By IPS Correspondents
LA PAZ, Oct 17 2003 (IPS)

Argentina and Brazil will try to mediate between Bolivian President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada and the social and political opposition forces that have taken to the streets of La Paz to demand his resignation, after a month of protests and bloody clashes with the security forces, in which dozens have died.

Foreign Minister Carlos Saavedra announced that delegates of presidents Néstor Kirchner of Argentina and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil arrive in Bolivia Friday to seek a solution to the crisis, as the mobilisation against Sánchez de Lozada picks up steam.

The president has become more and more isolated, losing the support of key members of his coalition government, as even some of his closest associates have distanced themselves from him.

The delegates ”are coming to evaluate the situation here, and the specific agenda will be designed based on that assessment,” said the foreign minister, who carefully avoided using the term ”mediation”.

Protests continued to rage throughout the country Thursday. Tens of thousands gathered in the San Francisco plaza in downtown La Paz – the biggest crowd since demonstrators began a month ago to protest a five billion dollar pipeline through which Bolivia is to export natural gas to the United States and Mexico, possibly through a Chilean port.

Bolivia became a landlocked country after it lost its Pacific shoreline to Chile in the 1879-1884 War of the Pacific, and public opinion here is dead-set against an agreement with Chile.

In addition, the protesters complain that the wealth from the pipeline project will not reach the poor indigenous majority.

The demonstrations, which also include a variety of sectoral grievances voiced by miners, teachers, students and other groups, and which led to the widespread demand that Sánchez de Lozada step down, began to intensify last Saturday in La Paz, the seat of government, and in the nearby city of El Alto.

The heavy-handed police and military crackdown ordered by the president has left at least 40 dead in the two cities, according to the Judicial Technical Police, although human rights groups and other sources put the number as high as 70, with hundreds injured.

Miners, peasants, teachers, industrial workers and neighbourhood committees from El Alto and La Paz gathered Thursday in San Francisco plaza, on the fifth day of a general strike in the two cities, demanding the president’s resignation.

However, there were no disturbances or clashes with the security forces.

Social leaders and opposition politicians rejected the compromise proposal set forth by the president late Wednesday, even though it addressed the main demands, such as holding a referendum on the natural gas deal.

Sánchez de Lozada also agreed to a parliamentary review of the Law on Hydrocarbons, in order to increase the royalties received by the state from the country’s abundant oil and gas reserves, which are to be exploited by transnational oil companies.

But the protesters are also demonstrating against Sanchez de Lozada’s free-market reforms, which have failed to alleviate the endemic poverty in South America’s poorest country.

More than 70 percent of the population of 8.2 million lives below the poverty line, and three out of 10 Bolivians live in extreme poverty, according to official statistics.

Coca farmers have also joined the protests, angry at the U.S.-backed strategy to eradicate illegal coca crops.

The social and political organisations argue that due to the extreme tension caused by the deaths of protesters, the only solution is for Sánchez de Lozada to step down and for a transitional government to be formed.

Several of the opposition leaders have stated that they would accept a government headed by Vice-President Carlos Mesa.

”We will not agree to any dialogue until Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada resigns,” said parliamentary Deputy Evo Morales, the head of the leftist Movement Towards Socialism, the main opposition force, and the leader of the coca farmers in the central coca-growing region of Chapare.

Morales is one of the most visible leaders of the protests, which have brought together a number of organisations, including the Bolivian Central Workers union, the El Alto Central Workers union, and peasants from the region of Cochabamba.

A similar position was expressed by parliamentary Deputy Felipe Quispe, the head of the Pachakuti Indigenous Movement, which has been staging roadblocks and demonstrations in El Alto and in the rural highlands region around La Paz.

”The gringo (Sánchez de Lozada) has shed blood on our people. The blood that has been shed is sacred. That is why we cannot negotiate with the government. We will not agree to talks,” said Quispe in response to the president’s proposal.

Sánchez de Lozada is sometimes referred to as ”the gringo” because of his U.S. accent, a result of living for years in the United States.

Mesa said Thursday that he would not return to the government, but that he would not resign from his post as vice-president, as he had threatened on Monday.

”I’ve been asked if I am brave enough to kill,” said Mesa, a journalist and historian. ”And my response is no, I’m not brave enough to kill, nor will I be tomorrow. That is why it is impossible for me to consider rejoining this government.”

A group of local academics, artists and personalities from the world of culture, headed by a former people’s defender (ombudsman), journalist Ana María Campero, declared a hunger strike Wednesday in La Paz to demand that Sánchez de Lozada be replaced by Mesa.

But Mesa responded that he was not willing ”to serve as an instrument in a growing and dangerous process of polarisation of Bolivian society.”

The Permanent Human Rights Assembly of Bolivia also joined the chorus of voices criticising the government of Sánchez de Lozada, in a communique addressed to ”the international community and the Bolivian people.”

”We are letting” the Organisation of American States and the United States ”know that the democracy that you are defending has handed over strategic state enterprises to transnational corporations,” and ”is implementing neo-liberal economic policies that bring wealth to a few and dire poverty for the majority,” said the statement.

More than one million people work in the informal sector of the economy, miners earn less than 14 dollars a month working 14-hour days, and 50 percent of the country’s families survive on a dollar a day, said the human rights group.

The Central Bank announced Thursday that the private banks in La Paz would remained closed as long as insecurity reigned in the city. However, banks were operating normally in the rest of the country.

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