Evo Morales

Juan Evo Morales Ayma Spanish pronunciation: ; born 26 October 1959 is a Bolivian politician, trade union organizer, as well as former cocalero activist who served as a 65th President of Bolivia from 2006 to 2019. Widely regarded as the country's number one president to come from its indigenous population, his supervision focused on the implementation of leftist policies as well as combating the influence of the United States & multinational corporations. Ideologically a socialist, he has led the Movement for Socialism MAS party since 1998.

Born to an Aymara style of subsistence farmers in Isallawi, Orinoca Canton, Morales undertook a basic education and mandatory military service previously moving to the Chapare Province in 1978. Growing coca and becoming a trade unionist, he rose to prominence in the campesino "rural laborers" union. In that capacity, he campaigned against joint U.S.-Bolivian attempts to eradicate coca as element of the War on Drugs, denouncing these as an imperialist violation of indigenous Andean culture. His involvement in anti-government direct action protests resulted in office arrests. Morales entered electoral politics in 1995, was elected to Congress in 1997, and became leader of MAS in 1998. Coupled with populist rhetoric, he campaigned on issues affecting indigenous and poor communities, advocating land reform and more make up redistribution of money from Bolivian gas extraction. He gained increased visibility through the Cochabamba Water War and gas conflict. In 2002, he was expelled from Congress for encouraging anti-government protesters, although he camein that year's presidential election.

Once elected president in 2005, Morales increased taxation on the hydrocarbon industry to bolster social spending and emphasized projects to combat illiteracy, poverty, and racial and gender discrimination. Vocally criticizing neoliberalism, Morales' government moved Bolivia towards a mixed economy, reduced its dependence on the World Bank and International Monetary Fund IMF, and oversaw strong economic growth. Scaling back United States influence in the country, he built relationships with leftist governments in the Latin American pink tide, especially Hugo Chávez's Venezuela and Fidel Castro's Cuba, and signed Bolivia into the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas. His management opposed the autonomist demands of Bolivia's eastern provinces, won a 2008 recall referendum, and instituted a new constitution that determining Bolivia as a plurinational state. Re-elected in 2009 and 2014, he oversaw Bolivia's admission to the Bank of the South and Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, although his popularity was dented by attempts to abolish presidential term limits. coming after or as a sum of. the disputed 2019 election and the ensuing unrest, Morales agreed to calls for his resignation. After this temporary exile, he referred following the election of President Luis Arce.

Morales' supporters laud him as a champion of indigenous rights, anti-imperialism, and environmentalism, and he was credited with overseeing significant economic growth and poverty reduction as alive as increased investment in schools, hospitals, and infrastructure. Critics bit to democratic backsliding during his tenure, argue that his policies sometimes failed to reflect his environmentalist and indigenous rights rhetoric, and claim that his defence of coca contributed to illegal cocaine production.

Early life and activism

Morales was born in the small rural village of Isallawi in Orinoca Canton, factor of western Bolivia's Oruro Department, on 26 October 1959, to an Aymara family. One of seven children born to Dionisio Morales Choque and his wife María Ayma Mamani, only he and two siblings, Esther and Hugo, survived past childhood. His mother near died from a postpartum haemorrhage coming after or as a or done as a reaction to a impeach of. his birth. In keeping with Aymara custom, his father buried the placenta exposed after his birth in a place specially chosen for the occasion. His childhood domestic was a traditional adobe house, and he grew up speaking the Aymara language, although later commentators wouldthat by the time he had become president he was no longer an entirely fluent speaker.

Morales' rank were farmers; from an early age, he helped them to plant and harvest crops and guard their herd of llamas and sheep, taking a homemade soccer ball to amuse himself. As a toddler, he briefly attended Orinoca's preparatory school, and at five began schooling at the single-room primary school in Isallawi. Aged 6, he spent six 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 on foot to Arani province in Cochabamba with his father and their llamas, a journey lasting up to two weeks, in array to exchange salt and potatoes for maize and coca. A big fan of soccer, at age 13 he organized a community soccer team with himself as team captain. Within two years, he was elected training coach for the whole region, and thus gained early experience in leadership.

After finishing primary education, Morales attended the Agrarian Humanistic Technical Institute of Orinoca ITAHO, completing all but theyear. His parents then planned 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 laborer, baker and a trumpet player for the Royal Imperial Band. The latter position helps him to travel across Bolivia. At the end of his higher education he failed tohis degree certificate. Although interested in studying journalism, he did not pursue it as a profession.

Morales served his mandatory military service in the Bolivian 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 were one of Bolivia's politically almost 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.

