Evo Morales Wins Bolivian Presidency

Evo Morales, a socialist former coca grower, is going to be Bolivia’s next president. Either he earned 50%+1 of the vote in yesterday’s election, or he came so close that the legislature will have to give him the job as per the constitution. A proud friend of Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, he has said his election is a nightmare for Washington. Unsettling, perhaps, but not terrifying is more accurate. However, he does have the capacity to be a nightmare for his own people.

Mr. Morales wants to raise the price of natural gas, which his country exports in substantial quantities. With the extra revenue, he intends to build the nation’s infrastructure, as well as provide healthcare and education to its people. The theory is magnificent, but in practice, populist leftists almost always disappoint in these efforts. And with each failure, the reactionary right in Latin America (and elsewhere) denigrates the concept rather than the implementation – rather as if Christianity were null and void because it’s so hard to adopt as constant personal policy.

That said, Mr. Morales is the first Indian to be president of Bolivia. His election appears to have been fueled by a sense among his Aymara brethren and other indigenous groups that they have been left behind, that the neo-liberal trade policies of the nation have benefited the elites (who just happen to have more Spanish than Indian blood). “I am the candidate of those despised in Bolivian history, the candidate of the most disdained, discriminated against,” he said in the campaign. Racial politics are suspect at best, but this election at least suggests that the majority indigenous people are still engaged in balloting – that will keep things more peaceful than they otherwise might be.

Mr. Morales’ other big policy would be an end to the US-backed effort to wipe out coca growing. The Indians of the Andes have various uses for the plant, and cocaine production, it seems, he views as someone else’s problem – specifically America’s. The Yanqui War on Drugs makes sure that there is a ready source of revenue in South America for the drug-lords, who operate in Bolivia as much as Colombia and elsewhere in the region. This allows them to arm militias that do not answer to the central government. Instability follows as night does day. Mr. Morales may fail as badly as his predecessors here, but a new approach has the virtue of offering some reason to hope for success. Doing the same thing over and over and failing suggests an inability to learn.

Mr. Morales is supposed to be president for five years starting January 22, 2006. History suggests he won’t make it. Since independence from Spain on August 6, 1825, there have been 200 coups d’etat in Bolivia. Mr. Morales is the nation’s fourth president since August 2002. By the time he has had a chance to scare Washington, he will likely be Bolivia’s former president.

© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
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