Evo Morales

 

Juan Evo Morales Ayma (born October 26, 1959), popularly known as Evo (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈeβo]), is a Bolivian politician and activist, who has served as President of Bolivia since 2006. Politically a democratic socialist, he leads the Movement for Socialism party (MAS) and the Cocalero trade union. His administration has focused on the implementation of leftist reform, poverty reduction and combating the influence of the United States and transnational corporations in Bolivia.^[1]

Born to an Aymara family of subsistence farmers in Isallawi, Orinoca Canton, Evo undertook a basic education before mandatory military service, in 1978 moving to Chapare Province. Growing coca, he joined the cocalero trade union, rising to prominence in the campesino (rural laborers) union, campaigning against the United States and Bolivian government's attempts to eradicate coca as a part of the War on Drugs. Entering electoral politics in 1995, he became leader of MAS, focusing on issues affecting indigenous and poor communities, advocating land reform and redistribution of gas wealth. Gaining increasing visibility through the gas conflict and the Cochabamba protests of 2000, in 2002 he was expelled from Congress, though came second in that year's presidential election.

 

Elected president in 2005, he instituted land redistribution and nationalisation of key industries, scaling back U.S. involvement in Bolivia while building relationships with other nations in the Latin American Pink Tide and joining the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas. Winning a recall referendum in 2008, he instituted a new constitution before being re-elected with a landslide in 2009, furthering leftist reform and joining the Bank of the South and Community of Latin American and Caribbean States.

 

Morales has received international acclaim for his support of indigenous rights and anti-imperialism, and has been named "World Hero of Mother Earth" by the General Assembly of the United Nations.^[2] Critics have accused him of autocratic tendencies and protecting the cocaine trade.

New Constitution

A constituent assembly was convened in 2006, which produced a final text of a new Constitution of Bolivia in December 2007. It was approved in the Bolivian constitutional referendum, 2009. In the interim Morales faced an autonomy movement in the country's eastern departments, which after a failed referendum on recalling Morales culminated in the 2008 unrest in Bolivia, which the government accused the United States of supporting. Morales and the MAS government subsequently adopted autonomy as a government policy and departmental autonomies were recognized in the new Bolivian constitution, approved in a referendum in January 2009. As well as departmental autonomy, the new constitution recognizes municipal, provincial and indigenous autonomies.^{[citation needed]}

 Second presidential term: 2009–present

Following the approval of the new Constitution of Bolivia in the January 2009 referendum, new elections were called. Morales won the 2009 general election with a landslide majority, polling 64%, an increase on his 54% victory four years previously. His primary opponent, former army officer Manfred Reyes Villa, gained 27% of the vote, whilst cement magnate Samuel Doria Medina gained about 8%. Morales' party, the Movement for Socialism, also won a two-thirds majority in both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate.^[54][55][56] In response to his victory, Morales proclaimed that he was "obligated to accelerate the pace of change" in Bolivia, seeing his re-election as a mandate to further his socialist reforms.^[54][56]

 

Following the victory of Barack Obama and the Democratic Party in the 2008 U.S. presidential election, relations between Bolivia and the U.S. improved, although remained strained.^[54] After the U.S. backed the 2011 military intervention in Libya by NATO forces, Morales condemned Obama, calling for his Nobel Peace Prize to be revoked; in this he was backed by Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia.^[57] In November 2011, the Bolivian and U.S. governments agreed to restore diplomatic relations,^[58] although Morales refused to allow U.S. agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) back into the country.^[59]

 

In May, 2011, Morales held a book up for the world press to photograph, citing it as providing justification for his expelling DEA from his country on the basis of DEA using the drug war to manipulate the Bolivian Government. The book, La Guerra Falsa was the Spanish translation of "The Big White Lie" by retired DEA Agent Michael Levine, who also authored New York Times Bestseller "Deep Cover." Levine fired back in numerous articles that, "if President Morales had read the book he would have welcomed DEA as heroes and booted CIA from his country for betraying both the Bolivian and American people."^[60]

 Protests

Bolivia faced national protests after the announcement of a supreme decree to cut government subsidies for gasoline and diesel fuels, increasing the prices of those commodities on December 28, 2010. The measures triggered widespread protests throughout the country, among groups including Morales's own political base.^[61] Following the protests, on 31 December 2010, Morales announced that the supreme decree would be annulled, saying that he was complying with his promise to "listen to the people". The protest measures were subsequently called off.^[62] His approval ratings, consistently high in his first term, have declined according to one poll.^[63]

He also faced protests in 2011 from indigenous groups for his plan to build a highway through the Amazon Basin that would encroach on the tribal lands of lowland indigenous tribes. He responded to the protests by initially calling them American lackeys, but later acceded to holding a referendum on the matter. A government crackdown later led to the resignation of his Defense Minister María Chacon.Popular culture

• Evo Morales appears as a character in the Latin American postmodern fantasy novel "United States of Banana" (2011) by Giannina Braschi; President Morales joins left-wing leaders Hugo Chavez, Lula, Fidel Castro and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner on a quest to liberate the people of Puerto Rico from the United States.^[78]

• Oliver Stone directed the 2009 documentary "South of the Border", a film that challenges the mainstream media's misrepresentation of left-wing Latin American leaders Evo Morales, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and her late husband Néstor Kirchner, Rafael Correa, Raúl Castro, Fernando Lugo and Lula.^[79]

 Ethnicity

Morales has declared himself Bolivia's first Aymara president. However, there is some Amerindian heritage among prior Bolivian presidents, such as Andrés de Santa Cruz (1829) —who claimed that through his mother he was descended from Inca rulers,^[80] Mariano Melgarejo (1864), Carlos Quintanilla (1939), René Barrientos (1964), Juan José Torres (1976), Luis García Meza (1980), and Celso Torrelio (1981).^[81] None of these presidents was democratically elected, with the exception of Barrientos, who had the full support of the Bolivian military establishment. While the claim is a potent symbol, it has been challenged publicly by novelist and erstwhile right-wing Peruvian presidential candidate Mario Vargas Llosa,^[82] who accuses Morales of fomenting racial divisions in an increasingly mestizo^[83] South America.

 

The Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano responded to Vargas Llosa saying: "I see what is happening in Bolivia as a very significant act of affirmation of diversity [which is opposite to] racism, elitism and militarism, which leave us blind to our marvellous existence, to that rainbow that we are".^[84] Although Morales has sometimes been described as the first indigenous president to be democratically elected in Latin America, this description in fact goes to Benito Juarez, a Mexican of the Zapotec ethnic group, who was elected President of Mexico in 1858.^[85]

  Controversies

Since he took office in 2006, some analysts and human rights organizations have stated that many of the actions and policies of the Morales government have substantially eroded the rule of law and threaten to weaken the situation of human rights in Bolivia.^[86][87] In August 2011, police violence on peaceful protesters became international news. Morales denied giving the police the order to attack the protesters, but the event tarnished his approval ratings. He issued a public apology and continued to claim the officers acted on their own.^[88]

On August 2012, Morales was accused by the leader of the CN party of having sexual relations with the underage daughter of one of her Cabinet members and making her pregnant. This accusation has been rebuffed by the cabinet member, mother of the underage daughter, as false and pretentious of the leader of the CN party. ^[89]