Evo+Morales

Evo Morales, previously a union worker, was born on October 26, 1959 (Wikipedia). Son of coca farmers, he is the first indigenous president Bolivia has seen. He grew up on the farm, growing coca, herding llamas, and playing soccer. His rise in politics began in 1985, when Morales was the elected the general secretary in his union of coca farmers. By 1988, he was the executive secretary of the Tropics Federation. In 1995, Morales founded MAS (Movimiento al Socialismo). MAS is an indigenous-based political party trying to give more power to the indigenous people and legalize the coca leaf (Vera-Zavala).He ran for president in 2002, but lost by 2 percentage points to Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada (Vera-Zavala).  In 2005, President Carlos Mesa resigned because of pressure from MAS and Morales. As a result, Congress decided to move to 2007 elections to December 2005. Morales ran and won the presidential election by 34%. He was inaugurated on January 21st, 2006. He wore a white shirt with no tie, which was unheard of for a political figure in Bolivia. As president, Evo Morales and his government have not been able to do a lot of what they set out to do. Despite that, Morales has remained popular with his people (Stiglitz). Currently, he is trying to create a “constituent assembly” which would re-write the constitution including input from the indigenous population (Vera-Zavala).