Bolivian police free Amazon highway protesters

AP - Bolivian police on Monday freed hundreds of Amazon Indians detained during a protest march over a proposed Amazon highway after mobs of local residents blocked roads and an airport runway to prevent authorities from taking the detainees away.

In the Bolivian capital, La Paz, Defense Minister Cecilia Chacon resigned Monday, saying she didn’t agree with the government’s decision to break up the march against the highway, which would traverse a national nature reserve.

Hundreds of local residents used barricades to block a landing strip in the Amazon town of Rurrenabaque to stop police from flying the prisoners out of the area.

“Given the attack by hundreds of people, the police pulled back to avoid confrontations,” Interior Minister Sat Loretta told a news conference in La Paz.

Police used tear gas and truncheons to break up a march Sunday by activists protesting the proposed 190-mile (300-kilometer) highway that would connect Brazil with Pacific ports in Chile and Peru.

Police arrested the march’s leaders, hauling them away in buses. Bolivia’s national ombudsman, Rolando Villena told Erbol radio “there was excessive use of force” by police, and protest leaders claimed that several protesters, including children, had gone missing.

Llorenti disputed the claim, saying that police on Sunday had acted to “evacuate the marchers to guarantee their safety and protect them from physical harm” because pro-government groups were approaching from the opposite direction to stop the march themselves.

About 1,000 marchers opposed to the highway had departed the eastern lowlands provincial capital of Trinidad in mid-August and were nearing La Paz.

On Saturday, protesters armed with bows and arrows briefly detained Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca, forcing him to march with them to protect them from police and from pro-government demonstrators.

Llorenti accused the protesters of kidnapping Choquehuanca.

The proposed highway would traverse the 600-square-mile (12,000-square-kilometer) Isiboro-Secure Indigenous Territory National Park, home to 15,000 indigenous people who live off hunting, fishing, gathering native fruits and subsistence farming.

The locals fear an influx of settlers will destroy their habitats, felling trees and polluting rivers. Environmentalists say the highway will mostly benefit Brazilian commercial interests such as timber exporters while endangering a pristine nature preserve.

Vehement opposition to the road poses a dilemma for President Evo Morales, an Aymara Indian whose support for the highway has alienated many of the indigenous Bolivians whose support was crucial to his landslide re-election in 2009.

Morales, who still leads a coca-growers union and sympathizes with many Indian causes, insists the highway is essential to strengthening Bolivia’s economy.

On Sunday, the president promised to hold a referendum on the issue in the affected Cochabamba and Beni regions, although analysts have noted that Cochabamba is home to the coca growers who still work with Morales and are in favor of the highway.

The crisis has already hurt the president, whose popularity fell to 37 percent this month, its second-lowest level since Morales was first elected in 2006.