Massive pro, anti-gov’t marches take to Bolivia’s streets
La Paz, Nov 10 (EFE).- Sectors opposed to a controversial law in Bolivia participated Wednesday in a massive march through La Paz, where there was also a pro-government counter-rally of militants who consider the protest movement an attempt to destabilize the country.
The rally against the National Strategy to Fight the Legitimization of Illicit Profits and the Financing of Terrorism law was called by the National Committee for the Defense of Democracy. It was scheduled to begin in Plaza de San Francisco, one of the main areas in the historic center of La Paz.
However, organizers decided last minute to change the place of concentration to Abaroa Square, in the Sopocachi neighborhood, to avoid meeting the militants of the government’s Movement to Socialism who also called for a mobilization in the same area.
Those mobilized against the law carried Bolivian flags and banners that said “No to Law 1386,” “No to the dictatorship” and asked that two thirds of the decision be restored in parliamentary debates, shouting slogans such as “repeal, abrogation.”
The march was finally held in the neighboring neighborhood of Miraflores and ended in the square where the Hernando Siles de La Paz stadium is located, which has not paralyzed activities.
“We are in a dictatorship, in a totalitarian communist regime and in a year they will have no idea how this country is going to be,” Katy Ortiz, a woman at the rally, told EFE.
The protest is the first massive demonstration in La Paz within the national strike against the law called by informal traders and transporters and which has been carried out in other cities since Monday.
Movement to Socialism militants gathered early in the afternoon in Plaza de San Francisco carrying the indigenous Wiphala flag and calling the groups opposing Luis Arce’s government “fascists.”
As they passed through the center of La Paz, those mobilized from this sector shouted “the right will not pass” and “murderous coup,” calling the 2019 crisis a “coup” against former President Evo Morales. EFE
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