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Cannabis campaigner to fight for Bolivian presidency

REED LINDSAY - In La Paz | Scotsman.com | August 1, 2004

FOR years, union leader Evo Morales has been the bête noire of US drug policy in Bolivia, leading thousands of angry indigenous coca farmers in road-blocking protests that have paralysed the economy and brought the government to its knees.

Now, to the consternation of US policymakers, Morales has left the coca fields and taken centre stage in Bolivia’s volatile political arena.

He has made enemies in Washington with his opposition to the US-led war on drugs and his warm relations with Washington nemeses such as Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

But in the past year Morales has softened his rhetoric and abandoned the road-blocking protests, rapidly becoming a leading candidate to replace president Carlos Mesa in the 2007 presidential election.
Last Sunday he received a huge boost in a national referendum to decide how Bolivia will exploit its large natural gas deposits when voters responded to his call for a split vote on the five-question ballot. While other indigenous leaders called for a boycott of the referendum, Morales and his Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party gave Mesa key support by endorsing the vote.

Such moderation has won him fans among Bolivia’s small but influential middle class, but threatens to undermine his support among the nation’s often combative indigenous peoples.

"Evo Morales has betrayed his people," said Felipe Quispe, a rough-hewn Aymara farmer from Bolivia’s arid highlands, who helped lead an uprising last October that toppled Mesa’s predecessor, former president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada.

"Evo Morales and Mesa have set their own traps. If the natural gas industry isn’t nationalised, if their plans don’t prosper, they’ll be wiped off the political map," added Quispe.

Morales maintains the referendum requires congress to nationalise the gas and oil industries, while Quispe and other radical indigenous and union leaders argue that Mesa and the legislators will never allow this.

The crux of the debate is whether 78 contracts the government has already signed with companies to exploit oil and gas will be annulled or only modestly altered in benefit of the state.

For his part, Morales has warned of returning to road blockades if the industry is not nationalised.

"The people are going to mobilise," he warned. "If Mesa wants to continue to follow in the footsteps of Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, he’s going to end up like him."

While the issue of coca has taken a back seat to natural gas since last October, Morales continues to demand that the production and commercialisation of the crop, used to make cocaine, is legalised.

Meanwhile, he has called for the demilitarisation of the Chapare region - one of two areas in Bolivia where coca is grown - and promised to push for a referendum on the crop’s legalisation.

"We’ve decided to marry the defence of our coca with the defence of our hydrocarbons," said Morales. "Eradication in the Chapare is still happening, but so is planting, and that’s going to continue."

He frequently complains that the US embassy is conspiring against him, and the US shows no signs it will forgive him for his coca farmer roots.

Some analysts argue that by demonising Morales as an alleged "narco-terrorist" and a "threat to democracy", his critics among Bolivia’s elite and at the US embassy may ironically drive him from the negotiating table and closer to Quispe - an ex-guerrilla who speaks of the possibility of launching an armed struggle for power.

"The attitude of the United States toward Morales has a perverse effect," said Juan Ramon Quintana, director of the La Paz-based Democracy and Security Observatory.

"Instead of isolating Morales, the US is pushing the social movements into becoming more radical and engendering even greater opposition to multinational companies."

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MickityMike

In general, I tend to be a bit wary of political leaders that have "warm relations" with the likes of Chavez and Castro.

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I'd be delighted to live in a country where happily married gay couples had closets full of assault weapons. - Glenn Reynolds

iGame3D

2007 is also a long way off for someone who has made enemies in Washington. Expect his car to explode long before any election favoring him takes place.

MickityMike

...Can we expect Castro's or Chavez's cars exploding any time soon?

Niteshift

Morales sounds like quite the good little socialist.

But hey, who cares that he wants to push socialism on a country....as long as he wants to legalize pot.

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A burning desire for social justice is never a substitute for knowing what you're talking about. -Thomas Sowell

Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is muzzle flash.

 

solutions

While I don't feel a candidate who wants to legalize pot is necessarily a good candidate, one who wants to wage a War on Pot is per definition a bad candidate.

As for pushing socialism on a country, it is not my first choice of ideologies (go Capitalism whooo), yet at the same time in certain places and timeframes I consider it a big step forwards.

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3 monkeys sitting under a coconut tree
discussing things as they are set to be
Said one to the other, now listen you two
there's a strange rumor that can't be true
they say man was descended from our noble race
but the very idea is a big disgrace
no monkey ever deserted his wife
or her baby to ruin their lives.
Damian Marley - Educated Fools

JTP

Yeah well ultimately syphilis is better than HIV too - doesn’t mean either one is a good thing.

solutions

If getting syphilis would cure a HIV infection I would consider it a good thing, just as I would consider socialism a very good thing if I were living under a fascist regime...

Then again I know too little about Bolivia or Morales' favored type of socialism to say if it were good, so never mind my comment