Bolivia: Where Rioting is a Way of Life

A tropical morning sun beat down on the plaza and the crowd was impatient to become a mob. Some had sticks, others rocks. "To the school!" shouted someone, and a few young men started jogging down a muddy road.

The rest surged after them, about three hundred men, women and children. Some improvised weapons along the way, tree branches, bottles, car aerials, so by the time they reached Claudia Theveneth school, which on Sunday doubled up as a voting center, they were a ragged army.

This was Plan Tres Mil, a slum of mostly indigenous people in Santa Cruz, and their mission was to block a referendum on regional autonomy which threatened their champion, President Evo Morales.

The voting center guard bolted the metal blue gates just as the attackers arrived. The men smashed the gates with boulders, the women lobbed rocks over the walls and the children used catapults to ping stones.

In Bolivia rioting is not just a family affair, it's a way of life. South America's poorest and by some measures most volatile country has gone through 84 presidents and dictators in the past 182 years. In the past decade especially street protests have toppled presidents with alacrity.

The twist now is that Morales himself is a veteran protester and when threatened by the opposition his indigenous supporters take to the streets, blocking highways, burning tires or, in this case, storming a voting center.A pro-referendum man outside the center plucked a pistol from his grubby jeans and fired five wild shots at the mob. All missed.

The gates yielded and the crowd poured in as if it was the Bastille, shouting, cheering and breaking whatever seemed breakable. Under a hail of rocks and debris the center's officials fled through a back entrance while a handful of would-be voters cowered in voting booths.

A middle-aged woman hugged her weeping teenage daughter and denounced "drunken Indians". She picked up a ceramic pot and hurled it a man smashing a window. "No mama," wailed the girl.

By mid afternoon there was one reported death and 25 injuries, a mere blip compared to the huge disturbances which regularly shake El Alto, the indigenous stronghold beside the capital La Paz.

By the time police deployed tyres were burning and street hawkers were doing brisk trade with 20p plastic bottles of vinegar. The smoke would disperse the teargas and the vinegar, when dabbed on a cloth and inhaled, would dull the gas's sting.

"Here it's a bit like Braveheart," said Noe Osinaga, a young man selecting a rock. "Except we have vinegar."