"US dismayed as socialist becomes Bolivia's power broker"

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

http://observer.guardian.co.uk Coca farmers' hero holds sway in
Bolivia US dismayed as socialist becomes nation's power broker

Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor Sunday October 26, 2003 The
Observer

He has been described as the new Simón Bolívar, the visionary soldier
who to tried to unite the South American continent. His own model,
judging by the poster fixed to the wall of his office in the
parliament building of the Bolivian capital of La Paz, is more recent:
Che Guevara.

Whatever happens in Bolivia in the near future, it will not be without
the say-so of Evo Morales: champion of cocaine producers and
indigenous peoples; socialist, anti-imperialist and America's declared
enemy.

Morales and his Movement Towards Socialism have served as the
lightning conductor in a month of violent clashes that led to the
flight into exile of Bolivia's President, 72-year-old Gonzalo Sanchez
de Lozada, nicknamed 'El Gringo' for his closeness to the US.

Morales came second to Lozada in last year's elections, which marked
the explosion of an indigenous political movement on to Bolivia's
political scene.

While Carlos Mesa may have been sworn in as interim President, few in
the country are in any doubt that it is the era of Morales that has
dawned in the past few weeks.

Morales's rise has been rapid. The son of an impoverished peasant
farmer, his advance as leader of the Aymara indigenous peoples, one of
Bolivia's two Indian groups that make up more than 60 per cent of the
population, has caught the US, which has invested hundreds of millions
of dollars in its drug war in Bolivia, unawares.

Washington has been horrified by the appearance of a series of
left-leaning South American leaders rejecting its assumption of
leadership of the region - including Lula in Brazil. Morales wants
Bolivia's cocaleros to be allowed to grow and market their cocaine
after years of US-funded efforts to stem production, the most
successful eradication programme of America's drug wars.

Morales rejects the 'neo-colonialism' of the US in South America,
calling for an anti-capitalist, local, indigenous and socialist future
for his country. And Bolivians are listening.

He wants the country's natural resources to be nationalised, including
the natural gas that Lozado wanted to sell to the US via Chile - a
move that triggered the uprising. Above all, Morales wants the
long-suppressed voice of the indigenous peoples to have full
expression. Little wonder that, before the presidential elections, US
ambassador Manuel Rocha warned Bolivians that voting in Morales could
lead to US aid being slashed.

But whether America likes it or not, Morales is in the driving seat,
as both a power broker and a man who, if elections were held now,
would become Bolivia's first indigenous president.

A handsome man of 43, a stocky bachelor with thick black hair, he
revels in being blacklisted by the US.

His door in the parliament building in La Paz is always open to those
from all sectors of society who seek his ear, although it is among the
poor that he has his greatest appeal. He is a son of Indians of the
Altoplano, who, like so many others, took over a small parcel of land
in Chapare in the 1980s and went into the coca business.

With the imposition of the US-funded Plan Dignity - the sometimes
violent campaign to eradicate cocaine production - Morales emerged at
the head of the cocaleros and is unembarrassed by his advocacy of the
coca industry. In an interview last year he laid out where it fits
into his vision for Bolivia.

'There is a unanimous defence of coca because the coca leaf is
becoming the banner for national unity, a symbol of national unity in
defence of our dignity. Since coca is a victim of the United States,
as coca growers we are also victims of the United States, but then we
rise up to question these policies to eradicate coca.

'Now is the moment to see the defence of coca as the defence of all
natural resources, just like hydrocarbon, oil, gas; and this
consciousness is growing. That is why it is an issue of national
unity.'

Morales has expanded his power base from the poverty-striken pueblos,
once enriched by coca but unable to find new markets for the bananas,
manioc root and other crops the government said they should grow, to
the small businessmen who swelled the anti-Lozado protests.

While the US embassy in La Paz atempts to link him to a coup attempt
against Lozado, the popularity of Morales is more a result of US
policy than his charisma.

Plan Dignity - launched in 1998 - was a huge success, destroying at
one stage more than 80 per cent of coca production, but it failed to
produce new sources of income for coca farmers, and the brutal,
military nature with which it was carried out fuelled resentment.

The most hated unit - the Expeditionary Task Force of 1,500 former
Bolivian soldiers - is paid, fed, clothed and trained by the US
embassy. The farmers call them 'America's mercenaries' and accuse them
of shootings and beatings.

According to a former guerrilla, sociologist Alvaro Garcia Linera,
Morales has also benefited from the emergence of a youthful
intellectual elite, preaching indigenous autonomy. These activists
have fuelled the rejection of the traditional Spanish-speaking ruling
class, in favour of tribal-based communitarian culture. But Linera
warns of dangers ahead - Bolivia, he says, is on a slow slide towards
war.


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