MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Bolivia’s Morales yields to Amazon Indian protests and scraps plan to build highway

The Brazilian financed project will be re-routed promised the Bolivian president

President Evo Morales said Friday that he was scrapping plans to build a highway through a nature reserve in Bolivia's jungle lowlands, bowing to public pressure after a two-month protest march by Amazon Indians.

Morales did not abandon the idea of the Brazilian financed highway through Bolivia linking Brazil with the Pacific coast, but said it would no longer cut through the pristine Isiboro-Secure Indigenous Territory National Park, or TIPNIS.

“And so the matter is resolved,” Morales told reporters. “For me, this is called governing by obeying the people.”

More than a hundred protesters remained camped in front of the presidential palace Friday two days after activists ended their trek from the Amazon reserve to La Paz, the world's highest capital.

The march galvanized opposition to the Brazilian-funded highway and highlighted claims that Morales — an Aymara — has favoured Bolivia's majority Aymara and Quechua highland Indians over indigenous groups from the country's lowland jungle.

Bolivia's first indigenous president said he would veto a law passed last week that green-lighted the highway as originally proposed. He said he would insist it be amended to declare the reserve off limits to the highway as well as to the settlement by colonists.

The 15,000 Indians who inhabit the reserve fear encroachment by loggers, mining companies, coca growers, landless peasants and other settlers. The highway's supporters argue it is needed to promote the development of Bolivia's poorer regions.

Morales' popularity plunged after he insisted on the route through the national park and was further battered when police used tear gas and truncheons Sept. 25 to try to break up the march.

The police crackdown backfired. The defence minister quit in protest and the interior minister resigned. Bolivians harangued Morales for the use of force against peaceful protesters and for allegedly betraying his credentials as an environmentalist and champion of Bolivia's long downtrodden indigenous majority.

Protest leader Fernando Vargas responded cautiously Friday to Morales' announcement.

“It's a good signal, but we need to talk with the president and analyze several pending topics,” Vargas told reporters before an afternoon meeting with Morales.
Morales who has become Bolivia’s longest lasting elected president in a country where political instability is the rule, suffered three serious setbacks running: the dispute with the peaceful Indian protestors and last Sunday’s vote to fill the Judiciary with ‘elected’ magistrates faithful to his party. An overwhelming majority of Bolivian voters (60%) spoilt or deposited blank ballots.

Morales has announced previously he was expected an overwhelming turnout and ‘a 70% support for his initiative”. However opposition leaders warned of the seriousness of the situation and called on voters to blank or spoil their ballots.

Last December he had to turn back on an increase in fuel prices that triggered massive protests and stoppages, blocking most of the country’s transport system.