Juan Evo Morales Ayma, popularly known as Evo, is a Bolivian cocalero activist and politician, who has served as President of Bolivia since 2006.
Background
Ethnicity:
Ethnically a Mestizo and thereby of both European and Native American heritage, much of his ancestry came from the indigenous Aymara people.
Morales was born in the small rural village of Isallawi in Orinoca Canton, part of western Bolivia's Oruro Department, on 26 October 1959. One of seven children born to Dionisio Morales Choque and Maria Mamani, only he and two siblings, Esther and Hugo, survived past childhood. His mother almost died from a postpartum haemorrhage following his birth. In keeping with Aymara custom, his father buried the placenta produced after his birth in a place specially chosen for the occasion. His childhood home was a traditional adobe house, and he grew up speaking the Aymara language, although later commentators would remark that by the time he had become president he was no longer an entirely fluent speaker. Morales's family were farmers and from an early age he aided them in planting and harvesting crops and guarding their herd of llamas and sheep, taking a homemade soccer ball to amuse himself.
Education
As a toddler, he briefly attended Orinoca's preparatory school, and aged 5 began schooling at the single-room primary school in Isallawi.Aged 6, he spent 6 months in northern Argentina with his sister and father. There, Dionisio harvested sugar cane while Evo sold ice cream and briefly attended a Spanish-language school. As a child, he regularly traveled by foot to Arani province in Cochabamba with his father and their llamas, a journey lasting up to two weeks, in order to exchange their salt and potatoes for maize and coca. A big fan of soccer, aged 13 he organised a community soccer team with himself as team captain. Within two years, he had been elected training coach for the whole region, gaining early experience with leadership.
After finishing primary education, Morales attended the Agrarian Humanistic Technical Institute of Orinoca (ITAHO), completing all but the final year. His parents then sent him to study for a degree in Oruro; although he did poorly academically, he finished all of his courses and exams by 1977, earning money on the side as a brick-maker, day labourer, baker and a trumpet player for the Royal Imperial Band, the latter of which allowed him to travel across Bolivia. At the end of his higher education he failed to collect his degree certificate. Although interested in studying journalism at university, he didn't have the aptitude to pursue it as a profession. Morales served mandatory conscription in the army from 1977 to 1978. Initially signed up at the Centre for Instruction of Special Troops (CITE) in Cochabamba, he was sent into the Fourth Ingavi Cavalry Regiment and stationed at the army headquarters in the Bolivian capital La Paz. These two years saw "one of Bolivia's politically most unstable periods", with five presidents and two military coups, led by General Juan Pereda and General David Padilla respectively; under the latter's regime, Morales was stationed as a guard at the Palacio Quemado (Presidential Palace).
Career
Following his military service, Evo returned to his family, who had escaped the agricultural devastation of 1980's El Niño storm cycle by relocating to the Tropics of Cochabamba in the eastern lowlands. Setting up home in the town of Villa 14 de Septiembre, El Chapare, using a loan from Evo's maternal uncle, the family cleared a plot of land in the forest to grow rice, oranges, grapefruit, papaya, bananas and later on coca. Evo joined the local soccer team, before founding his own team, New Horizon, who proved victorious at the August 2nd Central Tournament. The El Chapare region remained special to Morales for many years to come; during his presidency he often talked of it in speeches and regularly visited.
In El Chapare, Morales joined a trade union of cocalero (coca growers), being appointed local Secretary of Sports. Organizing soccer tournaments, among union members he earned the nickname of "the young ball player" because of his tendency to organize matches during meeting recesses. Influenced in joining the union by wider events, in 1980 the far-right General Luis García Meza had seized power in a military coup, banning other political parties and declaring himself president; for Morales, a "foundational event in his relationship with politics" occurred in 1981, when a campesino (coca grower) was accused of cocaine trafficking by soldiers, beat up and burned to death. In 1982 the leftist Hernán Siles Zuazo and the Democratic and Popular Union (Unidad Democrática y Popular - UDP) took power in representative democratic elections, before implementing neoliberal capitalist reforms and privatizing much of the state sector with US support; hyperinflation came under control, but unemployment rose to 25%. Becoming increasingly active in the union, from 1982 to 1983, Morales served as the General Secretary of his local San Francisco syndicate. However, in 1983, Morales's father Dionisio died, and although he missed the funeral he temporarily retreated from his union work to organize his father's affairs.
