By Isabel Debre, LAUCA Ñ Bolivia
Bolivia’s transformative and divisive former President Evo Morales said Sunday that he would press on with a hunger strike until the government of his protégé-turned-rival agreed to a political dialogue.
His act of dissent aims to
defuse street protests that have paralyzed the nation in recent weeks over what
Morales’ supporters condemn as his political persecution.
Morales, a larger-than-life
figure still
towering over Bolivian politics five years after his
fraught ouster, spoke on his third day without food from the misty tropics
of Chapare, Bolivia’s rural coca-growing region that serves as his stronghold.
“My fight is to improve the
situation in the country and to start a dialogue without conditions on two
fronts, one economic and one political,” Morales told The Associated Press from
the office of the coca growers’ federation that he long has led.
The ex-president said he began
his hunger strike Friday in hopes of “international organizations or friendly
governments” facilitating talks with his political nemesis, President Luis
Arce.
Tensions
have surged over the past three weeks since pro-Morales
supporters set up crippling roadblocks aimed at rebuking Arce —
Morales’ former economy minister with whom he’s now vying to lead Bolivia’s
governing socialist party into next year’s elections.
Protesters have choked off
major highways in defiance of an attempt by Arce’s government to revive a 2016
statutory rape case against Morales, an
ethnic Aymara who was the first member of an Indigenous community to
become the president of Latin America’s only Indigenous-majority nation.
Morales has denied any
wrongdoing. “My crime is being Indigenous,” he said on Sunday.
The AP reached Morales after
an arduous 11-hour journey by car, motorcycle and foot over hills and through
the highlands, circumventing road blockades, crisscrossing routes littered with
debris and toppled trees and squeaking through over a dozen security
checkpoints, in some cases manned by profiteers.
Roadblocks
are a common protest tactic in Bolivia, where the mountainous terrain means
a few
strategically positioned checkpoints can can isolate major cities and
bring the whole nation to a halt.
That’s exactly what happened
earlier this month, marooning hundreds of thousands of residents in the
highlands, raising fears of food and gasoline shortages and hiking up the
prices of basic goods in major cities, including La Paz, the capital.
“I see people rising up even
more,” said Eusebio Urbano, a farmer protesting in support of Morales at one of
the road blockades Sunday. “I don’t know what this government thinks. ... They
don’t try to solve anything. We must keep pushing until it leaves.”
Under public pressure to quell
the unrest, Arce’s government sent some 3,000 police officers armed with tear
gas and backed by helicopters to break up the blockades by force.
Eduardo Del Castillo, a senior
Cabinet minister, said security forces had arrested dozens of protesters in
clearing the main road linking Cochabamba, Bolivia’s third-biggest city, with
La Paz. Authorities transferred over 50 of the demonstrators to pre-trial
detention in the capital on charges related to violating public order, he said.
“What happened was very
inhumane,” Morales said of the crackdown, adding that his refusal to eat was
also aimed at pressuring authorities to release the 66 detainees. “These are
humble people who were presented as terrorists.”
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