Roadblocks choking entry into Bolivia’s main cities eased Monday but shortages of fuel, food and other basics remained after more than a month of protests against center-right President Rodrigo Paz.
The protesters are calling for an end to US-backed Paz’s economic reforms, designed to sweep away 20 years of socialist government, and are demanding his resignation.
Over the past two weeks roadblocks denying delivery of essentials to cities like La Paz have fallen from more than 100 to 50 on Monday, the Bolivian Highway Administration said.
In La Paz, people waited in lines stretching three blocks outside a state-run supermarket as word spread that cut-rate chicken was available.
But in private-sector stores in Bolivia’s main city and neighboring El Alto, the easing of the transport chaos seemed to have no effect, as meat and vegetables still cost twice the usual price.
Medicine is in short supply in hospitals and people spend days sleeping in their cars as they wait to fill up in gas stations.
Paola Herrera, a 50-year-old employee of a trucking company, spent five hours waiting in line to buy a chicken in a one-per-customer arrangement.
“Everyone is suffering and the government makes no decisions. It is hoping protesters get tired or bored and lift the blockades,” she told AFP.
Demonstrators mainly blue-collar workers, farmers, miners, truck drivers and teachers reject Paz’s ideas for ending the poor South America country’s worst economic crisis in 40 years.
Paz has been in power only seven months and his arrival ended 20 years of socialist rule in Bolivia.
The main unions behind the protests have rejected the government’s appeal for dialogue and Paz has said he does not rule out deploying soldiers and declaring a state of emergency that would curtail rights like freedom of assembly and movement.
Paz claimed last week that the protests calling for his resignation are being driven by “narcoterrorists” he linked to former socialist icon Evo Morales.
Morales, the country’s first Indigenous president, is in hiding in his coca-growing stronghold of Chapare to escape charges of trafficking a minor, which he denies.
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