Pubdate: Mon, 02 Oct 2000 Source: Reuters Copyright: 2000 Reuters Limited. Author: Gilbert Le Gras BOLIVIAN TEACHERS BREAK RANK WITH OTHER PROTESTERS LA PAZ, Bolivia (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of Bolivia's teachers accepted a pay hike on Monday and broke rank with protesting peasants with whom they had maintained costly roadblocks for two weeks. About 50,000 rural teachers agreed to return to class after a two-week strike in exchange for a $40 raise this year and a $200 pay hike next year. Teachers earn between $150 and $200 a month in this poor Andean country of 8 million people. The rest of the nation's 130,000 teachers, on strike since Sept. 13, had yet to reply to the government's offer. Some 80,000 teachers in the country work in the cities. Humberto Ortiz, head of the Confederation of Bolivian Rural Teachers, also said his group's members would be unable to return to work until the ongoing dispute with the peasants protesting coca eradication plans is resolved and the roads are cleared. The situation in Bolivia has become increasingly tense as the two-week blockage of all roads leading in and out of the capital La Paz and the agricultural hubs of Santa Cruz and Cochabamba has caused prices to skyrocket and prompted widespread complaints and government threats to forcefully clear the roads if a resolution is not found. Ten people have died during the past week in clashes with security forces over the government's reluctance to raise the teachers' pay, as well as the peasants' complaint against plans to eradicate vast fields of coca -- the raw material for cocaine. At the height of production about five years ago, one in every eight Bolivians earned lucrative pay for growing coca. Bolivia is one of the Western Hemisphere's poorest nations with an average annual income of $1,000. Congressman Evo Morales, who heads the coca growers union, pleaded with teachers to continue the fight. ``I ask the teachers to take heart and continue with our struggle and stay with us on the roadblocks,'' he said. Coca Eradication Sparks Protests Bolivia is the world's third-largest producer of coca after Peru and Colombia, but has reduced significant amounts of production acreage in the past five years in exchange for much-needed U.S. aid. The government of President Hugo Banzer -- a military dictator of the 1970s who was elected president in 1997 -- has vowed to rid the nation of illegal, nontraditional coca fields and replace the lucrative crop with a more diversified economy. But coca growers are skeptical of government suggestions they grow pineapples and bananas instead of the bitter leaf, which they use to ease the pangs of hunger and thirst and help with altitude sickness. The coca growers were meeting with government officials late on Monday in Chimore, a town in the lowland coca-growing Chapare region. To protest the eradication plans, peasants and coca growers littered paved roads with stones, bricks and barrels to blockade the nation's three largest cities. Meat prices have since doubled and the cost of some vegetables has risen fourfold. Some travelers have been stranded due to the lack of transportation or for fear of the protesters. ``It's incredible how expensive everything is .... The government really has to do something about this,'' said Carlos Horacio at an open-air market in La Paz. Eduardo Zegada, head of the Cochabamba Business Federation, also demanded action. ``We're tired of this standoff, we want the government to solve it now,'' he said. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake