Evo, president

“Evo, Presidente.”

Such was the headline in El Deber, one of Santa Cruz’s leading newspapers, this Monday morning, the day after the anxiously awaited national elections. On the surface, the meaning of the headline is clear: Bolivia has a new president, a man named Evo Morales.

But to those who know something of this country’s history, those two words say a mouthful.

Evo, president? MCCers who watched his victory speech said Morales looked like he himself couldn’t believe he’d actually won. An Aymara Indian, born to a poor campesino (peasant) family, whose high school education raises him far above what most of those in his hometown have achieved, who rose to prominence as a leader of the coca growers’ movement, president of the republic?

In Bolivia, in any of the Andean nations—or in the Americas in general—this is unheard of. Since colonial times, those who rule have been the descendants of the conquerors, not the conquered. “I want to tell the Aymaras, the Quechuas, the Guaraní people, and the Chiriguanos that, for the first time, we are going to be president,” Morales told a group of supporters celebrating his win (El Deber, Monday, December 19, 2005; my translation and italics).

Evo, president?!

This morning I read a newspaper article illustrated by a photo of three people dwarfed by a dry, scrub-covered landscape, squatting on plastic crates and rocks and apparently discussing something, straw hats shading their faces. They live in a remote village of small farmers and llama herders on the western edge of Bolivia’s altiplano (highlands) called Orinoca, the place where Morales was born in 1949.

According the article, the villagers “decided to celebrate the historical triumph…in the way their ancestors taught them: having fun, but without forgetting to be responsible in their work” (El Deber, Tuesday, December 20). After leaving their fields and animals to cast their ballots on Sunday (511 of 546 votes went to their native son), the people awaited the results by shortwave radio. (Few homes in Orinoca have television sets.) When the results became known, they brought out the beer, toasted Evo’s triumph, then danced until four in the morning to celebrate his victory. At seven o’clock on Monday morning, they got up to start another day—a day of hard work like any other, except that today their country’s president was one of them.

Teodoro Copagira, Orinoca’s tata grande (literally, “grandfather,” the title given to the leader of the community), told a reporter that the villagers hoped Evo would visit soon to have a beer with them and receive their congratulations. When asked what request he would like to make of the new president, Copagira said he would ask to have the community’s roads mended, for better electric service, and for help in developing an irrigation system so the crops won’t wither and the llamas won’t die of thirst.

Evo will certainly have a lot of demands to consider as he begins his term in January—those of national and international corporations; of the political establishment, which still holds many seats in the Senate; of Bolivia’s still-powerful labor unions; and of foreign powers (especially the U.S.A.)—many of them competing with the requests of people like Orinoca’s tata grande. The issues are complex: how to reduce the country’s chronic poverty, how to bring together the historically marginalized indigenous majority and the European and mestizo (mixed indigenous and European) minority, what to do about increasing demands for regional autonomy without further eroding national unity, how to fight for Bolivian interests but retain good relations with the world powers.

Only God knows how Evo Morales will develop as a leader once he takes office in January. I think that what most Bolivians hope for is that this administration will fulfill the promise of Evo’s running mate, Alvaro García Linera, to “govern for all of Bolivia,” not just one segment of the population (El Deber, Tuesday, December 20). Still, part of me hopes Evo will return to Orinoca for a visit and sit down with the people who watched him grow up—and that their aspirations will be foremost in his mind when he returns to the halls of power.

For those who would like to read other perspectives on Evo Morales’s election, I suggest the following:

“Evo, Presidente” (El Deber—the article is in Spanish, but scroll halfway down this webpage to see a great photo)

“Bolivia awaits final poll result” (BBC)

“America’s ‘nightmare’ leads Bolivian election” (CNN)