The Bolivian national government has declared a state of emergency over ongoing protests led by Indigenous people including farmers throughout the country.

Key points:

• The Indigenous solidarity movement has been protesting in Bolivia for months
• President Rodrigo Paz plans to undermine the land rights of Traditional Owners and sell off publicly-owned assets
• Former president Evo Morales accuses the Paz government of serving the interests of the United States

Bulldozers were ordered on Saturday to clear roadblocks set up more than a month ago in protest against the economic policies - including an attack on the land rights of Traditional Owners - of the country's most conservative president in years, Rodrigo Paz.

Thousands of demonstrators including the union movement have marched through cities and close up highways, thoroughfares and other roads across the country with rubble, logs and various forms of debris.

The major cities in the South American nation have suffered acute shortages of fuel, food and medicine, while the economy has been projected to have lost billions of dollars, as the protests have threatened to topple Bolivia's first non-socialist government in two decades.

Mr Paz appeared in a televised address on Saturday morning in the national capital to warn off protesters that they would face "the full force of the law" as the president moved to halt economic damage that has escalated in his short term in office.

He declared a 90-day state of emergency, which curbs the right to protest and allows the military to be deployed at will throughout the country.

Bolivian and international media in the city of El Alto witnessed squads of soldiers and armed police moving in a convoy as bulldozers physically moved to clear roadblocks that have stood for nearly six weeks.

In surrounding La Paz, military police and navy personnel also guarded the presidential palace and police tactical units were also stationed on the capital's main public squares.

"Bolivians cannot continue to be held hostage by blockades that prevent them from all working, studying, receiving medical care, getting supplies and bringing food to their homes," Mr Paz wrote in a social media post.

"This state of emergency is not intended to take away normalcy, but to restore it."

The predominantly Indigenous protesters want Mr Paz to abandon his latest economic reforms that have crippled the rights of traditional landowners, demanding he steps down eight months into what has been a tumultuous first term.

The 58-year-old president had signalled that he was willing to negotiate with leaders from across the 36 recognised Indigenous tribes last week after agreeing to a deal with one of the country's major peasant unions to end the crisis. That came about in exchange for a promise not to privatise Bolivian state companies and to hold further talks with the Bolivian Workers' Central union that represents many Indigenous peoples.

But other Indigenous groups against the President's land reforms in favour of wealthier, rural corporate holdings had vowed to fight on, standing by more than 40 major roadblocks that remained across Bolivia over the weekend.

"We want him gone," Lidia Callisaya, a 42-year-old Aymara tribal leader, told the Agence France-Presse.

"We don't want him to be the one governing."

Mr Paz has accused "narcoterrorists" - people that combine drug trafficking with other terrorist activities - and, in particular, former Bolivian president Evo Morales - who was Bolivia's first Indigenous president - of allegedly being behind the agitation of the road-blocking demonstrators.

Mr Morales, a former Aymara coca farmer, was president of the country from 2006 to 2019.

He has been in hiding while facing charges of alleged trafficking, which he staunchly denies.

The 66-year-old's stronghold is the Chapare region in central Bolivia, which itself is now a potential flashpoint of the crisis

He is said to be protected by thousands of Indigenous supporters, who have so far prevented police from locating Mr Morales to arrest him.

Mr Morales recently said while in hiding that Bolivians were rebelling against the right-wing government that he accuses is "utterly submissive" to the Trump administration in the US.

Bolivian Interior minister Marco Antonio Oviedo refused to rule out on Saturday an operation to capture the former President.

The security forces "will carry out whatever operations are necessary at the appropriate time", Mr Oviedo said, while adding that Mr Morales regardless of the blockades in Bolivia must face the law.