Coca-growers advocate next Bolivian president?

By Letta Tayler
Newsday

LOS ANGELES TIMES Bolivian Congressman Evo Morales proposes nationalizing the country's natural-gas industry.

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Then he earnestly outlined his vision for Bolivia, South America's poorest nation. "This country, filled with riches, must no longer be filled with poverty," Evo Morales proclaimed. "It's time to end a philosophy that's pro-imperialist, pro-oligarchy and pro-multinational. The fascists ... and the U.S. Embassy don't want to accept that."

The talk may sound like far-left fringe to many ears, but Morales, the charismatic indigenous leader of Bolivia's coca-growers union, has emerged as the man of the moment and a leading contender for 2006 presidential elections in this politically restive Andean nation.

The cocalero leader's rapid rise has worried Washington, which is pouring millions of dollars into eradicating the Bolivian coca plants that Morales wants legalized, and into the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency office here that Morales wants shuttered.

"If radicals continue to hijack the indigenous movement, we could find ourselves faced with a narco-state that supports the uncontrolled cultivation of coca," Gen. James Hill, chief of the U.S. military's Southern Command, told the U.S. Congress in March.

Coca cultivation in Bolivia, the world's third-largest coca producer, is rising again after dropping dramatically in the past couple of decades.

Equally worrisome to some U.S. interests is Morales' latest pet project: pushing a measure through Bolivia's Congress that would nationalize the nation's natural-gas industry. Under Morales' plan, U.S. and other multinational companies that operate gas wells here could be booted from the country without compensation.

Given that Morales' Movement Toward Socialism, or MAS, party is the second-largest in Bolivia's Congress, and that polls show most Bolivians — particularly indigenous ones — support nationalization, his proposal has a chance of passing.

Two years ago, when Morales made his first bid for the presidency, Washington was so alarmed it threatened to yank aid to Bolivia if he won. Despite that warning, he placed second by a mere 1.5 percentage points behind winner Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada.

"There are segments within the U.S. government which see Evo Morales as the devil incarnate," said Eduardo Gamarra, a Bolivian expert at Florida International University in Miami. "The reality is more complex."

Indeed, despite a visit to Cuba, Morales has in recent months softened his political stance in an apparent bid to broaden his appeal in municipal elections this December. He was nowhere in sight last October when indigenous Bolivians, enraged over a plan to sell natural gas to the United States on what they considered giveaway terms, ousted Sánchez de Lozada from the presidency in a massive uprising.
 
Moreover, Morales' support is widely seen as the main reason that interim President Carlos Mesa, a political outsider, remains in power — and that Mesa's popular referendum to let Bolivia continue exporting natural gas was approved by wide margins last Sunday.

Many radical indigenous leaders called for voters to boycott the referendum, arguing it favored multinationals. Morales, in contrast, urged Bolivians to cast "no" ballots on some referendum questions.

"We want to profoundly transform our country, but through peaceful means," said Morales, whose boyish face makes him look younger than his 44 years.

The son of impoverished coca farmers, Morales joined the cocalero movement after playing trumpet in a bar band. He hotly denies ties to narco-traffickers but waxes poetic about the coca leaf, which has been chewed and brewed for centuries in the Andes for medicinal and religious purposes, and is served throughout the country as tea.

"Coca is not cocaine. It's good for your health," said Morales, who blames cocaine production on demand from U.S. and European consumers.

Nevertheless, Morales appears to have eased his demands for unfettered coca production in Bolivia, which allows some cultivation for traditional use.

Already, more radical indigenous leaders are pouncing on Morales' centrist shift. "Evo Morales is a traitor ... who is selling out to the United States," declared union leader Roberto de la Cruz at a recent rally in the indigenous city of El Alto.

Morales scoffs at the notion he is in cahoots with the United States, noting it continues to deny him a visa.

Morales' growing clout could strengthen a move to the left in Latin America, where leaders in Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina are demanding more trickle-down economic policies from foreign investors.

But he says his main impetus is to help indigenous Bolivians, who constitute nearly two-thirds of the population of 8.7 million but remain at the bottom of the socio-political ladder after centuries of rule by Spanish conquistadors or European-descended elite. Their struggle for a greater share of the pie is being watched by indigenous groups across the Andes.

Whatever happens to his presidential bid, Morales predicted, "the indigenous movement is here to stay."