Police, Marchers Clash in Bolivia

Thousands of Indian-led protesters filled the streets of this capital Tuesday, challenging the Bolivian president and leaders of the country’s eastern business elite amid persistent rumors of a possible military coup.

Leaders of the protest, who are based mostly in the Aymara Indian-dominated suburb of El Alto, had declared an indefinite general strike in the capital the day before to demand the nationalization of Bolivia’s petroleum and gas reserves. They say revenue from the country’s most lucrative resource should help its poorest citizens.

On Tuesday, police battled protesters in the city center 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 Indian leaders have threatened to storm Congress as early as this evening if lawmakers approved 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. Indian protesters have opposed the autonomy movement and called instead for a constituent assembly to rewrite the nation’s constitution, in part to recognize the traditional authority of Indian leaders and institutions.

In a scathing editorial Tuesday in the Santa Cruz newspaper El Mundo, Publisher Ronald Mendez accused Indian 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,” Mendez wrote.

Last weekend, thousands of Santa Cruz residents demonstrated to demand regional autonomy.

At the center of the conflicts stands President Carlos 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 paralyzed the nation’s transportation system.

But Mesa has mostly remained silent in recent days, even as thousands of farmers and union activists marched on the capital.

The La Paz newspaper La Razon expressed many people’s growing frustration with the government in an editorial Tuesday. “The government negotiates, surrenders, concedes and will sign anything,” the piece said.

Rumors of an impending coup have become constant, the paper wrote. For reasons that were not clear, the rumors have been loudest on the weekends, causing people to rush to markets to stock up on groceries.

On Sunday, with La Paz residents planning for shortages caused by the protests, Bolivia’s military command took the unusual step of issuing an announcement denying the rumors.

But the same statement commented at length 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,” the communique said.

Tuesday’s clashes between protesters and police occurred as authorities sought to keep the crowds from advancing to the Plaza Murillo, where Congress and the presidential palace are located.

An “open assembly” of about 5,000 protesters met in central La Paz on Monday. The crowd listened to speeches and then voted in favor of the immediate nationalization of Bolivia’s oil and gas reserves.

Many waved the rainbow-colored flags of Indian 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.”

Times staff writer Tobar reported from Buenos Aires and special correspondent Ordonez from La Paz.