Swelling throng of Aymara and Quechua in La Paz call for a revolution

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

`http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-lapaz16oct16,1,75
85231.story

Protest Swelling in Bolivian Plaza Groups of Indian,
some having marched hundreds of miles and armed with sticks, set up
barricades and call for a revolution.
By Héctor Tobar Times Staff Writer

October 16, 2003

LA PAZ, Bolivia ? At the very center of this capital city, groups of
Aymara and Quechua Indians have taken over the plaza the Spanish
conquistadors first laid out in 1548, cutting up cobblestones the size
of bread loaves to make barricades, filling the days with fervent
speeches about revolution.

They've been there for four days, the focal point of an uprising that
has shut down this metropolis of 1.5 million people, where cars no
longer circulate, stores no longer open and children while away the
hours playing soccer on usually bustling boulevards and highways.

The Aymara and Quechua have walked down into La Paz from the slums
known as "the periphery" that cling to the ragged brown mountains
surrounding the city. Thousands more have marched for days from
distant towns and villages, turning this country's centuries-old
social order upside down.

"Before, we let other people speak for us," said German Jimenez, a
teacher and Quechua from the city of Potosi who arrived in La Paz on
Wednesday after hitching rides on tractors, walking and bicycling
hundreds of miles over six days. "Now we say the original [Indian]
nations are ready to rule our own affairs. We are ready to impose our
own democracy."

The Aymara and Quechua make up the vast majority of the protesters
demanding that President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada step down after a
year of political upheaval and violence that has left more than 150
people dead. They say that his administration is corrupt and venal and
that it has only worsened life for Bolivia's already-poor Indian
majority.

The nation's leading Indian and peasant leaders are also calling for a
constituent assembly that would rewrite the constitution and wrest
control of the country from the white and mixed-race minority that has
ruled this region since the Spanish conquest.

"It's the poorest villages that are rising up, all over the western
part of the country," said Clemente Macias, a 32-year-old construction
worker from La Paz, referring to Bolivia's Aymara and Quechua
heartland.

On Wednesday, the army and police once again in effect surrendered La
Paz to the protesters, even as violent demonstrations swept through
other Bolivian cities, leaving two more people dead and the
president's future more in doubt.

Army troops and protesters clashed in Patacamaya, about 60 miles south
of La Paz, and in the cities of Oruro and Cochabamba. Human rights
activists launched a hunger strike in a La Paz church, demanding the
president step down.

Huddled in his residence in La Paz's affluent southern neighborhood,
Sanchez de Lozada met with advisors and allies but issued no
statements.

With official information scarce, La Paz was awash in rumors about
American military advisors, weapons arriving on an airplane from
Miami, and newspapers and television stations being harassed for
broadcasting reports critical of the government.

"If we go off the air it will only be because we have been taken over
by the government," said a breathless newscaster at Channel 13, a
university station. "All we have been doing is showing what the people
are clamoring for."

Hours later, the station was still broadcasting.

Appointed president last year by Congress after an election in which
he won 22% of the vote, Sanchez de Lozada has vowed not to step down,
calling the protesters "subversives" who are manipulated by outside
forces.

A tight cordon of soldiers blocked all the approaches to the downtown
presidential palace, just two blocks from the protesters' barricades
at the Plaza San Francisco.

But they allowed about 1,000 miners and several other groups to march
through the city center without incident.

Eduardo Dalence, a professor at the University of El Alto, walked with
the miners as they entered the city.

"Step back, they're going to set off some dynamite," he told some
people on the sidewalk watching the marchers. "Don't worry, it's just
a little."

Seconds later, an explosion rocked the street, setting off an alarm
inside an office building. Later, a group of peasants arrived from the
Yungas coca-growing region hundreds of miles east of La Paz.

Many were armed with sticks and pieces of rebar, their faces sunburned
and weather-beaten after days of marching.

For Juan Carlos Alfaro Monroy, one of about a thousand demonstrators
milling about the plaza Wednesday morning, each contingent of marchers
that arrived was a victory.

"This is the reaction of all the people who have been excluded," he
said. "Look up at those mountains where we live. None of us have any
gas connections. But all these hotels and office buildings around us
do."

Moments later, three station wagons passed, each carrying two coffins
on its roof.

"Look, look!" several people shouted. The coffins, they said, held
people shot by the army in the protests. "See how they're killing us."

Nearby, men tore up the plaza's storm drains, creating a ditch that
would prevent any car from passing.

The city's international airport has been closed since Sunday because
of the disturbances and uprisings in the La Paz suburb of El Alto,
home to about 750,000 Aymaras and Quechuas.

Residents of El Alto and other "periphery" communities have covered
the highways leading to the airport with a moonscape of stones.

On Tuesday, as a small group of foreign journalists entered La Paz on
bicycles, women and children worked to add more stones to the
barricades, carrying one at a time, creating a clutter of rocks that
stopped army trucks, tourist vans and most other vehicles.

The airport remained closed to most commercial traffic, as did nearly
all the roads leading into the city, something that has led to food
and fuel shortages.

Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times



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