THOUSANDS of indigenous people, rural workers and miners are travelling to La Paz this weekend to “safeguard the smooth swearing-in of Luis Arce as president of Bolivia,” an indigenous-rights activist told the Morning Star today.

Miriam Amancay Colque of the Bartolina Sisa Resistance condemned a dynamite attack on the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) headquarters in the capital on Thursday night while Mr Arce was there for a meeting.

“Paramilitary groups commit terrorist attacks under the protection of the dictatorial regime,” she warned. 

Bolivia’s interim President Jeanine Anez, appointed by the military after it overthrew elected president Evo Morales last November, remains in office until Sunday’s inauguration ceremony. 

The government has not commented on the attack on Mr Arce. MAS spokesman Sebastian Michel said: “We have not seen any statement on the subject from Interior Minister Arturo Murillo. We feel that we are totally unprotected. No one provides us with the security guarantees that our authority requires.”

Ms Anez’s office wrote to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal on Wednesday, calling for an audit of last month’s vote, which Mr Arce — who was Mr Morales’s finance minister for over a decade — overwhelmingly won with 55.1 per cent of the vote, almost 30 points ahead of his nearest rival. 

But Ms Colque said that “the Bolivian people, organised, will come out to defend their new president” and “the only way the election can be overturned is by overwhelming physical force — the army, police, with support from the USA.”

She said that physical attacks on MAS supporters were less common since the election but “civic committees” had maintained blockades in towns such as Santa Cruz and Cochabamba, preventing people from going to work.

Tension between the coup regime and the government-elect has resulted in multiple clashes, even over which foreign guests will attend the ceremony — with the Anez administration even claiming it would invite Venezuelan pretender Juan Guaido, who welcomed 2019’s coup, to represent Caracas.

But on Thursday night outgoing Foreign Minister Karen Longaric conceded on the issue and said Venezuela’s elected President, Nicolas Maduro, would be present, alongside Argentinian President Alberto Fernandez, who has always refused to recognise the coup and provided asylum for Mr Morales during his exile.