Catholic Church leaders in Bolivia are opposing a controversial new law that strips protection from a national park and indigenous peoples’ territory. The measure signed into law by President Evo Morales in mid-August opens the Isiboro Secure National Park and Indigenous Territory, known as TIPNIS, to highway construction and other development.
“The government doesn’t listen to the people, especially not indigenous people,” Bishop Eugenio Coter, Bolivian coordinator of the Pan-Amazonian Church Network, said.
“Knowing that the indigenous people of TIPNIS have expressed their opposition to this highway, the government is imposing its will on the people who live in the territory.”
Currently 14,000 indigenous people live in the region. Plans for a 300km highway, which will split the park in two, can now legally go ahead.
In 2011, indigenous people from the territory staged a two-month protest march to La Paz to stop plans to build a highway through the protected area – which aimed to link several towns.
After that march, which met with a harsh crackdown from government security forces, the Morales administration placed TIPNIS under the strictest form of protection. The new law reverses that.
