Young Bolivians fight for their regions

"I had a bad feeling," she recalled. "It was dangerous."

But her son insisted. Edson Abad Ruiz was a proud member of the Juvenile Union of Santa Cruz, a group dedicated to defending this rebellious eastern region of Bolivia from its chief foe, the leftist administration of President Evo Morales.

Bolivia's polarization has reached the point where "defense" bands -- some call them militias -- are popping up here in the defiant lowlands and in the pro-government high plains to the west.

"Win or Die With Glory" is the Juvenile Union's motto.

The slogan adorned a green banner hoisted by mourning colleagues at the front of Ruiz's funeral cortege. The 25-year-old had been badly beaten Sept. 13, a nail perforated his head, when unionistas brawled with pro-government activists at a roadblock west of town, police say.

Mob violence has been the inevitable outcome of the jump in the number of Bolivians aligned with one faction or another.

Both sides in the conflict insist that they are defending their regions, and their very identities, in a nation split by social, geographic and ethnic rifts.

In Santa Cruz, a semitropical city of 1.2 million that is the epicenter of the opposition to Morales, Ruiz has become the posthumous inspiration for the youthful militants of the right. His slaying is seen as a call to the barricades against the collas (pronounced COY-yas), as Indians from the mountainous west are disparagingly called by Santa Cruz natives, known as cambas.

"He is a martyr of Santa Cruz," declared Angelo Cespedes, president of the Juvenile Union.

Conflict escalates

To supporters, the union loyalists armed with sticks, stones and Roman candles are the foot soldiers of democracy, a bulwark against Morales, the country's first indigenous president, and his allied Indian multitudes. The Santa Cruz union has been in existence for almost 50 years, but the country's political crisis has spurred new growth and generated copycat organizations in four other opposition-controlled states.

"War has been declared against us," said Jose Marcio Melgar, 34, a Juvenile Union leader who says he heads a contingent of more than 300 unionistas. "Evo Morales wants to make Bolivia another Cuba. We won't permit it."