Evo Morales—Sagging Popularity or the Beginning of the End?

By Douglas Farah

Evo Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous president, and his Movement toward Socialism (Movimiento al Socialismo, MAS) rose to power in Bolivia by successfully arguing that the political parties alternating in power had grown corrupt and refused to listen to “el pueblo” or the people. Then-president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada resigned in 2003 after roadblocks, encouraged by Morales, led to a clash between protestors and security forces that left several dozen dead.  Faced with escalating violence or resigning, Sánchez de Lozada turned the government over to his vice president and left.

In September, Morales’ own police clashed with some 1,000 marchers protesting a Brazilian-backed road-building project across pristine Amazon rain forest that would impact the environment and upset lives the small indigenous communities located there. The ensuing political firestorm has not died down.

On September 25 the marchers, including hundreds of women and children, were denied access to water and finally halted by police using clubs and tear gas, leading to violence and the death of at least one child, along with the detention of hundreds of people. A week later, the march resumed 125 miles outside La Paz.  Morales denied he ordered the crackdown and called for a referendum to decide the future of the highway.  However, tribal leaders rejected the idea, claiming that too many indigenous persons from Morales’s coca growers union—who do not live in the impacted area—would be allowed to participate. 

As several Bolivian analysts have noted, the situation reveals where Morales’s heart lies. Besides being president, he remains the head and chief advocate of the coca growers syndicate. Coca cultivation has been expanding into the protected Amazon region where the road would be built and, in the process, has forced the issue on accessibility.

Growing divisions could lead the President’s already-weakened coalition to break apart.  Followers who once viewed Morales as a champion of Pachamama, or Mother Earth, are now skeptical.  Some consider his support for a highway a betrayal.  Others find it hard to believe that the nation’s first indigenous-descended leader would order a halt to a protest march and then stand by as police forcibly broke it up.

Defense minister Cecilia Chacón quit in protest over the violence as did his interior minister and confidant, Sacha Llorenti.  The government ombudsman (Defensor del Pueblo) issued a blistering condemnation of police actions. Morales is now left more reliant than ever on vice president Alvaro García Linera, a Marxist ideologue and former guerrilla who has little support within the MAS, and no indigenous ties. 

Morales has suffered other blows. General René Sanabria, hand-picked to lead the elite anti-drug police unit and then a special intelligence unit within the Ministry of Interior, was arrested in Panama for trafficking drugs and extradited to the United States. He pleaded guilty in a Miami court and was sentenced to 14 years in prison.  Other members of the government have been implicated in the cocaine trade and its encircling corruption since the ejection of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration personnel in 2008.

Unsuccessful attempts to raise gasoline prices during Christmas holidays, the constant harassment of opposition figures, and corruption at senior levels of the administration had already led some MAS leaders to abandon Morales. “We signed up for a revolution, not more of the same corruption and abuse,” one Morales supporter told me recently. “But the government is now totally corrupted. When they start shooting marchers, you know the revolution is dead.”

Finally, Morales is also weakened by the illness of his close political mentor—Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. Not only is Chávez ill, he no longer has the resources to help the Morales government through a fiscal crisis brought on by untenable economic policies inspired Chávez’s Twenty-first Century Socialism concepts. This will lead to more hardships going forward.

Many outside interests have a stake in the survival of the Morales government. Venezuela has perhaps the most, but Iran, China and Russia all have deep ideological investments in Bolivia. That will likely mean Morales can hang on longer than his immediate predecessors, who were driven from office by Morales-led marches and the ensuing chaos. But he has ignored the lessons of history in which he was a protagonist. And that is always dangerous.

Douglas Farah is an adjunct fellow in the CSIS Americas Program and a senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center.