La Paz (AFP) – Bolivian riot police clashed with anti-government protesters in La Paz on Friday for the second time in a week as unions and Indigenous groups pressed their calls for President Rodrigo Paz to step down.

Demands for the business-friendly conservative to resign have persisted despite his promise to respond to the grievances of labor unions and Indigenous communities.

Many businesses in central La Paz had closed their doors, anticipating a repeat of the clashes that marked a similar demonstration on Monday.

"He should resign, damn it!" shouted the crowd of farmers, laborers, miners, transport workers and teachers who brought traffic to a halt on the streets of the Andean city.

Paz came to power six months ago, in the midst of the country's worst economic crisis since the 1980s, marked by acute shortages of fuel and foreign currency and runaway inflation.

"Six months in office and he hasn't been able to solve the basics...We have to choose between buying meat or buying milk," Melina Apaza, a 50-year-old demonstrator from the southern mining heartland of Oruro, told AFP.

Wearing helmets and ponchos, the protesters, many of whom waved rainbow-colored Indigenous flags, marched toward the city center to the din of firecrackers.

Demonstrators hurled stones and sticks at riot police, who responded with successive tear gas rounds and blocked them from reaching the square in front of government buildings.

In El Alto, a predominantly Indigenous suburb of La Paz and a hotbed of dissent, demonstrators briefly blocked access to the city's main international airport.

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