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Populist Indian Leads in Bolivian Polls

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Times Staff Writer

As Bolivians head to the polls to elect a new president today, the leading candidate is Evo Morales, a charismatic champion of the peasant producers of coca leaf -- the raw ingredient in cocaine -- and a devoted acolyte of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, South America’s premier critic of the United States.

If elected, Morales, 46, would be the first Indian president in a nation where long-marginalized indigenous groups have focused their rage on multinational corporations and economic and anti-drug policies backed by the United States. Morales has vowed to decriminalize coca cultivation, a shot across the bow to longtime American policy here.

Morales’ main rival for the presidency is his antithesis: Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga, a former president and a U.S.-educated product of Bolivia’s largely white and mixed-race elite. Quiroga has accused Morales of having ties to narco-terrorists and says a Morales victory would encourage traffickers and scare off foreign investors.

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Many in the deeply polarized Andean nation fear that the election’s result will be uncertainty or outright chaos.

Neither candidate is expected to win a majority, and under Bolivian law, it would be up to the newly elected Congress to choose between the top two vote-getters. Many fear that could lead to further trouble in a country where stability is precarious at best: Convulsive street protests have already chased two presidents from power in the last two years.

“If the election is close, which it probably will be, there’s all kinds of room for turmoil,” said Eduardo A. Gamarra, a native Bolivian who heads the Latin American and Caribbean Center at Florida International University. “The notion of governing from the streets is very, very prevalent in Bolivia.”

Morales has emerged as a new star of a resurgent, post-Cold War Latin American left that rejects open-market and privatization prescriptions long pushed by Washington. Morales’ organization, pointedly named Movement to Socialism, or MAS, in the last decade has surged from its origins in the steamy coca fields to become the nation’s preeminent political movement.

“I don’t mind being a permanent nightmare for the United States,” Morales told an animated crowd of fellow Aymara Indians in ponchos, bowler hats and shawls in the wind-swept town of Viacha.

The almost-mythic personal arc of Morales -- a onetime llama herder, coca cultivator and itinerant trumpet player -- has won him credibility among many here. He is also accorded star treatment in other Latin American and European capitals.

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Stocky and baby-faced, he relishes playing race and class cards in a country where Indians -- perhaps half or slightly more of the total population, among the highest such percentages in Latin America -- have historically been denied a place in government and other institutions. Bolivia’s caste system has survived a left-wing revolution in 1952 and subsequent political and land reforms.

The poor, most of whom are indigenous peoples, “have long been denied a path to social mobility,” noted Alejandro F. Mercado, an economist at the Catholic University of Bolivia. “A worker sees that he is poor, his parents and grandparents were poor, and his children and grandchildren will likely be poor. There’s not much hope.”

Morales, a gifted speaker, has focused his campaign on a call to restore government control of Bolivia’s natural resources, especially its vast natural gas reserves, which are the second largest on the continent, after Venezuela.

“How can these treasures be in private hands?” Morales, in his trademark blue windbreaker, asked repeatedly during a recent campaign swing through the barren Altiplano, the desolate high plains expanse that is the ancestral indigenous heartland.

Media-savvy and a populist, Morales often dons colorful native dress and occasionally puts on a miner’s helmet as well -- potent symbols of his ties to indigenous and disenfranchised Bolivians. Admirers inevitably drape him with garlands and shower confetti on his shock of black hair.

But Morales’ perceived support of road blockades and other civil disobedience tactics has alienated many Bolivians, who fear even greater disarray if he takes power. And that distrust comes not only from the corbatudos -- literally, “tie wearers,” as the professional classes are sometimes called, somewhat pejoratively -- but from working-class sectors as well.

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“I’ll vote for anyone except Evo Morales,” vowed Eduardo Cuenca, a 45-year-old cabdriver and father of three who has lost work as protesters regularly shut down the capital’s streets. “Evo means more street shutdowns and more drugs and criminality.”

Morales’ rival, Quiroga, 45, has depicted him as a man bent on undermining the Bolivian state and creating a base in the heart of South America for Venezuela’s Chavez.

