Evo Morales

President of Bolivia

Evo Morales (born October 26, 1959) is a leader of the Bolivian cocalero movement, a loose federation of coca-growing campesinos who are resisting the efforts of the Bolivian government to eradicate coca in the department of Chapare. Morales is also leader of the Bolivian political party, Movement Toward Socialism (MAS in its Spanish initials). In the 2002 Bolivian elections, MAS came in second, a surprising upset for Bolivia's traditional parties. As leader of MAS, it brought Morales within a hair's breadth of being elected president of Bolivia, a unique and unprecedented event in the post-columbian history of South America. It made the indigenous activist an instant celebrity throughout the continent.

An Aymara speaker, Morales was born in Orinco, a mining town in the department of Oruro, in the Bolivian Altiplano. In the early 1980s, his family, like many indigenous highlanders, migrated to the lowlands in the east of Bolivia, in search of a better life.

In his family's case, they settled in Chapare, where they dedicated themselves to farming, including crops of coca. During the 1990s, The cocaleros came into repeated conflict with the

government of president Hugo Banzer, who had promised the United States to completely eradicate coca in Bolivia.

As an emerging leader of the cocaleros, Morales was elected to the Bolivian Congress in 1997 as a representative of the provinces Chapare and Carrasco de Cochabamba. He received 70% of

the votes in that district, the highest share of votes among the sixty-eight members of parliament who were elected directly in that election.

Although the recent protests have centred on the issue of Bolivian gas exports, Mr Morales has kept up pressure on the government over the coca issue.

"I am not a drug trafficker," he once told the media. "I am a coca grower. I cultivate coca leaf, which is a natural product. I do not refine [it into] cocaine, and neither cocaine

nor drugs have ever been part of the Andean culture." He is not only against the US-backed coca eradication programmes.

He also seeks some form of national control over Bolivia's huge gas reserves - the second largest in the region. He has pledged to wrest power from the politicians who, he says, have "sacked" Bolivia and to bring the benefits of the nation's hydrocarbons to the people. Bolivians are divided over Mr Morales.

Some believe he is a dangerous leader who could shut down Bolivia and isolate it internationally, pushing the nation further into poverty. But for others he brings hope, he is someone who can open the horizon of a better future in South America's poorest country.