For many Latin Americans, Evo Morales symbolized the anticorporatocracy, pro-poor people movement. Dressed in traditional Andean sweaters, ponchos, and woolen caps, he dared to flaunt his humble roots. He unabashedly proclaimed the greatness of his people to the world, saying that just because they had been subjugated for centuries did not mean they would not now fight for their lands and their pride. Exploitation did not equal inferiority. Materialistic poverty was not a sign of moral inadequacy.
Announcing that he would run for president, he promised to fight foreign corporations determined to plunder resources and to defy the United States' demand that his country destroy its coca crops. Emphasizing that the plant only becomes a problem after it is processed into cocaine and shipped outside Bolivia, he insisted that the drug issue be handled at the consumer end.
In December 2005 Evo Morales won a landslide victory to become Bolivia's first Indian president. He immediately announced that he would cut his salary in half, mandated that no Cabinet minister would be paid more than he, and earmarked the money saved for hiring more public school teachers. His vice president, Alvaro Garcia Linera, had been a guerrilla leader in Bolivia's anticorporato-cracy revolutionary movement, spent four years in prison, was educated as a mathematician in Mexico, and then became a sociology professor at Mayor de San Andres university in La Paz, where he was praised as an intellectual and political analyst. The minister of justice, a woman, had worked as a maid. The leader of the senate was a rural school teacher. Although indigenous, Morales said his commitment was to all of Bolivia's poor and disenfranchised, whether they lived in city slums, high in the Andes, or deep in the jungles.
The mainstream press in the United States openly deceived its U.S. audiences. In a campaign eerily reminiscent of the one launched against Guatemala's Arbenz before we invaded that country, the media conveyed the impression that Morales was a "Communist" and "agent of Castro."
Bechtel dropped its legal suit against Bolivia in January 2006, the month after Morales's election.
Less than four months later, on May 2, 2006, President Morales ordered the Bolivian military to occupy oil and gas fields around the country and place them under state control. Giving corporate executives 180 days to renegotiate existing contracts with the government, he proclaimed, "The looting by the foreign companies has ended." Rather than sharing profits in the ratio of roughly 80 percent to foreign corporations, 20 percent to Bolivians, he demanded a reversal in those numbers.29
Some saw the Bolivian move as a swing away from a united Latin front; they pointed out that Brazil and Argentina would be most significantly impacted since they import large quantities of Bolivian natural gas. However, Chavez vehemently defended Morales, saying, "We support a Bolivia that is pointing the same direction that Venezuela is pointing. We have recovered the control of our natural resources and our mineral riches in a very long and difficult process that even cost us an attempted coup. (In Bolivia) I am sure that everything will turn out well."
Morales himself made his policies very clear; he favored nationalism and also a united front when it came to Latin America versus the United States; he opposed corporate exploitation, regardless of where the corporations were headquartered:
We're going to defend the natural resources. If before, Bolivia was no man's land, now it is someone's land. It is the land of Bolivians, especially the indigenous and original people. Private companies, oil companies, transnational companies, if they want to come here and they want to respect Bolivian laws, they are welcome .. . but the companies that don't want to respect Bolivian laws, that don't want to subordinate themselves to the state, the law—may bad things come to them!30
In January 2006, Chile followed in the footsteps of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, and Uruguay when Michelle Bachelet won her bid for the presidency on a platform that emphasized self-determination. The first woman ever to hold this position, she immediately fulfilled a campaign promise by naming women to half her Cabinet posts.
While these leaders could trace their heritage back to heads of state who had courageously opposed empires in the past, something different was happening in the first decade of the new millennium. And that difference had global implications.
Never before had so many voters sent to the highest office at the same time leaders who so strongly defended the rights of their people against the moneyed interests of the United States. Never before had there been such unanimity. Never before such a show of support for the poorest of the poor—both urban and rural. Or for indigenous populations. Never had colonized countries delivered such a powerful and unanimous message to their colonizer. It had not happened in the western hemisphere. Not in Africa or Asia. Although the Middle East also resisted the grip of empire, the struggles there took a terrible toll on the region's own people. The Latin American revolution, on the other hand, was not just aimed at expelling foreign exploiters; it was a positive movement toward greater equality, freedom, and social reform. For the most part, it was peaceful. Its impact reached around the planet and was setting an example; it accomplished concrete goals and inspired people on every continent.
The newly elected presidents also began something completely unprecedented in the history of the hemisphere. They agreed to defend each other. United not by a single leader (as in the time of Bolivar) but through mutual consent, they expanded their stance against the IMF, the World Bank, and the U.S. government to include self-defense. Countries like Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, and Venezuela led efforts to switch their military objectives from protecting multinational corporations to defending their countries against foreign intervention. And they began to seriously discuss the possibility of extensive military cooperation.
In addition to strengthening the bonds with one another, Latin American countries began aggressively developing relationships with India, China, and other nations that share a distrust of U.S. empire building. In a highly significant November 2005 trip to the continent, China's President Hu Jintao visited Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Cuba, and conducted bilateral meetings with Mexico's President Vicente Fox and Peru's President Alejandro Toledo. Chinese businesses have quietly beaten out U.S. corporations in a number of areas that previously were considered U.S. turf. A Chinese company effectively controls the "anchor ports" at both ends of the Panama Canal. China and Brazil launched their Earth Resources Satellite program in 1998. While Washington's attempts to create trade pacts that favor U.S. corporations have met with repeated resistance from Latin leaders, less onerous
overtures by the Chinese have been embraced. This may seem contradictory given China's potential as an emerging empire; however, Latins understand that China, unlike the United States, does not have a history of meddling in their affairs. Similar to the U.S.S.R. in the sixties, seventies, and eighties, China today is seen as a place that offers balance, a protector against U.S. aggression.
That Latin emissaries are fanning out across the world reflects a determination to increase commercial relationships; however, it is also part of the anti-corporatocracy movement and a clear indication that our southern neighbors are determined to oppose U.S. hegemony. Latin fears of U.S. intervention are justified by covert activities, as well as by Washington's pronounced policies. This became clear to me when I was approached by several jackals who wanted to "come in from the cold" and confess their recent sins.