Bolivian riot police on Monday clashed with throngs of demonstrators demanding the resignation of embattled President Rodrigo Paz, AFP observed.
The center-right leader took office less than six months ago following two decades of socialist rule, promising to end the South American country’s worst economic crisis in four decades.
He scrapped two-decade-old fuel subsidies that had drained the treasury’s international dollar reserves, but so far he has failed to stabilize fuel supplies.
Thousands of farmers, miners, teachers, workers from other sectors and Indigenous communities have led weeks-long protests that have blocked routes into La Paz and caused supplies to run low and the majority of shops in the capital to shutter.
The demonstrators are calling for wage increases, economic stability and an end to the privatization of state-owned companies.
The country’s largest trade union, the Bolivian Workers’ Center , has also joined calls for Paz to step down.
“We want him to resign because he’s incompetent. Bolivia is going through a moment of chaos,” 60-year-old farmer Ivan Alarcon, who traveled around 90 kilometres from Caquiaviri in western Bolivia to protest, told AFP.
Riot police used tear gas to prevent protesting miners from entering the main square, where government buildings are located, while the demonstrators hurled explosives and stones back at them.
Supporters of former socialist president Evo Morales, who was in power from 2006 to 2019, arrived in La Paz on Monday after marching for seven days from Oruro, about 180 kilometers south of the capital.
After clashing with protesters Saturday, police and military forces managed to temporarily open some roads into La Paz as the city suffered severe shortages of food, medicine and fuel.
One protester died in those skirmishes after falling into a ditch, deputy interior minister Hernan Paredes said Monday.
Protesters regained their positions on Saturday and resumed their blockades on Monday.
The Bolivian Highway Administration reported at least 28 roadblocks on the country’s highways on Monday.
Although the government has struck deals with several protest groups, including urban teachers and some miners, others have issued calls to ramp up pressure.
Landlocked Bolivia is in the midst of its worst economic ordeal in the past four decades, with year-on-year inflation hitting 14 percent in April.
gta/mis/cc/mlm
This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
