Bolivian indigenous marchers clash with police

Bolivian police fired tear gas at indigenous demonstrators Sunday in an attempt to break up a march against plans to build a highway through a rainforest reserve. After more than a month of hiking from the Amazon rain forest, the protesters arrived just outside Yucumo, a small town northeast of La Paz that is largely supportive of the government, after breaking through a police barricade. Police said they intervened in Yucumo to prevent confrontation between the marching protesters, who are not from Bolivia's two main indigenous groups, and another set of pro-government demonstrators just 300 meters (1,000 feet) away who had set up a barricade. Bolivian media said several people had been injured, but an official toll was not immediately available. The Amazonian people had left the northern city of Trinidad in mid-August in hopes to march on the capital La Paz to protest the plan backed by President Evo Morales to build a highway through a nature preserve that is the ancestral homeland of 50,000 natives from three different Amazonian groups. They reached Yucumo, about halfway on their journey to La Paz, late Saturday after a day of tensions that saw them force their way through a police barricade. They had also forced Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca, who was trying to negotiate with the protesters, to march with them past riot officers into an area where rival Andean highland indigenous people had settled. "They made me march. They made me do it," Choquehuanca, visibly tired after walking for about four hours, told local media.