigenous and union leaders of engaging in a "conspiracy" against the people of Santa Cruz: "They don't want us to sell our natural gas to anyone or to any place, just so that we don't reach our full economic potential as a region."
Last weekend, thousands of Santa Cruz residents demonstrated to demand regional autonomy.
At the centre of the conflicts stands President Mesa, the historian and onetime television commentator who more than once this year has threatened to resign in the face of protests and barricades that have periodically paralysed the nation's transportation system.
The La Paz newspaper La Razon expressed the growing frustration of many with the Mesa government in an editorial on Tuesday. "The government negotiates, surrenders, concedes, and will sign anything," the editorial said.
Rumours of an impending coup have become constant, the paper wrote. For reasons that were not clear, the rumours circulate most loudly on the weekends, causing people to rush to the markets to stock up on groceries. On Sunday Bolivia's military command took the unusual step of issuing a communique denying the rumours. But the same statement also commented on the competing protest movements assailing Mesa's government. Any attempt to change Bolivia's government and its law by means "outside the rules of the Political Constitution of the State . . . will not be accepted by this institution," it said.
The clashes on Tuesday between protesters and police came as authorities sought to keep the crowds from advancing to the Plaza Murillo, site of the Congress and the presidential palace. "The government is a puppet, manipulated by the transnational corporations," said Julia Paredes, a 47-year-old protester. "We're not afraid of the military coming to stop us from marching."
An "open assembly" of about 5,000 protesters met in central La Paz on Monday. The crowd listened to speeches and then voted in favour of the immediate nationalisation of Bolivia's oil and gas reserves. Many waved the rainbow-coloured flags of Indigenous nationalism.
Jaime Solares, head of the Bolivian Workers Central, told the assembly that the nation's congress should be closed immediately "because it betrayed the people".