A COLUMN of Amazonian Indians protesting against plans by Bolivia’s government to build a highway through their territory got a tumultuous reception when it arrived in La Paz on Wednesday at the end of a 66-day march.
Thousands of people lined their route – many with gifts of flowers, food and drinks – as they covered the last stretch of a 600-kilometre trek from their home in the rainforest up through the Andes to the capital.
A huge crowd greeted them as they entered the city’s central plaza turning their arrival in front of the presidential palace into a mass anti-government rally.
The marchers want the government to scrap plans for a 300-kilometre highway through the Isiboro Sécure Indigenous Territory National Park, claiming it will draw in outsiders hungry for land, provoking deforestation and end their traditional way of life. The country’s indigenous president Evo Morales indicated he will meet the protesters to discuss their demands.
The huge display of support in the capital for the Isiboro Sécure protesters is a major embarrassment for the president who was elected almost six years ago promising to give more power to the country’s indigenous peoples.
Morales suspended work on the highway following a public outcry at a police assault on the marchers last month. But he has so far refused to scrap the project.
The government’s backing of the highway has fractured the coalition that brought Morales to power with many former supporters saying the president’s backing for the road violates indigenous rights and environmental legislation passed by his own Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) party.
“The law clearly says one thing but in practice the government is acting differently. By going ahead with the road despite the objections of the Isiboro Sécure peoples the government is acting against its own constitution and its Mother Earth Law,” says Marcelo Patzy of the Centre of Legal Studies, a Bolivian think tank long close to the social movements that make up the president’s coalition.
On arriving in La Paz, Fernando Vargas, the leader of the Isiboro Sécure protesters, claimed that the highway is designed to benefit the country’s coca farmers and “will only serve to sow more coca and produce more drugs – it is not for anything else”.
If completed the highway will link the isolated coca-growing Chapare region with Brazil’s highway network and among the MAS base the Chapare’s coca farmers are the project’s most vocal advocates, saying it will end their economic isolation.
President Morales started his political career as a union leader of the Chapare’s coca farmers and since coming to power has halted Bolivia’s US-backed coca eradication programme.
But his government has struggled to come up with economically viable alternatives for coca farmers in the Chapare who cite a lack of access to markets as one of the main reasons for refusing to switch from coca production to other crops.
Bolivia is the third biggest producer of coca, the principle ingredient in cocaine.