Members of the sindicato social movement first suggested a move into the political arena in 1986. This proved controversial, as meany feared that the social movement would be co-opted for personal gain by politicians, who were widely mistrusted by the activists. Morales began supporting the formation of a political wing in 1989, although a consensus in favor of its formation only emerged in 1993. On March 27, 1995, at the 7th Congress of the Unique Confederation of Rural Laborers of Bolivia (Confederación Sindical Única de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia - CSUTCB), a "political instrument" (a term employed over "political party") was formed, named the Assembly for the Sovereignty of the Peoples (Asamblea por la Sobernía de los Pueblos - ASP). At the ASP's 1st Congress, the CSUTCB participated alongside three other Bolivian unions, representing miners, peasants and indigenous peoples. In 1996, Morales was appointed chairman of the Committee of the Six Federations of the Tropics of Cochabamba, a position that he retained until 2006.
Nonetheless, the National Electoral Court (Corte Nacional Electoral - CNE) refused to recognize the ASP, citing minor procedural infringements. The coca activists circumvented this problem by running under the banner of the United Left (IU), a coalition of leftist parties that had been founded in 1988 and which was headed by the Communist Party of Bolivia (Partido Comunista Boliviano - PCB). They went on to win landslide victories in those areas which were local strongholds of the movement, producing 11 mayors and 49 municipal councilors, with Morales being elected to the National Congress as a representative for El Chapare, having secured 70.1% of the local vote. In the subsequent national elections of 1997, the IU/ASP gained four seats in Congress, obtaining 3.7% of the national vote, with this rising to 17.5% in the department of Cochabamba. The election itself led to the establishment of a coalition government led by the right-wing Nationalist Democratic Action (Acción Democrática Nacionalista - ADN), with Hugo Banzer as President; Morales lambasted him as "the worst politician in Bolivian history".
Rising electoral success was accompanied by factional in-fighting, with a leadership contest emerging in the ASP between the incumbent Alejo Véliz and Evo Morales, who had the electoral backing of the social movement's bases. Morales and his supporters subsequently split from Véliz and the ASP and formed their own party, the Political Instrument for the Sovereignty of the Peoples (Instrumento Político por la Soberanía de los Pueblos - IPSP). The movement's bases soon defected en masse to the IPSP, leaving the ASP to crumble and Véliz to join the centre-right New Republican Force (Nueva Fuerza Republicana - NFR), for which Morales denounced him as a traitor to the cocalero cause. Continuing his activism, in 1998 Morales led another cocalero march from El Chapare to la Paz, and came under increasing criticism from the government, who repeatedly accused him of being involved in the cocaine trade and mocked him for how he spoke and his lack of education.
Morales came to an agreement with David Añez Pedraza, the leader of a defunct yet still registered party named the Movement for Socialism (MAS); under this agreement, Morales and the Six Federaciónes could take over the party name, with Pendraza stipulating the condition that they must maintain its own acronym, name and colors. Thus the defunct right wing MAS became the flourishing left wing vehicle for the coca activist movement known as the Movement for Socialism – Political Instrument for the Sovereignty of the Peoples. The MAS would come to be described as "an indigenous-based political party that calls for the nationalization of industry, legalization of the coca leaf ... and fairer distribution of national resources." The party lacked the finance available to the mainstream parties, and so relied largely on the work of volunteers in order to operate. It was not structured like other political parties, instead operating as the political wing of the social movement, with all tiers in the movement involved in decision making; this form of organisation would continue until 2004. In the December 1999 municipal elections, the MAS secured 79 municipal council seats and 10 mayoral positions, gaining 3.3% of the national vote, although 70% of the vote in Cochabamba.
In March 2005, Mesa resigned, citing the pressure of Morales and the cocalero road blocks and riots. In the election, Morales gained 53.7% of the vote, while Quiroga came second with 28.6%. Becoming president elect, Morales was widely described as Bolivia's first indigenous leader, with various political analysts drawing links with the election of Nelson Mandela to the South African Presidency in 1994. Morales' inauguration took place on January 22 in La Paz. Reducing his own wage by 57% to $1,875 a month, as well as that of his ministers, Morales gathered together a largely inexperienced cabinet made up of indigenous activists and leftist intellectuals.
Following the approval of the new Constitution, the 2009 general election was called. The opposition sought to delay the election by demanding a new biometric registry system, hoping that it would give them time to form a united front against MAS. Many MAS activists reacted violently against the demands, and attempting to prevent this, Morales went on a five day hunger strike in April 2009 to push the opposition to rescind their demands. He also agreed to allow for the introduction of a new voter registry, but insisted that it was rushed through so as not to delay the election. Morales and the MAS with a landslide majority, polling 64.2%. His primary opponent, former army officer Manfred Reyes Villa, gained 27% of the vote. The MAS won a two-thirds majority in both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. Morales notably increased his support in the east of the country, with MAS gaining a majority in Tarija. In response to his victory, Morales proclaimed that he was "obligated to accelerate the pace of change" in Bolivia, seeing his re-election as a mandate to further his socialist reforms.His new cabinet was 50% female, a first for Bolivia.
Politics
Leader of Movement for Socialism