LA PAZ, Bolivia, Oct 1 (Reuters) - Hundreds of Bolivian miners and butchers joined with striking teachers on Wednesday as a two-week wave of protests against unpopular President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada gathered momentum. Marching shopkeepers and workers caused traffic mayhem in La Paz for the third straight day, while peasants continued to block roads outside the capital, causing food shortages. State sector health workers plan to strike from Thursday. Police and troops skirmished with peasants while clearing a roadblock outside La Paz at dawn, protest leaders said, but otherwise the demonstrations were peaceful. Thousands of people, including coca farmers angry at a U.S.-backed drive to eradicate illegal crops of coca, the raw ingredient in cocaine, have marched across Bolivia in protest over the past month. An unpopular project to export natural gas to the United States through Chile became a lightning rod for wider protests. Sanchez de Lozada, who is widely unpopular for failing to alleviate the poverty that engulfs two thirds of the population of South America's poorest country, has played down the protests and defied calls to step down. But demands for his resignation continue unabated. "We want Goni to quit," said union leader Roberto de la Cruz, using Sanchez de Lozada's nickname and announcing plans for a one-day strike by thousands of workers in La Paz on Thursday. Analysts warn that the government faces the possibility of more bloody protests after recent violent standoffs between peasants and security forces. Coca farmers are due to meet later this month to decide what further action to take. "The government is not recognizing the scale of the crisis," said Jorge Lazarte, a political analyst at San Andres University in La Paz. "Bolivia is in convulsions because of political factors as well as social and economic ones." Hundreds of people in the North were stranded last month by Indian peasants protesting against poverty and the government. Seven were killed in clashes between troops and peasants. In February, a government bid to tax salaries in an International Monetary Fund-backed austerity drive triggered unrest in which 32 people were killed.
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