EL ALTO, Bolivia, Nov 28, (AP): Fuel is rapidly becoming one of Bolivia’s scarcest commodities. Long lines of vehicles snake for several kilometers outside gas stations all over Bolivia, once South America’s second-largest producer of natural gas. Some of the queues don’t budge for days. While frustration builds, drivers like Victor García now eat, sleep and socialize around their stationary trucks, waiting to buy just a few gallons of diesel - unless the station runs dry.

"We don’t know what’s going to happen, but we’re going to be worse off," said García, 66, who inched closer to the pump Tuesday as the hours ticked by in El Alto, a bare-bones sprawl beside Bolivia's capital in the Andean altiplano. Bolivia's monthslong fuel crunch comes as the nation's foreign currency reserves plummet, leaving Bolivians unable to find US dollars at banks and exchange houses.

Imported goods that were once commonplace have become scarce. The fuel crisis has created a sense that the country is coming undone, disrupting economic activity and everyday life for millions of people, hurting commerce and farm production and sending food prices soaring. Mounting public anger has driven crowds into the streets in recent weeks, piling pressure on leftist President Luis Arce to ease the suffering ahead of a tense election next year.

"We want effective solutions to the shortage of fuel, dollars and the increase in food prices,” said Reinerio Vargas, the vice rector of Gabriel René Moreno Autonomous University in the eastern province of Santa Cruz, where hundreds of desperate truckers and residents flooded main squares Tuesday to vent their anger at Arce’s inaction and demand early elections.

In a similar eruption of discontent, protesters shouting "Everything is expensive!” marched through the streets of the capital, La Paz, last week. Bolivians say Arce's image has suffered not only because of the crisis but also because his government insists that it doesn't exist. "Diesel sales are in the process of returning to normal,” Economy Minister Marcelo Montenegro said Tuesday. Arce has repeatedly vowed that his government will end the fuel shortages and lower the prices of basic goods by arbitrary deadlines.