What Brought Evo Morales to Power?
By ROXANNE DUNBAR-ORTIZ What has been left out of reports and analysis in both the mainstream press and among anti-imperialists and leftists about the triumph of Evo Morales’ election as President of Bolivia is the role played by the three-decade international indigenous movement that preceded it. Few are even aware of that powerful and remarkable historic movement, which springs from generations of grassroots organizing. If the left, particularly the Latin American left, misses this point, it’s a shame, as mistrust of and racism against the indigenous nations has been the Achilles heel of previous revolutionary movements in Latin America (as well as North America). Indeed, some indigenous activists and organizations in the Andean region are wary of Evo Morales because of his left politics and alliances, for the very reason that the Latin American left has so consistently either ignored indigenous issues and aspirations, or used the indigenous and tossed them aside (recall that the lib
