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Introducing her book
"I am my father's daughter"
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| Written by Maria Elena Salinas |
| Monday, January 09 2006 |
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| Bolivians have a new president, and the United States could very well have a new headache to deal with. It didn't take long for Bolivia's president-elect, Evo Morales, to show where his political loyalties lie. The former coca farmer and Aymara Indian kicked off his international tour in Cuba, the last bastion of communism in the Western Hemisphere.
It was a lovefest when Fidel Castro welcomed Morales to Havana with full honors -- a dream come true for Morales, who arrived in a private plane sent by Castro to pick him up in La Paz, the Bolivian capital. "All year I dreamt of joining the anti-imperialist struggle of Fidel and the Cuban people," he said in a recent interview. "I'm filled with joy," he said as he stood on Cuban soil.
From Havana to Caracas, Venezuela, Morales continued his ego-boosting whirlwind trip, with President Hugo Chavez vowing to help develop Bolivia's natural-gas reserves -- the second largest in the region, after Venezuela -- and giving him a $30 million grant for social programs modeled after those in his own country.
Before heading back to Bolivia to prepare for his swearing-in ceremony, Morales will also have visited Spain, France, Brussels, South Africa and China, with a final stop in Brazil, his country's No. 1 trading partner.
Morales will begin his presidency with a strong mandate. He was elected with 54 percent of the vote -- the largest majority in almost three decades -- becoming the first indigenous head of state in Bolivia. He promised, among other things, to give the country's resources back to the people by nationalizing the natural-gas industry. But as president of the poorest nation in South America, he'll need all the international help he can get and will need to attract as many foreign investors as possible to be able to keep all of his campaign promises.
What is yet to be seen is the type of relationship he'll have with the United States. The Bush administration is taking a wait-and-see approach, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice saying she hopes he will govern democratically. Like his buddy Hugo Chavez, Morales has been critical of President Bush, even calling him a terrorist and vowing to become the U.S.'s worst nightmare.
But to Eduardo Gamarra, director of the Latin American and Caribbean Center at Florida International University, the fear of "Evo" is unfounded. "Bolivia is irrelevant to the United States in ideological terms," said Gamarra. "The Cold War has been over for years; it is unlikely that Bolivia will become another Cuba, and it doesn't have enough money to become another Venezuela."
Gamarra does not believe in the so-called creation of a Latin American axis of evil among Castro, Chavez and Morales. Morales, he says, is more a product of Washington's ill-conceived policy to eradicate coca-leaf crops without offering an alternative. As head of the federation of coca-leaf growers, the U.S. demonized Morales, turning him into a national hero among indigenous people who live off the production of coca leaf.
Morales opposed the destruction of the crops that are not only the main source of income for Bolivian peasants, but part of their heritage. Coca leaves are traditionally chewed in the Andean mountains to alleviate hunger and to better cope with the high altitude. The U.S. conditions its aid to Bolivia, linking it to the eradication of those crops as part of its war against drugs. But cocaine made from Bolivian coca leaves does not reach the United States; that market is controlled by Colombian drug traffickers.
Symbolically, Morales' rise to power is a blow to the United States, which has virtually ignored Latin America for years. He is one more in the growing number of left-leaning heads of state in a region where anti-American sentiment runs high. A recent poll showed that 61 percent of Latin Americans have little or no confidence in the United States.
For his part, professor Gamarra, a Bolivian himself, is hoping that Morales will tone down his anti-Yankee rhetoric after taking office on Jan. 22. After all, he said, it's one thing to not include the United States in his world tour, but Morales gains nothing by further alienating the only superpower left in the world |
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