Bolivian president declares state of emergency and deploys military to quell anti-government protests

Bolivia’s president declared a state of emergency on Saturday and deployed soldiers and bulldozers to raze anti-government roadblocks that have paralysed the country. For more than six weeks, unions, Indigenous groups and coca farmers have marched through cities and blocked roads across the country with rubble, logs and debris in protest against the conservative government. Major cities have suffered acute shortages of fuel, food and medicine, the economy has lost billions of dollars, and the protests have threatened to topple Bolivia’s first non-socialist government in two decades. The president, Rodrigo Paz, appeared in a predawn televised address on Saturday to warn protesters they would face “the full force of the law” as he moved to end the crisis. He declared a 90-day state of emergency, which curbs the right to protest and allows the military to be deployed domestically. Hours after his address, AFP reporters in the city of El Alto saw squads of soldiers and armed police moving in a convoy as bulldozers moved in to clear roadblocks. A bulldozer breaks down a barricade at a blockade zone in the city of El Alto on Saturday. Photograph: Aizar Raldes/AFP/Getty Images Some residents clapped as they passed. One man handed a bag of bread to a police officer riding in the back of a pickup truck. “I’m very happy,” Carla Butron, a 39-year-old shopkeeper, told AFP. …