LA PAZ, Bolivia – Evo Morales, Bolivia’s first Indian president, took office on Sunday with a promise to lift his nation’s struggling indigenous majority out of centuries of poverty and discrimination.
Morales, a former leader of Bolivia’s coca growers and a fierce critic of U.S. policies, raised a fist in a leftist salute as he swore to uphold the constitution.
“I wish to tell you, my Indian brothers, that the 500-year indigenous and popular campaign of resistance has not been in vain,” Morales said.
The 46-year-old son of a peasant farmer, Morales vowed that his socialist government would reshape Bolivia. He criticized free-market economic prescriptions supported by the U.S. and international donors, saying they had failed to end chronic poverty.
Bolivia’s first Indian president takes office
January 22, 2006
More to Discover