“Everyone knows that Hugo Chavez left the presidency to become campaign manager of MAS,” Quiroga told reporters here recently.

The two candidates have demonstrated personal antipathy.

“I don’t debate with liars,” Morales responds when asked why he won’t accept Quiroga’s challenge to a debate.

Morales has repeatedly fought off allegations that he has used Venezuelan money for his high-profile campaign, while Quiroga has denied reports of secret American funding.

Today, Bolivia -- a main source of cocaine to the U.S. market in the mid-1990s -- is regarded as a success in the war against drugs. But illicit production is said to be on the rise.

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Morales, a leader of the cocaleros, or coca growers, from the Chapare region who was elected to Congress, has denied links to traffickers, and no proof has emerged linking him to the illicit trade.

But Quiroga and others say it strains credibility to believe that Morales doesn’t have connections to traffickers.

Morales responds that he favors legal and traditional uses of the coca leaf, and contends that the plant has been wrongly demonized. Bolivian law allows the leaves to be chewed and used in tea, as well as for religious ceremonies.

“From the moment the white man came to our land, he has tried to control our leaf for his own personal enrichment,” Morales is quoted as saying on his website. “The moment has come for us to stop the menace of annihilation of the coca plant and our communal ways of living.”

A disquieting backdrop to the campaign is the prospect of postelection violence in a nation where street protests, strikes and road closures have become the chief expression of popular discontent.

Two years ago, this capital was dangerously cut off as protesters barricaded all the entrances. The national government was close to collapse. The military was called in and the subsequent crackdown led to scores of deaths. And this June, caretaker President Eduardo Rodriguez took office after his predecessor, Carlos Mesa, resigned following a siege of La Paz by protesters, many of them Indians or poor farmers.

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Although Morales has vowed to capture “50% plus one” of the vote, surveys show no candidate winning a majority. That result would throw the election to Congress, which has chosen each Bolivian president since the restoration of democracy in the early 1980s.

Polls show Morales generally topping out at 33%, while Quiroga and his “We Can” front garner about 27%.

A third candidate, Samuel Doria Medina, a cement magnate and scion of the European-ancestry elite, runs a distant third with about 10%, polls show.

Morales’ support is concentrated in the highland provinces of La Paz and Oruru, his birthplace, and Cochabamba, his home and the base of his coca-growing activism.

Morales is less popular and even disliked in the resource-rich lowlands to the east, especially in the bustling city of Santa Cruz.

Most experts expect Morales to win a plurality but fail in Congress.

His supporters have warned that they may take matters into their own hands if he is denied power.

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“MAS views itself as due this election, and they haven’t clarified for anyone whether they will respect the electoral outcome,” a Western diplomat here said. “And they’re certainly giving indications that they see the street as equally legitimate as the ballot box.”

U.S. officials, who have given about $2 billion in direct and indirect aid to Bolivia in the last decade, would clearly be thrilled if Quiroga won. But embassy personnel have declined to comment publicly on the race, fearing accusations of meddling.

The economic plan of Morales’ party is broadly socialistic but vague on specifics. He has backed down from talk of nationalizing foreign assets, instead asserting that he would seek better deals from foreign companies working here. Quiroga, trying to siphon off Morales’ support, has also called for more favorable terms from the corporations.

With his support among the Indian masses solid, Morales has made an effort to reach out beyond his base to attract middle-class voters. For vice president, he has tapped Alvaro Garcia Linera, a left-wing sociologist who has sometimes seemed to run a parallel, less radical, campaign to Morales’. Garcia, a former guerrilla who spent time in jail for political activism, has sought to reassure international investors and the middle class.

If he takes office, Morales will face many challenges, none as daunting as meeting the high expectations he has raised in the nation’s poorest regions.

“The people in Bolivia want good highways, good schools, good healthcare -- things that are no different than what someone in Cleveland wants,” said Gamarra of Florida International University. “They hope Evo is going to be able to provide all that.

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“I hope he can too, but I’m not holding my breath.”

Andres D’Alessandro of The Times’ Buenos Aires Bureau contributed to this report.

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