Police, protesters clash in new marches against Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz

LA PAZ: Bolivian riot police clashed with anti-government protesters in La Paz on Friday for the second time in a week as unions and Indigenous groups pressed their calls for President Rodrigo Paz to step down.

Demands for the business-friendly conservative to resign have persisted despite his promise to respond to the grievances of labor unions and Indigenous communities.

Many businesses in central La Paz had closed their doors, anticipating a repeat of the clashes that marked a similar demonstration on Monday.

“He should resign, damn it!” shouted the crowd of farmers, laborers, miners, transport workers and teachers who brought traffic to a halt on the streets of the Andean city.

Paz came to power six months ago, in the midst of the country’s worst economic crisis since the 1980s, marked by acute shortages of fuel and foreign currency and runaway inflation.

“Six months in office and he hasn’t been able to solve the basics… We have to choose between buying meat or buying milk,” Melina Apaza, a 50-year-old demonstrator from the southern mining heartland of Oruro, told AFP.

Wearing helmets and ponchos, the protesters, many of whom waved rainbow-colored Indigenous flags, marched toward the city center to the din of firecrackers.

Demonstrators hurled sticks and stones at riot police, who responded with successive tear gas rounds and blocked them from reaching the square in front of government buildings.

As the city calmed later in the day, hundreds of residents marched through the city center in a counterprotest against the blockades strangling the city, an AFP reporter saw.

The Bolivian government said it would deploy a police and military operation beginning Saturday morning to allow the passage of goods in short supply in La Paz through the blockades.

In El Alto, a predominantly Indigenous suburb of La Paz and a hotbed of dissent, demonstrators briefly blocked access to the city’s main international airport.

 Labor minister fired

Paz has attempted to take the heat out of the protests by firing his unpopular labor minister and promising to give the miners and other groups in the street more of a say in shaping policy.

But his overtures appear to have fallen short of the mark.

Roads leading to La Paz continue to be blockaded by protesters, causing shortages of food, medicine and fuel.

Trade unions began demonstrating in early May for wage increases, improved fuel supplies and economic stability.

But as the weeks passed, the demonstrations snowballed into a full-blown revolt, marked by calls for the resignation of the US-backed Paz.

His election — part of a right-wing tide sweeping Latin America — ended two decades of socialist rule launched by Indigenous coca farmer Evo Morales in the mid-2000s.

Paz’s government accuses Morales, who attempted a comeback last year despite being wanted on charges of trafficking a minor, of fomenting the current unrest.

Morales has been hiding out from police in his central coca-growing fiefdom of Chapare since late 2024.