Human Flower Project

Monday, January 23, 2006

Evo

After months of campaigning in floral regalia, Evo Morales is sworn in as Bolivia’s first indigenous president.

Evo Morales and his supporters

With a resounding 54% percent of December’s vote, Evo Morales was elected to preside over Bolivia, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. “Evo,” as he prefers to be called, was sworn in yesterday in La Paz.

Morales, 46, becomes the first indigenous leader to hold the high office, and through many years of political organizing he has worn his heritage quite literally: the most flower-bedecked political figure the modern-day Americas has known.

Born into an Aymara Indian family, Morales herded llamas for a living and became a cocalero (coca grower).  He campaigned for the presidency unsuccessfully in 2002 and again last year on a socialist platform, promising to transform the nation’s raw material wealth—notably its coca-leaf and natural gas reserves—into assets for Bolivia’s poor.

“Today the Bolivian gas is controlled by the multinationals,” Morales said in an interview four years ago. “We, the Bolivians, have lost the ownership….  If we are going to sell our gas we must not sell it as raw material.”

Bolivia, as other nations of the Andes, has been under intense U.S. pressure to eradicate coca, the plant processed into cocaine. But Morales rejects U.S. definitions and intervention, arguing that coca has been a traditional medicinal plant among the indigenous people of the Andes for centuries. “I am a coca grower. I cultivate coca leaf, which is a natural product,” Morales declared. “I do not refine [it into] cocaine, and neither cocaine nor drugs have ever been part of the Andean culture.” 

Throughout his political ascendancy, Morales has presented a striking figure, appearing at hundreds of public events festooned with garlands of coca leaf and Andean flowers. Yoked with blossoms and greenery, it’s as if he wears the Bolivian landscape, both a resource-rich mantle and a robe of international defiance.

The most striking such event took place on the eve of his inauguration. At a pre-Incan archeological site, Tiwanaku, the president-elect received a spiritual blessing from Aymara leaders.

The blessing by Aymara priests at Tiwanaku, Jan. 21

Photo: David Mercado, for Reuters

“Morales walked barefoot up the Akapana pyramid, donning the tunic and a cap decorated with traditional yellow and red Aymara patterns. Then he was showered with white flower petals, and blessed by Indian priests….  Accepting a baton adorned with gold and silver symbolizing his Indian leadership, he put on sandals and descended the pyramid to address the crowd gathered in front of the Kalasasaya temple.



“Morales thanked Mother Earth and God for his victory and promised equality and justice.”

Wearing a striped sweater to meet heads of state, and addressing the people from inside thick wreaths of gladiola blooms and coca leaves, Morales has embodied Bolivia. May he govern it well.