Nearly 2,000 indigenous people made a triumphal entry into La Paz on Wednesday at the end of a two-month march from the Amazon against a government plan to build a highway through their ancestral homeland.
The marchers, who set out in August and trekked 600 kilometers from the lowlands high into the Andes, were greeted as heroes as they entered the capital and made their way to Murillo Square and the presidential palace.
Facing the biggest challenge yet from fellow Indians in his five years in office, President Evo Morales withdrew police and a riot control vehicle as a gesture of goodwill and extended a welcome via his information minister.
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Tens of thousands of people lining the steep streets waved Bolivian flags and white handkerchiefs to the sounds of firecrackers and patriotic songs, cheering and applauding as the Indians passed, accompanied by groups of workers and students.
"We are happy to have arrived but our demands have still not been answered," said march leader Fernando Vargas, before the throng headed to nearby San Francisco church for a mass.
The marchers, including women, children and elderly people, have endured heavy rains, low temperatures, mountainous terrain and police brutality during their journey.
They are protesting plans to build a road through the pristine Isiboro Secure National Park and Indigenous Territory that would level an ancestral homeland inhabited by 50,000 native people from three different native groups.
Although the project has been suspended, the marchers want it killed for good.
Morales, Bolivia's first elected indigenous president, offered late on Tuesday to meet with them for talks upon their arrival.
"This dialogue would aim to iron out and build consensus on their demands in the framework of broader political action," presidential spokesman Carlos Romero said in a statement.
Government officials said the talks could take place on Wednesday or Thursday.
Morales finds his leadership challenged by a thorny national political debate over juggling native peoples' rights and economic development.
A police crackdown on the marchers that left 74 people injured in late September triggered a wave of indignation, a general strike and the resignations of several top government officials, including two ministers.
Work on the highway, which was supposed to be operational in 2014, began in June, although not on the segment running through the protected park.
The isolated peoples from the humid lowlands are not from the main indigenous groups that make up most of majority-indigenous Bolivia's population, the highland Andean Aymara and Quechua.
The lowland people fear their traditional lands may be overrun by landless highland farmers.
Earlier this month, Morales agreed to postpone construction of the roadway, a delay that was later approved by Bolivia's legislature. But the protesters are seeking assurances that the project - or at least the Amazon portion of it - will be scuttled for good.
"If work begins, we will fight in the forest until death," said indigenous leader Adolfo Chavez.
