Evo Morales 'Padlocked' In Palace
BBC Newsnight, Bolivia
April 5, 2006
By Paul Mason
Shortly before 0500, the military police huddled in the doorways of the Plaza Murillo begin to stir beneath their capes.
The door of the presidential palace creaks open and the guards, in scarlet tunics and white webbing, begin a rigmarole of shuffling, stamping and saluting that is the changing of the guard.
The police are muscular white guys. The guards, armed with muskets, are willowy young indigenous kids - the regiment has always recruited from the "indios" for ethnic novelty value.
Now, as the police strut away, the guards smile nervously at each other from beneath their kepis: then they collapse in a fit of giggles.
Since Evo Morales took office, the joke is no longer on them. "Look," President Morales tells me, "60 years ago, our grandparents didn't even have the right to walk into the main square - not even in the gutter. And then we got into parliament - and now we're here."
He looks around apologetically at the long Rococco state room we are meeting in - at the ormolu chairs we are sitting on. He has installed a portrait of Che Guevara in the presidential suite but, apart from that, the palace remains as it was under his neo-liberal predecessors.
"It's been a great victory - now this is a stronghold for the indigenous people. And we're not going to stop," Mr Morales says.
"The most important thing is the indigenous people are not vindictive by nature. We are not here to oppress anybody - but to join together and build Bolivia, with justice and equality."
More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4878466.stm
April 5, 2006
By Paul Mason
Shortly before 0500, the military police huddled in the doorways of the Plaza Murillo begin to stir beneath their capes.
The door of the presidential palace creaks open and the guards, in scarlet tunics and white webbing, begin a rigmarole of shuffling, stamping and saluting that is the changing of the guard.
The police are muscular white guys. The guards, armed with muskets, are willowy young indigenous kids - the regiment has always recruited from the "indios" for ethnic novelty value.
Now, as the police strut away, the guards smile nervously at each other from beneath their kepis: then they collapse in a fit of giggles.
Since Evo Morales took office, the joke is no longer on them. "Look," President Morales tells me, "60 years ago, our grandparents didn't even have the right to walk into the main square - not even in the gutter. And then we got into parliament - and now we're here."
He looks around apologetically at the long Rococco state room we are meeting in - at the ormolu chairs we are sitting on. He has installed a portrait of Che Guevara in the presidential suite but, apart from that, the palace remains as it was under his neo-liberal predecessors.
"It's been a great victory - now this is a stronghold for the indigenous people. And we're not going to stop," Mr Morales says.
"The most important thing is the indigenous people are not vindictive by nature. We are not here to oppress anybody - but to join together and build Bolivia, with justice and equality."
More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4878466.stm
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