Evo Morales
Evo Morales
Juan Evo Morales Ayma, popularly known as Evo, is a Bolivian politician and cocalero activist who has served as President of Bolivia since 2006. Widely regarded as the country's first president to come from the indigenous population, his administration has focused on the implementation of leftist policies, poverty reduction, and combating the influence of the United States and multinational corporations in Bolivia. A democratic socialist, he is the head of the Movement for Socialismparty...
NationalityBolivian
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth26 October 1959
CityOrinoca, Bolivia
CountryBolivia (Plurinational State of)
We want to overcome our historical problems with Chile. The sea has divided us and the sea must bring us back together again. Chile has agreed, for the first time, to talk about sea access for Bolivia.
As an indigenous leader from Bolivia, I know what exclusion looks like. Before 1952, my people were not allowed to even enter the main squares of Bolivia's cities, and there were almost no indigenous politicians in government until the late 1990s.
We are starting a process of decolonization in Bolivia. All this is bringing about change and we will continue.
In 2006, I entered the presidential palace in the main square of La Paz as the first indigenous president of Bolivia. Our government, under the slogan 'Bolivia Changes,' is committed to ending the colonialism, racism and exclusion that many of our people lived under for many centuries.
I don't mind being a permanent nightmare for the United States.
It's easy for people in an air-conditioned room to continue with the policies of destruction of Mother Earth. We need instead to put ourselves in the shoes of families in Bolivia and worldwide that lack water and food and suffer misery and hunger.
The most important thing is the indigenous people are not vindictive by nature. We are not here to oppress anybody - but to join together and build Bolivia, with justice and equality.
We are going to strengthen relations with state oil companies ... We are going to guarantee that partners have all the right to recover their investment.
We are not a government of mere promises, we follow through on what we propose and what the people demand.
They're won't be zero coca, but there will by zero drug trafficking.
As with any country, we have the right to manage our own resources. This doesn't mean expelling foreign companies or expropriating foreign property. Foreign companies have every right to recover investments and make profits, but profits should be balanced.
That's how life is in peasant families. What luck that three of us survived!
This is a political and social triumph as well as a union triumph and shows that our struggle has not been in vain.
The U.S. should be equally responsible for diminishing the cocaine market within the United States as it is in fighting the drug elsewhere.