LA PAZ, Bolivia—President Evo Morales and his political opponents traded recriminations Friday over the shocking beating death of a high-ranking government official by protesting miners who had blockaded a highway.
The killing of Deputy Interior Minister Rodolfo Illanes underscored how Morales, a former coca growers’ union leader, has increasingly found himself at odds with the same kind of popular social movements that fueled his rise to power and have made up his political base.
“This is a political conspiracy, not a social demand,” Morales said at a news conference, accusing his political opponents of backing the miners’ cause. He called for three days of official mourning, criticized the “cowardly attitude” of the protesters and insisted that his government had “always been open” to negotiation.
He ordered prosecutors to find and bring to justice those responsible for Illanes’ killing as well as anyone who may have ordered it.
Businessman and opposition leader Samuel Doria Medina rejected Morales’ comments about the opposition and said the government should try to make peace.
“The prices of minerals have gone down and the costs of production have increased,” he said. “That is the cause of the protest.”
“Morales would do well to be critical of himself and set aside false conspiracy theories blaming the right wing and the media,” former President Jorge Quiroga said, “when the undercurrent of these protests is the crisis.”
Mourners brought flowers to a funeral Mass for Illanes on Friday in the capital, La Paz, where a red-uniformed honor guard carried his coffin into the government palace. Lawmakers and government officials paid their respects.
Illanes’ kidnapping and killing followed weeks of tension over dwindling paychecks in a region of Bolivia that has been hit hard by falling metal prices.
