AT FIRST sight, revolution Bolivian style looks like a large village fête.

Indian women in their distinctive bowler hats and shawls sit around Plaza Villaroel in La Paz, eating potatoes cooked over charcoal braziers. Teenagers head for the stage to watch local bands. Men chat and chew coca leaves together.

Every so often another group of revellers arrives, some led in by Andean flute players.

Appearances are deceptive. The reason for the gathering is to “bury neo-liberalism and end the robbery of our country”, says Evo Morales, the man the crowd has come to see.

He is the presidential candidate of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) party and favourite to win Sunday’s election. He promises that “with the power of the people’s vote” Bolivia will confront “North American imperialism”.

Delivering his speech, Señor Morales looks an unlikely Latin American revolutionary. There are none of the rhetorical flourishes of Fidel Castro or paramilitary props such as Hugo Chávez’s red beret. He wears jeans and trainers, a poncho over one of his ever-present fleeces, looking as if he had just clambered out of the audience.

What is truly revolutionary about Señor Morales is that like most of the crowd in the plaza, but unlike all of Bolivia’s rulers for the past five centuries, he is from the downtrodden Indian majority. It is a powerful asset in a country where Indians harbour centuries of resentment against the descendants of European colonists, who made them dig up the country’s vast mineral wealth but shared none of the benefits.

“He is not someone who came from abroad and did bad things to the country,” says Wilfredo Macuchapi, like Señor Morales an Aymaran Indian. “Every citizen identifies with him because he is one of us.”

Señor Morales’s preparation for the presidency could not be further removed from that of the caras blancas — the white faces — the Western-educated European elite who have considered political power their preserve since independence from Spain in 1825 and are accused by MAS of selling out to US and European interests.

Señor Morales was born and brought up on the Altiplano, in an indigenous community among the poorest in South America. Four of his six siblings died in infancy and he had only a rudimentary education before working as a travelling musician and lorry driver. Like thousands of other poor peasants he turned to growing coca, the main ingredient in cocaine. This led to his start in politics, getting elected as a union boss for the coca growers in their fight against a US-inspired coca eradication effort.

Today one of Señor Morales’s electoral pledges is the legalisation of coca cultivation, much to the horror of the US.

As well as legalising coca, he swears to prevent a repeat of the “plundering” of the country’s silver and tin wealth by nationalising the country’s huge gas reserves. He plans to make sure state control means popular control by rewriting the constitution to reflect the indigenous majority in the country.

This anti-capitalist message means that MAS draws support from Bolivia’s non-indigenous left, and Señor Morales is always careful to point out that whites have nothing to fear from his revolution. “The poncho and the tie will walk together,” he promises.

Despite such assurances, the thought of an Indian president is anathema to many Bolivians, and Señor Morales is viewed by much of the country’s elite as a direct threat to their interests.

No one outside MAS believes that he will win much more than a third of the vote, meaning he is not even assured of a majority among indigenous voters. But if no candidate gets 50 per cent of the vote, the decision lies with congress. Although MAS will be a minority in the new congress, the fragmentation of the opposition and a threat by MAS to take to the streets if its man is not installed mean that on January 22 Bolivia will probably have its first indigenous president.

It is then, as head of a minority administration, that Señor Morales will have to prove wrong all the Bolivians who believe he is not capable of governing.

In a country where presidents come and go, many believe the task of managing his supporters’ expectations in the face of resistance from the country’s powerful business elite will prove beyond him.

There are even some in the elite who would welcome a MAS government, says René Mayorga, a political analyst in La Paz: “Because they believe Morales will not be capable of governing and they prefer that the ‘Morales Alternative’ destroys itself in government.”

BOLIVIA BASICS

• Population of 9.1 million
• Main languages are Spanish, Quechua, Aymara, Guarani
• The world’s largest producer of tin
• Mining accounts for about 45 per cent of total export earnings
• One of three countries that produce most of the world’s cocaine (along with Colombia and Peru)
• Responsible for 18 per cent of world coca cultivation in 2004
• Agriculture accounts for 15 per cent of its GDP
• Other exports include tin, soyabeans, natural gas, gold, silver, zinc, lead, antimony, wood and sugar
• National dishes include parrillada, a mixed grill including offal and intestine, and salteñas, pockets of pastry filled with meat, vegetables, raisins and an egg
• Prominent Bolivians have included Andrés de Santa Cruz (1792–1865), who briefly united Peru and Bolivia

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