Former Bulivia president on hunger strike to push government for political dialogue

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.”