Bolivia’s leftist government declared martial law on Friday in a remote Amazon region where at least 15 people were shot dead in a wave of political violence sweeping the impoverished country.
The government banned protests and meetings in the far northern Pando region and said anyone carrying weapons would be arrested. Officials said six more bodies had been found following a clash in the area on Thursday.
”In Pando, it’s been a real massacre,” Government Minister Alfredo Rada told reporters, referring to the violence between supporters of President Evo Morales and those of rightist provincial governors, who oppose his socialist reforms.
Almost all of the dead were pro-government peasant farmers, ambushed by gunmen armed with machine guns and hired by the opposition governor, said Sacha Llorenti, Deputy Minister for Coordination of Social Movements.
Local television showed corpses being loaded onto a flatbed truck. Pando Senator Abraham Cuellar said some bodies had been thrown into a river and that 20 people were still missing.
Anti-government protesters continued to block roads in eastern areas, causing fuel and food shortages in the opposition-led city of Santa Cruz. Officials said protesters had destroyed or set fire to about 30 public buildings.
The martial law decree came as Morales’s government held talks with one of the opposition governors in a bid to defuse the crisis.
Mario Cossio, governor of the natural gas-rich Tarija region and representing three other rebel governors who have rejected talks, met Vice-President Alvaro Garcia Linera at the presidential palace in La Paz. A government spokesperson said Morales had decided not to take part.
”We’re here because of our clear will to establish a base for a process of dialogue which will pave the way for a pact, a national agreement, a process of national reconciliation,” Cossio told reporters before the meeting.
Morales, who handily won a recall vote in August with 67% of the vote, said his administration was willing to talk with its opponents but that reaching a deal would be difficult. — Reuters