How Morales has gone from defender of Mother Earth to grinding roadbuilder

BOLIVIAN LETTER: THE ONE fact that almost everyone knows about Evo Morales is that he is Bolivia's first ever indigenous president.

As an upstart candidate, he promised to end 500 years of colonial oppression, give back power to his country’s indigenous majority and defend Pachamama – Mother Earth – from the ravages of capitalism, which he blames for poisoning the planet.

After his election victory in 2005, he changed the country’s name to the Plurinational State of Bolivia in recognition of its various indigenous peoples and made their multicoloured wiphala the country’s flag alongside the traditional red, yellow and green tricolour. He passed the “Law of the Rights of Mother Earth” which declares the Earth “sacred”, and a new constitution gave local indigenous peoples a much greater say in their communities’ future.

This record made President Morales a hero for indigenous rights campaigners around the world and the UN’s General Assembly declared him a “World Hero of Mother Earth”.

But on September 25th that image suffered a major blow when police used batons and tear gas to attack a march by poor Indians opposed to plans by Morales’s government to build a €320 million road through their Amazonian reservation.

The Indians had set out in August from their homes in the Isiboro Sécure Indigenous Territory National Park aiming to walk to the capital of La Paz to raise their objections to the road directly with Morales himself.

They say the proposed 300km (185 mile) highway through their territory will bring all the usual evils associated with roads cut through the Amazon – migrants, deforestation, violence and pollution – and destroy a pristine wilderness that is home to about 15,000 Indians who live by hunting and subsistence farming.

To the surprise and frustration of many former admirers, Morales has been a stubborn defender of the plan to defile a pristine corner of Pachamama over the objections of its indigenous inhabitants.

He claims the project will boost growth and spread prosperity. But the road’s opponents say it is Brazilian commercial interests and not the Indians of Isiboro Sécure who will benefit. If completed, the highway will help link Brazil’s rainforest to Peruvian ports on the Pacific, thus cutting the cost of transporting goods to Asia’s economies. That is why it is being financed by Brazil’s state development bank and will be built by a Brazilian multinational.

Even more worrying for those who thought Morales would represent a break with Bolivia’s colonial past, the Indians of Isiboro Sécure say they were not consulted about the project and their defenders – which include a large number of former Morales supporters – say this fact alone makes the proposed highway illegal according to Bolivia’s supposedly indigenous friendly new constitution.

What the highway dispute has done is expose a fundamental contradiction in the make-up of the president’s Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) alliance. On one hand, part of it is composed of groups like the Indians of Isiboro Sécure who would prefer if the modern world left them alone and who had thought the new constitution gave them the means to opt out from it.

But a larger portion is more interested in economic improvement than living in pristine wildernesses. Though also indigenous and flattered by the Indian trappings added to the state, the backbone of Morales’s support comes from those who want the government to oversee development to combat Bolivia’s chronic poverty. If that means cutting roads through the Amazon or enticing Chinese investment into the highly toxic mining industry, so be it.

The police said they only intervened against the marchers to prevent them clashing with a counter-march made up of dynamite-wielding Morales supporters who want the highway built. One indigenous leader of a pro-Morales grouping even referred to the Isiboro Sécure marchers as “savages”, as opposed to the presumably more “evolved” indigenous supporters of the highway.

As well as exposing the contradictory make-up of the MAS, the highway has once again laid bare the intolerance of many of its more influential sectors. In truth, this has been evident for some years but is only garnering more attention now that those suffering are not the wealthy right-wing oligarchs of Santa Cruz but the hunter-gatherers who have come out of the rainforest to defend their home.

But the violent assault on the marchers has swung public opinion behind them. Trade unions and the country’s militant miners have come out in support. The defence minister quit in protest and the interior minister was forced out after he defended the police action.

The conspiratorially obsessed Morales has gone from insinuating the marchers are stooges of his political opponents to blaming police provocateurs for unleashing the violence to smear him and his ratings have slumped.

Morales has suspended the highway plan but has not given up hope of building it. The Indians of Isiboro Sécure have resumed their march. Their ragged column should arrive in La Paz within a week. For Morales it promises to be an awkward moment.