Defending Bolivia
Morales and the Red Ponchos
By PATRICK IRELAN

The Bolivian oligarchy has initiated its plan to balkanize the country. Traditionally, the oligarchy controlled the oil, natural gas, and the best farmland in Bolivia; and, for the most part, it has never indicated a desire to share the wealth with the nation’s indigenous majority. That majority, 60 percent of the population, lives primarily in the Andean highlands of western Bolivia, although in recent decades, the Indians of those areas have begun moving down to the cities in search of jobs.

With their diseases, their firepower, and their greed, the Euro-Americans have enjoyed their country’s wealth since the founding of Bolivia, and the Indians think it’s about time for a more-equitable division of the proceeds. They’ve been waiting half a millennium, and their patience has begun to drift off somewhere over the Andes, from whence it is unlikely to return.

Evo Morales is an Aymara Indian. In 2005, he became the first indigenous president in Bolivia’s history, collecting 54 percent of the vote. He inherited a land-locked and underdeveloped country, the poorest in South America. But the provinces of the eastern lowlands are blessed with large reserves of oil and natural gas. They also possess good farmland, although much of it lies unused by its wealthy owners.

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