Bolivia Letter: It was the 40th anniversary of the killing of Che Guevara in the wilderness of south-eastern Bolivia and a crowd - including three government ministers and representatives of the Cuban and Venezuelan embassies - was packed tight the other day into a low-ceilinged room to commemorate that fact.
Former guerrilla now senator Antonio Peredo recalled some of the heroes. During his fiery speech he told how Gen Hugo Banzer, the Western-supported dictator of the day, had kept him and some of his friends handcuffed for months at a time.
"We were the lucky ones. José was also handcuffed for months too, but with his hands behind his back," said Peredo, pointing to my friend José Pimentel, now the quietly spoken deputy for the government MAS movement led by Evo Morales.
As the event came to an end in the suffocating hall, songs were sung lustily, poems were read touchingly and paper flags waved enthusiastically.
Thus far the evening went to confirm the widespread foreign view of President Morales as just another of of the new left-wing generation of Latin-American leaders, such as Luis Inacio Lula of Brazil, Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Tabaré Vásquez of Uruguay and several others.
That is unfortunate since the problems he faces now that - with a huge popular majority - he sets out to improve conditions for the nine million, mostly desperately poor, Bolivians, are more complicated and much more difficult to that those of most other Latin American leaders.
He more than the rest wants to right some of the elementary wrongs stemming from the very DNA of Bolivia, the domination on a series of native peoples.
Two, the Quechuas and the Aimaras, had experience of empire when the first European empire-builders, the Spaniards, arrived, conquered and started exploiting them in the 16th century.
There are others - Chiquitanos, Mojenos, Guaranes - and they all, particularly the women, want an end to domination by the descendants of the Europeans.
The Aimaras and Quechuas are numbered in millions: there is only a handful left of the tiniest tribes, such as the Urus of Oruro, but all have been demanding reform for a long time.
That is behind Morales's push for a constituent assembly to rewrite the constitution which, with no little difficulty, he has been trying to push through congress for a year.
Conservatives in the senate, where he does not have the votes to change the constitution straight away, have been blocking his progress. He has not given up, because he is still committed to give the indigenous majority the reforms they want.
He proclaims: "In 1829, the year of independence [ from Spain], only one part of the nation was freed. So today our people and the social movements are seeking their second and definitive liberation."
So far there is deadlock between the president and congress but negotiations are continuing.
Morales is hoping that the most important item on his agenda will get sorted out this year.
Meanwhile he has been taking measures to reassure his supporters that he is not going to let his good intentions peter out into the sand.
He is maintaining his defence of the growing of coca leaf, whose use is as normal to the indigenous people of the Andes as Guinness is to the Irish.
A mild stimulant to be chewed by those who live at high altitudes - and La Paz stands at 13,000 feet - it is as inconceivable that it should be uprooted as it would be for a foreign military expedition to obliterate the Guinness brewery in Dublin.
However it is also a constituent of cocaine, to which foreigners have become addicted and against which a diminishing number of countries are waging a patently unwinnable "war".
Previous governments allowed US troops into Bolivia in the drive against narcotics so he proclaims the motto "Coca yes: cocaine no". He is keeping a precarious balance between allowing coca to be grown for domestic purposes but not at a rate which would supply the cocaine manufacturers.
In March he appealed to growers at the coca-growing centre of Coripata to keep to the legal limit of 12,000 hectares for the area. "We must talk about rationalising the crop, comrades," he announced in the presence of Andrew Standley, the representative in Bolivia of the EU, which is promising €10 million in aid.
It is Morales's good fortune that for once his traditionally indigent country need not worry too much about truckling to the demands of rich governments.
Last year he squeezed out a more equitable share of profits from the oil and gas companies which has given him a surplus on the domestic budget. Also, hydrocarbon exports are doing wonders for the balance of trade.
Bolivia's gas supplies are massive and Morales and Chávez are cooking up a sort of Opec alliance for gas producers.
For the first time for years a Bolivian leader can look forward to the country having cash to play with.
All he has to do now is to give the indigenous peoples a better deal: the new money will help him do that.