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Associated Press Worldstream

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August 15, 2002 Thursday

SECTION: INTERNATIONAL NEWS

DISTRIBUTION: Europe; Britian; Scandinavia; Middle East; Africa; India; Asia; England

LENGTH: 712 words

HEADLINE: Bolivia's downtrodden Indian majority gains political voice, clout

BYLINE: CRAIG MAURO; Associated Press Writer

DATELINE: LA PAZ, Bolivia

BODY:

They wore rainbow-colored shawls and bowler hats. One carried a bow and arrow. Some chewed coca leaf. Windburned faces told of harsh mountain lives far from the Bolivian capital.

Such a spectacle would be nothing unusual in a 60 percent Indian nation, except that this was the inaugural session of Bolivia's new Congress - and with roughly a quarter of the seats, Indians are for the first time a major congressional bloc.

The power structure is still dominated by Spanish-descended Bolivians, but Indian power is shaking things up. For starters, officials have had to scramble to hire interpreters to translate the Indian languages spoken by several lawmakers.

More important at a time of growing social unrest, the Indians' triumph has given the public a striking example of the power of a free vote.

Three times the size of Montana and straddling Andean peaks and Amazon jungle, landlocked Bolivia has retained its pre-Hispanic culture more than any other country in South America.

About a quarter of its 8.3 million people are descended from Aymara-speaking Indians who have inhabited the Andean highlands for centuries. Another three out of 10 Bolivians are Quechua-speakers, descendants of the ancient Inca empire. Then there are several small, isolated jungle tribes.

Five centuries after the conquistadors came, Indian culture still thrives in religion, dress, language and music.

But most Indians live in poverty, either as peasants or in a growing urban underclass of job-seeking migrants.

For Miriam Quispe, a 21-year-old Aymara Indian visiting a friend in La Paz, the change is overdue.

"It's time to start listening to us," she said, her infant child strapped to her back in a blanket of blue, pink and white. "We've always been left out. Politicians have just looked out for themselves."

The Indians' newfound power was revealed in the presidential race as well. Bolivians were stunned when Evo Morales, an up-from-nowhere Aymara union leader, came in less than 2 percentage points behind front-runner Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada.

With no candidate winning over 50 percent of the June vote, the decision went to the incoming Congress, and it chose Sanchez de Lozada by 84 votes to 43.

Morales, now Bolivia's main opposition figure, carved out a political identity by organizing protests and highway blockades by Bolivia's coca growers. His Indian-dominated Movement to Socialism party won 35 of the 157 seats in Congress, with peasants and city dwellers voting for Indian candidates in larger numbers than ever before.

Previously, there were never more than 10 Indians in Congress at any one time, and they usually belonged to traditional parties for whom indigenous rights and identity were not a priority.

The new government is a coalition of two former rival parties dominated by white and mixed-race Bolivians, with only five Indian members in all. That has left Morales' opposition largely outnumbered in Congress. But even so, for an Andean Indian peasant to simply have a sympathetic legislator to turn to is a big step forward.

Also, Morales' party is likely to keep up the pressure by the same means it won national prominence: street protest.

"We lost the election, but we won't lose the battle," said Felix Santos, a congressman representing Morales' party. The president, he said, "will have to ask us for permission just to go to the bathroom."

During the campaign, Morales disturbed U.S. officials and Bolivia's elite with revolutionary rhetoric and his fierce opposition to the government-led eradication of coca leaf - the base ingredient of cocaine and an ancient part of Indian culture.

His support was boosted when, four days before the election, U.S. Ambassador Manuel Rocha said a Morales victory would jeopardize U.S. aid to Bolivia. The remark apparently touched an anti-American nerve among voters, and Morales ended up thanking Rocha publicly for strengthening his campaign.

But Jorge Lazarte, a political analyst, said not all those who voted for Morales support his divisive rhetoric and radical ideas.

They voted for Morales because, he said, "they don't want to remain in the past. They want to be included in the modern Bolivia, to have access to communications, telephone, television, university."

LOAD-DATE: August 16, 2002