Protest Swelling in Bolivian Plaza

They've been there for four days, the focal point of an uprising that has shut down this metropolis of 1.5 million people, where cars no longer circulate, stores no longer open and children while away the hours playing soccer on usually bustling boulevards and highways.

The Aymara and Quechua have walked down into La Paz from the slums known as "the periphery" that cling to the ragged brown mountains surrounding the city. Thousands more have marched for days from distant towns and villages, turning this country's centuries-old social order upside down.

"Before, we let other people speak for us," said German Jimenez, a teacher and Quechua from the city of Potosi who arrived in La Paz on Wednesday after hitching rides on tractors, walking and bicycling hundreds of miles over six days. "Now we say the original [Indian] nations are ready to rule our own affairs. We are ready to impose our own democracy."

The Aymara and Quechua make up the vast majority of the protesters demanding that President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada step down after a year of political upheaval and violence that has left more than 150 people dead. They say that his administration is corrupt and venal and that it has only worsened life for Bolivia's already-poor Indian majority.

The nation's leading Indian and peasant leaders are also calling for a constituent assembly that would rewrite the constitution and wrest control of the country from the white and mixed-race minority that has ruled this region since the Spanish conquest.

"It's the poorest villages that are rising up, all over the western part of the country," said Clemente Macias, a 32-year-old construction worker from La Paz, referring to Bolivia's Aymara and Quechua heartland.

On Wednesday, the army and police once again in effect surrendered La Paz to the protesters, even as violent demonstrations swept through other Bolivian cities, leaving two more people dead and the president's future more in doubt.

Army troops and protesters clashed in Patacamaya, about 60 miles south of La Paz, and in the cities of Oruro and Cochabamba. Human rights activists launched a hunger strike in a La Paz church, demanding the president step down.