Will Evo Morales end neoliberalism?
TOM LEWIS reporting from Bolivia WINNING THE presidential election in Bolivia last December with an impressive 54 percent of the vote, Evo Morales joined Luis Inácio “Lula” da Silva (Brazil), Hugo Chávez (Venezuela), Tabaré Vásquez (Uruguay), Alejandro Toledo (Peru), and Néstor Kirchner (Argentina) as part of Latin America’s electoral backlash against neoliberalism.1 Morales, an Aymara Indian, assumed office January 22 as Bolivia’s first indigenous president. His government immediately symbolized hope for the 60 percent of Bolivians who live in poverty and who, along with the nation’s coca farmers, form the base of support for Morales’s political party and movement, the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS). The election campaign unfolded as a national referendum on neoliberalism—the policies of privatization, austerity, and trade liberalization that have wreaked havoc on Bolivias poor and oppressed. Former president Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga, the candidate of the neoliberal Poder Democrático Soc
