Political crisis intensifies historical ethnic divisions

LA PAZ, Bolivia — Bolivia’s increasingly violent political crisis is exposing racial, ethnic and geographic divisions that many thought had been overcome after 14 years of rule by the Andean nation’s first indigenous president and a new “plurinational” constitution, analysts say.

While the resignation of Evo Morales marked the exit of the last member of the wave of leftist leaders who took power in South America in recent decades, inside Bolivia the departure of the president who had stabilized the chronically unstable nation was a political earthquake that has reopened old cracks.

Analysts say the movement to oust Morales was an urban middleclass revolt against what opponents said was fraud in his reelection and his repeated bids to retool the constitution to extend his rule through four terms. After weeks of protests, military leaders urged Morales to step down.

With Morales living in exile in Mexico, largely rural indigenous protesters, some coca leaf growers, are now filling the streets to demand the return of the Aymara former president.

“He is indigenous like me,” said Macario Chura, a poor altiplano farmer, in a recent march to demand the return of Morales from exile.

From Mexico, Morales has encouraged his followers to keep up the pressure, angrily tweeting that the killing of eight of his supporters Friday in the town of Sacaba was a “massacre” and calling the forces that toppled him racist. The nation’s Ombudsman’s Office says 23 people have been killed in violence since the disputed Oct. 20 election.

“A 14year political cycle has ended,” said Marcelo Silva, a political science professor at the Higher University of San Andres in La Paz. “We are living postEvoism, and this brings tensions and uncertainties that complicate the transition until a new political project emerges.”

Racist discourses and regional rivalries have reemerged in a nation divided between a wealthier, more Europeandescended lowland east and a more indigenous, poorer, highland west.

“It is worrying that in spite of 14 years (of Morales rule) and a new constitution that enshrines a plurinational state these endemic contradictions have not been resolved,” Silva said.

Morales upended politics on Jan. 22, 2006 when he took power. He ushered in a new constitution that created a Congress with seats reserved for Bolivia’s smaller indigenous groups and recognized the Andean earth deity Pachamama instead of the Roman Catholic Church. The charter also “refounded“Bolivia as a “plurinational“state, allowing selfrule for the nation’s indigenous peoples.