Peru Farmworkers Block Pan-American Highway Again In Pay Dispute

Striking Peruvian workers temporarily erected new blockades on the Pan-American Highway on Saturday, a day after they had ended a five-day blockage following the shelving of a controversial agricultural law.

"We want to solve the salary issue," said a worker manning a blockade near the city of Ica, 275 kilometers (170 miles) south of the capital Lima.

The workers, demanding that agro-exporting companies raise their salaries from $11 to $18 a day, used rocks, burning tires and an overturned minivan to block the highway.

The blockade near Ica began shortly before noon. Within minutes, buses carrying some 200 police arrived and three hours later the protesters dispersed.

On Thursday, police opened fire on one group of protesting farm workers, killing one worker, in the first labor dispute confronting President Francisco Sagasti since the centrist politician took office three weeks ago.

Workers had cheered word Friday that Peru's Congress, at Sagasti's behest, had repealed a law that gave exporters tax breaks but kept wages at a level workers considered unfairly low.

"The new blockades are because there is no agreement yet between the companies and the workers," one of them, Elvis Rodriguez, told AFP.

The Pan-American Highway was also blocked again Saturday near La Libertad, 490 kilometers north of Liba, according to local media, in protest of the death Thursday of a 19-year-old worker who died when police moved to clear a blockade.

Earlier blockades in Ica, a region known for its grape production, stranded some 2,000 cargo trucks and dozens of buses carrying passengers on the Pan-American Highway, which runs in Peru from its border with Ecuador in the north to Chile in the south.

The country's major east-west highway was briefly blocked Friday by metalworkers, but police using teargas quickly dispersed them.