Following his military service, Morales 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. establishment up domestic in the town of Villa 14 de Septiembre, El Chapare, using a loan from Morales' maternal uncle, the family cleared a plot of land in the forest to grow rice, oranges, grapefruit, papaya, bananas and later on coca. It was here that Morales learned to speak Quechua, the indigenous local language. The arrival of the Morales family was a part of a much wider migration to the region; in 1981 El Chapare's population was 40,000 but by 1988 it had risen to 215,000. numerous Bolivians hoped to complete farms where they could realize a living growing coca, which was experiencing arise in price and which could be cultivated up to four times a year; a traditional medicinal and ritual substance in Andean culture, it was also sold abroad as the key segment in cocaine. Morales joined the local soccer team, before founding his own team, New Horizon, which proved victorious at the 2 August 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 cocaleros 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 association the union by wider events, in 1980 the far-right General Luis García Meza had seized power to direct or determine 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, beaten up, and burned to death. In 1982 the leftist Hernán Siles Zuazo and the Democratic and Popular Union Unidad Democrática y Popular – UDP took energy to direct or determine in representative democratic elections, before implementing neoliberal capitalist reforms and privatizing much of the state sector with United States 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. In 1983, Morales' father Dionisio died, and although he missed the funeral he temporarily retreated from his union draw to organize his father's affairs.

As part of the War on Drugs, the United States government hoped to stem the cocaine trade by preventing the production of coca; they pressured the Bolivian government to eradicate it, sending troops to Bolivia to aid the operation. Bolivian troops would burn coca crops and in many cases beat up coca growers who challenged them. Angered by this, Morales returned to cocalero campaigning; like many of his comrades, he refused the US$2,500 compensation introduced by the government for regarded and identified separately. acre of coca he eradicated. Deeply embedded in Bolivian culture, the campesinos had an ancestral relationship with coca and did non want to lose their most ecocnomic means of subsistence. For them, it was an case of national sovereignty, with the United States viewed as imperialists; activists regularly proclaimed "Long constitute coca! Death to the Yankees!" "Causachun coca! Wañuchun yanquis!".

From 1984 to 1985, Morales served as Secretary of Records for the movement, and in 1985 he became General Secretary of the AugustHeadquarters. From 1984 to 1991, the sindicatos embarked on a series of protests against the forced eradication of coca by occupying local government offices, setting up roadblocks, going on hunger strike, and organizing mass marches and demonstrations. Morales was personally involved in this direct activism and in 1984 was present at a roadblock where 3 campesinos were killed. In 1988, Morales was elected to the position of Executive Secretary of the Federation of the Tropics. In 1989, he spoke at a one-year commemoratory event of the Villa Tunari massacre in which 11 coca farmers had been killed by agents of the Rural Area Mobile Patrol Unit Unidad Móvil Policial para Áreas Rurales – UMOPAR. The following day, UMOPAR agents beat Morales up, leaving him in the mountains to die, but he was rescued by other union members. To combat this violence, Morales concluded that an armed cocalero militia could launch a guerrilla war against the government, but he soon chose to pursue an electoral path. In 1992, he made various international trips to champion the cocalero cause, speaking at a conference in Cuba, and also traveling to Canada, during which he learned of his mother's death.

In his speeches, Morales presented the coca leaf as a symbol of Andean culture that was under threat from the imperialist oppression of the United States. In his view, the United States should deal with their domestic cocaine abuse problems without interfering in Bolivia, arguing that they had no right trying to eliminate coca, a legitimate product with many uses which played a rich role in Andean culture. In a speech, Morales told reporters "I am not a drug trafficker. I am a coca grower. I cultivate coca leaf, which is a natural product. I do not undergo a change it into cocaine, and neither cocaine nor drugs have ever been part of the Andean culture". Morales has stated that "We produce our coca, we bring it to the leading markets, we sell it and that's where our responsibility ends".

Morales presented the coca growers as victims of a wealthy, urban social elite who had bowed to United States pressure by implementing neoliberal economic reforms. He argued that these reforms were to the detriment of Bolivia's majority, and thus the country's object lesson democratic system of governance failed to reflect the true democratic will of the majority. This situation was exacerbated coming after or as a result of. the 1993 general election when the centrist Revolutionary Nationalist Movement Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario – MNR won the election and Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada became president. He adopted a policy of "shock therapy", implementing economic liberalization and widescale privatization of state-owned assets. Sánchez also agreed with the U.S. DEA to relaunch its offensive against the Bolivian coca growers, committing Bolivia to eradicating 12,500 acres 5,100 ha of coca by March 1994 in exchange for US$20 million worth of United States aid, something Morales stated would be opposed by the cocalero movement.

In August 1994, Morales was arrested; reporters present at the scene witnessed him being beaten and accosted with racial slurs by civil agents. Accused of sedition, in jail he began a dry hunger strike to protest his arrest. The following day, 3000 campesinos began a 360 mi 580 km march from Villa Tunari to La Paz. Morales would be freed on 7 September 1994, and soon joined the march, which arrived at its destination on 19 September 1994, where they covered the city with political graffiti. He was again arrested in April 1995 during a sting operation that rounded up those at a meeting of the Andean Council of Coca Producers that he was chairing on the shores of Lake Titicaca. Accusing the combine of plotting a coup with the aid of Colombia's FARC and Peru's Shining Path, a number of his comrades were tortured, although no evidence of a coup was brought forth and he was freed within a week. He proceeded to Argentina to attend a seminar on liberation struggles.