Reserving judgement on Bolivia's newcomer

By Paul Mason BBC, El Alto

Bolivia has been enjoying a lively relationship with the US since Evo Morales took the presidency earlier this year, amid talk of an end to centuries of imperial exploitation and foreign intervention.

One million people live in El Alto

But Mr Morales has yet to prove himself to many of Bolivia's capable citizens.

I had come to El Alto to meet, well, I had better call him Carlos since that is the alias he gave me.

Carlos is an Aymara, one of the indigenous ethnic groups that make up 65% of the population in Bolivia.

And he is a revolutionary - one of the people who ripped up paving stones and threw dynamite to overthrow two presidents in two years.

"The difference with the second uprising," he says "was that we used mobile phones and we were more efficient."

Now the revolution is on hold.

The reason for that is Evo Morales: the left-wing union leader who, in January, became the first indigenist to run a country anywhere in the Americas.

Textbook politics

Are President Evo Morales' pledges to end injustice and inequality too good to be true?

Evo has stunned Bolivia's white elite, the so-called "oligarquia".

For the past 20 years they have run this country according to the IMF textbook.

Now it will be run according to the anti-globalisation movement's textbook.

But for Carlos, the real revolution is still to come.

"Evo is just a populist - an indigenist influenced by Marxism, because his advisers are all Marxists," says Carlos, dismissively.

"Now if a real Aymara revolutionary were to run this country, we could go back to the way it was before 1492."

'Do-it-yourself' city

Carlos is highly educated, deadly serious, and about 20 years old.

What he wants is not socialism or capitalism, but what he calls an Ayllu economy, based on clans and communal property.

These Ayllus still exist, deep in the countryside, but up to now I had only talked about them to anthropologists, not political activists.

El Alto is a city of a million people, and 95% Aymara.

Its low brick buildings and tin roofs stretch as far as you can see across the plain above La Paz. It is a do-it-yourself city.

Aymara peasants built it from nothing over the last 20 years, as they migrated off the land.

Because the government could not provide water, health or education, they did that themselves too.

The typical El Alto shop sells bricks, pipes, taps, wire, steel rods, paint and plaster and the typical El Alto sound is somebody tapping a window frame into place in the cool evening sunlight.

United in opposition

Local government? Well that is DIY too.

There is a network of street committees that can give you planning permission for a drain or summon you to a revolution.

And the Aymara nationalism that is flourishing here takes a long view of things.

El Alto is perched high in the mountains above the capital La Paz

While Bolivia's left-right battle has been going on, say, 50 years, the grudge they are nurturing in El Alto goes back five centuries.

One elderly schoolteacher told me, during a demonstration: "We are sick of the oligarquia. I mean the descendants of the Spanish, the whites.

"They've oppressed us for 500 years and frankly we want them to leave our country."

But he was marching behind a banner of - white, Spanish descended - Che Guevara.

Lively debate

Towards nightfall, El Alto gets political.

There is a square right next to the motorway where people go to buy and sell... and argue.

There is one group of 30 blokes clustered round one man, with a rasta hat and Bin Laden-style beard. He is preaching against Christianity.

Another man has a cart full of herbal medicine and a diagram of the digestive tract. He is preaching against Coca-Cola.

As my cameraman starts filming this, and I stand minding the bags, another meeting breaks out... only it becomes clear I am the one holding it.

It starts with Ernesto Quiroga coming up to me. He is middle aged, dressed in shapeless trousers and a baggy windcheater.

We are capable of political analysis here, you know, we're not stupid Ernesto Quiroga

"Why did you invade Iraq?" he asks.

I explain that not all British people supported the invasion of Iraq.

"If that's true, why don't they vote out Tony Blair?" he asks.

I explain that Tony Blair is the leader of the partido de los trabajadores - the Labour Party - and the main opposition party is the party of... I am searching for the Spanish word when Ernesto suggests one: "la oligarquia."

I consider trying to explain that David Cameron is moving the British Conservative Party away from "la oligarquia" and towards "los nuevos ricos de Londres occidental", but my energy drains away.

"Why did you invade the Malvinas?" he asks, curtly.

By now the Coca-Cola man and the Christianity man are looking a bit forlorn because their audience has thinned and mine has grown considerably.

But if we are onto the Falklands war, it is time to change the subject.

"What do you think of Evo Morales?" I ask.

Ernesto, his voice now full of drama replies: "If he nationalises the oil and gas, the people of El Alto will support him. We are capable of political analysis here, you know, we're not stupid.

"If he does not nationalise the oil and gas," - he draws his finger across his throat - "we will denounce him as a traitor..." adding, with a glint in his eye "... like Tony Blair."

From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Saturday, 1 April, 2006 at 1130 BST on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules for World Service transmission times.