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As Bolivians go to polls, U.S. watches, worries

By DAVID ADAMS
Published December 17, 2005

	[Getty Images]
	Bolivian presidential candidate Evo Morales, a former coca farmer and union leader, is ahead in the polls for Sunday's election. He has called his party "a nightmare for the United States."

MIAMI - When Bolivia votes, normally no one takes much notice.

The small land-locked country of only 9-million hasn't gotten much attention since its silver mines were exhausted by the Spanish empire.

But Sunday's election could change that. At stake is not just the country's political future, but what some see as a radical anti-American, left-wing resurgence sweeping Latin America.

As the dominos have fallen one by one, U.S. officials have grown more wide-eyed and alarmed.

A dozen presidential contests and 13 legislative elections come due in Latin America over the next year. Left-wing candidates stand to win in several countries, including Nicaragua and Mexico. A radical former military officer has also leapt into contention in Peru.

These all come on the backs of victories in Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina in recent years.

Bolivia's domino looks like it's next. That's partly due to social and ethnic reasons beyond U.S. control. Clumsy American drug diplomacy hasn't helped.

Bolivia is a country deeply divided along ethnic and social lines between the country's downtrodden indigenous population of largely Quechua and Aymara Indians, and a light-skinned political and business elite of European descent.

The vote is being compared to the end of apartheid in South Africa. The only problem, some say, is that the country lacks a Nelson Mandela to handle the transition.

Bolivia is also dramatically split geographically. The Indians, who make up 60 percent of the population, dominate the country's dirt-poor, freezing-cold Andean highlands. The European class dominates the relatively wealthy and sultry eastern plains, which lead to the Amazon and are rich in natural gas and soybeans.

"Bolivia is on the verge of national and social disintegration," according to the International Crisis Group, a global conflict watchdog group in Brussels. This Sunday's vote "may be a final opportunity to start solving deep social and economic problems and profound ethnic divisions," it added.

The leftist front-runner, Evo Morales, is hoping to become the country's first indigenous head of state. An Aymara Indian, Morales is a hero in the highlands but is widely detested in the eastern plains as an uneducated upstart.

A close ally of Cuba's Fidel Castro and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Morales described his Movement Toward Socialism, or MAS, party as "a nightmare for the United States." He vows to end free-market policies and legalize the growing of coca, which is part of indigenous culture but also happens to be the main ingredient in the production of cocaine. He also plans to nationalize Bolivia's natural gas reserves and rewrite the constitution to better reflect the country's indigenous majority.

His main rival, the conservative, U.S.-educated Jorge Quiroga, has called for a "zero coca" policy. A former World Bank and International Monetary Fund consultant, Quiroga promises to stick to the U.S. economic model of free trade.

Morales leads Quiroga in the polls by about 5 percent, but is unlikely to obtain the 51 percent he needs to win in the first round. In that event, Bolivia's election system leaves the final decision to Congress where Morales could be thwarted by a conservative coalition.

But that seems unlikely given Bolivia's recent history of indigenous street protests that have brought down two presidents in the last two years.

Indians harbor centuries of resentment. They were treated as chattel after the Spanish conquistadors overthrew the Inca empire in the 16th century. During colonial times, all male Indians were forced to supply three years of free labor in the silver mines of Potosi.

On Thursday, Morales told a large rally it was time for those humiliated by history to run the country.

The son of a tin miner, Morales was born and brought up in the highlands. Four of his six siblings died in infancy and he never finished high school. After the government closed the inefficient state-run tin mines, the Morales family joined the thousands of other poor peasants who turned to growing coca. Coca growers defended their actions by saying the government failed to provide promised funding for alternative agriculture programs.

As cocaine production grew, the United States began to pressure Bolivia to crack down on coca. That's when Morales began his political ascent, emerging as a powerful union boss for the coca growers battling the U.S.-backed eradication program.

He was demonized by U.S. diplomats, who described him as little more than a murderous thug unworthy of public office. Today, his talk of legalizing coca worries U.S. policymakers who have invested billions in the drug war.

Adding to the explosive political cocktail are Bolivia's enormous reserves of natural gas. Indigenous leaders vow the potential underground riches will not be "plundered" by foreigners as occurred with the silver mines in colonial times. Protests led to the canceling of contracts that might have shipped the gas to California.

Most of that gas now goes to Brazil by pipeline, which could result in a moderating influence on Morales' plans. Brazil, the continent's largest country by far, consumes a lot of gas. Its president, Ignacio Lula da Silva - a leftist, who has stuck with free market policies - wields a lot of clout.

Even so, a Morales victory would likely push Bolivia into the Cuba-Venezuela axis. Using a tried and tested model, Cuban medical teams will likely provide much needed social assistance, fanning out into indigenous rural areas. (Che Guevara, who died trying to lead a revolution in Bolivia in 1967, will no doubt be smiling from his Cuban tomb.) Chavez will provide a financial lifeline thanks to the cash bonanza Venezuela is enjoying from current oil prices.

After Sunday, the United States, with its shrinking foreign aid budget and insistence on unpopular free trade measures, will watch its remaining influence vanish. Used to having its way with the region, the United States will have to settle for a spectator's seat.

David Adams can be contacted at dadams@sptimes.com

POPULATION: 9.1-million MAIN LANGUAGES: Spanish, Quechua, Aymara, Guarani

ETHNIC GROUPS: Quechua, 30 percent; mestizo (mixed white and Amerindian ancestry), 30 percent; Aymara, 25 percent; white, 15 percent

CAPITAL: La Paz.

LAND AREA: 433,756 sq mi., about three times the size of Montana

Sources: The (London) Times, (CIA) World Factbook

[Last modified December 17, 2005, 01:02:06]