-Caveat Lector-
Death toll rises to five, 30 injured
as roadblocks and violent protests continue
By PETER McFARREN
Associated Press Writer
LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) _ Violent protests by coca-leaf farmers
demanding an end to an anti-drug campaign raged throughout Bolivia,
leaving five people dead. Roadblocks set up by the farmers have
paralyzed commerce and cost the economy 50 million dollars, the
government said.
The rising tide of protest has highlighted an array of demands,
including calls for the resignation of President Hugo Banzer, land
reforms, and compensation for coca-leaf farmers or investment in
new agricultural crops.
Evo Morales, the head of the coca-leaf farmers organization in
the Chapare region in Bolivia's tropical heartland, said
negotiations with the government broke down Monday night, and
declared, ``Banzer would do us a great favor by resigning.''
``Coca is a question of life or death,'' Morales said. Coca leaf
is the farmers' key cash crop, and is the base ingredient to make
cocaine.
Only 2,000 hectares (4,940 acres) of coca leaf remain in the
Chapare, 5 percent of what existed four years ago. Banzer says
Bolivia will no longer be producing cocaine by the end of the year.
Protest leaders in Cochabamba, Bolivia's third largest city,
demanded Banzer's resignation Monday as at least 15,000 protesters
rallied in the main square. The demonstration was broken up by
soldiers and police using tear gas.
The minister of the Presidency, Walter Guiteras, rejected the
resignation demands and said, ``If Banzer leaves, so does democracy
-- those are the rules of the game.''
As anger spread, the umbrella group of community organizations
called the La Paz Civic Committee announced the capital would be
hit by a general strike on Wednesday. Their central issue was a
demand that foreign investors be barred from buying into the
national telephone system.
Two deaths and 30 injuries among protesters occurred Sunday on
the road between La Paz and Cochabamba and a third death in Guaqui,
a town on the border with Peru, on the shores of Lake Titicaca.
An agronomist was killed Monday by a rock thrown by farmers on
the road linking La Paz with the Yungas and Beni tropical regions
of the country, and a coca farmer in Yungas was killed.
The road blocks are already resulting in food shortages in most
major cities and will become acute by the weekend.
On another front, government said that three-fourths of the
public school teachers, who are on a general strike and failed to
show up for work Monday, will be fired.
The government says it will suspend classes for the year if the
strike does not end by Wednesday.
Losses related to the roadblocks are estimated at dlrs 50
million, the government says, aggravating an economic recession.
Farmers on the Bolivian highlands continued blocking access
roads to La Paz, Chile and Peru. Soldiers were only able to
temporarily lift roadblocks.
Farmers on the highlands are demanding that the government
reconsider a new water law that congress was debating, changes in
agrarian reform laws and an end to coca leaf eradication. They do
not grow coca, but most of them chew the leaves as a stimulant.
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