'Coca Is the Tree of the Poor': Indigenous People Leap Forward in Bolivia

COCHABAMBA, Bolivia--David Jovis stands in a circle of supporters cheering on others waving handkerchiefs and dancing the cueca, a traditional Bolivian dance. "This is a triumph not only of a candidate and a party, but of a people," Jovis shouts over the noise of the celebrating crowd.

By any measure, Bolivians made history Sunday with their overwhelming vote to make Evo Morales, an Aymara Indian and leader of the nation's coca leaf growers, president of their nation. Never before has the most indigenous country in the Americas been governed by one of its indigenous people. As in Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela before it, Bolivia also elected a president committed to challenging its powerful neighbor to the north.

Morales, 46, was born in the Aymara tin mining city of Oruro. Two of his siblings never made it through childhood. With the collapse of Bolivia's tin industry, his family joined a wave of migration to Bolivia's Chapare jungle region in the 1970s. There, displaced mining families were helping make the coca leaf the country's chief replacement export.

Morales gained political prominence as the leader of six coca-growing federations and became a vocal opponent of the U.S. war on drugs here. He later founded the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) political party, running three times for president. In 2002 he finished just a percentage point behind first place. On Sunday he beat his nearest opponent, a former President and fierce U.S. ally, by nearly 20 percent.

"In all of my life, I've never seen anything like this," said Christian Vargas, a lawyer celebrating at the victory party outside MAS offices in Cochabamba. "That a candidate would win over 50 percent, and that candidate be campesino, someone who never went to school ... this is historic."

First and foremost, Morales' victory is a declaration by the Bolivian people, across class lines, that they want a reversal of 20 years of market-crazed economic policies pressed on the country from abroad by lenders such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

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