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.