An Indigenous to Bolivian Presidency
Evo Morales Aima, an Aymara Indian who did not go to university, is on the brink of becoming the first indigenous president of Bolivia, if Sunday´s elections ratify the polls.

Reality has thus gone beyond the dreams of this llama shepherd born in 1959, whose greatest dream as a child was to be able to travel in one of the buses that agitated the herd he and his father led on the frozen Andean altiplano (high plateau).

Neither his house nor his town had electric power or drinking water and, he recalled, he did his homework on a pile of adobe, by candlelight, seated on a piece of sheepskin.

Later he lived in Oruro, capital of the region bearing the same name, where he alternated jobs as brick maker, baker and trumpet player. His passion has always been soccer.

His priority then was to survive. He owes his subsequent training to what he describes as the university of life, including military service when he was 17.

He was mistreated as a conscript, and he was shocked by abuses committed by the dictatorship of Hugo Banzer, whose political heir, Jorge Quiroga, is his main rival in the elections on Sunday.

The hunger-driven emigration of his family to coca-producing central areas in El Chapare was crucial to his fate as it helped mold his consciousness and forge him as a leader.

His leadership role began in 1983 when he was elected sports secretary by his coca farmers union, thus launching an extraordinary career that culminated in 1996 with his election as president of the Coordinating Committee of the six federations of coca growers.

The title of "coca leader" comes from that time. It has been used by those who want to reduce his dimension and avoid the fact that Morales has become a popular, political leader of national importance, who transcended coca growers a long time ago.

Washington hostility has reached the point of describing Morales, who is the leader of the Movement towards Socialism (MAS) as a threat to US interests along with Presidents of Cuba and Venezuela Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, which Morales considers an honor.