La Paz (AFP) – The arrival of the indigenous march at the Government headquarters in La Paz adds a new front of pressure against the management of Rodrigo Paz. The farmers of Pando and Beni, who demand the repeal of the law that allows mortgages on previously unseizable lands, join a climate of social discontent marked by announcements of indefinite strikes and road blockades by other union and trade union sectors in the country.

First modification: 05/05/2026 - 12:51 Last modification: 05/05/2026 - 14:01

Hundreds of Amazonian indigenous people from Bolivia arrived in La Paz on Monday, after a 28-day march, to demand that Rodrigo Paz's government annul a law that they consider affects their ancestral territories, AFP reported.

In April, the center-right president promulgated a rule that allows small agricultural properties, until today unseizable, to be reclassified as medium-sized ones so that farmers can mortgage them and access credit.

However, native farmers from the northern departments of Pando and Beni, who arrived with palm hats and flags of their towns, fear that this will be the starting point for them to lose their fields to private banks and end up in the hands of large landowners.

"We are going to lose our crops, we are going to lose what our ancestors fought for. That is why we ask the government to erase that law," María Parada, a 55-year-old indigenous woman, tells AFP, wearing a green tunic typical of her Moxos province.

The march began in the town of Porvenir, in Pando, more than 1,000 kilometers north of La Paz. And during the journey, protesters from other communities joined.

"The president wants us to be enslaved by the businessmen," says Marina Parapaibo, a 48-year-old indigenous farmer from Puerto Chacobo.

With blisters on their feet and altitude sickness at 3,650 meters above sea level, he claims that sometimes they slept in schools and other times outdoors.

The indigenous people of the Bolivian Amazon receive their properties through ancestral inheritances and their crops are for self-consumption or for small-scale sale in their own communities.

The Government has made, without success, efforts to stop the march and to sign agreements with the protesters. He maintains that the change in land category is voluntary and that fears are unfounded.

This protest joins others against the economic management of the Paz government for this week.

Workers, teachers and miners announced an upcoming indefinite nationwide strike, while transporters will block the routes of Santa Cruz, in the east of the country, on Tuesday.

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