In Latin America, A Leftist Vision Is Taking Hold
MOROCHATA, Bolivia -- In perhaps the quirkiest, most colorful of the many presidential campaigns gathering momentum in Latin America, Evo Morales, the Aymara Indian leader turned congressman, strode into this mountain hamlet on a recent day like a conquering hero.

The town's fathers honored him Bolivian-style, placing a heavy wreath of potatoes, roses and green beans around his neck. Crowds of peasants amassed behind him, while a ceremonial escort of indigenous leaders led him across cobblestone streets to a field filled with thousands.

There, Morales gave the kind of leftist speech that increasingly strikes a chord with Latin America's disenchanted voters, railing against privatization, liberalized trade and other economic prescriptions backed by the United States.

"If we win, not just Evo will be president, but the Quechua and Aymara will also be in the presidency," Morales said, referring to Bolivia's two largest Indian communities. "We are a danger for the rich people who sack our resources."

Morales, 46, a former llama herder and coca farmer leader who has a slight lead in the polls for Bolivia's election on Dec. 18, offers what may be the most radical vision in Latin America, much to the dismay of the Bush administration. But the sentiment extends beyond Bolivia. Starting on Dec. 11 in Chile, voters in 11 countries will participate in a series of presidential elections over the next year that could take Latin America further to the left than it already is.

Since an army colonel, Hugo Chávez, won office in Venezuela in 1998, three quarters of South America has shifted to the left, though most countries are led by pragmatic presidents like Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil and Néstor Kirchner in Argentina.

That decisive shift has a good chance of spreading to Bolivia, Ecuador and, for the first time in recent years, north of the Panama Canal.

In Central America, the Sandinistas, led by Daniel Ortega, are positioning themselves to win back the presidency they lost in 1990. Farther north in Mexico, polls show that Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a hard-charging leftist populist, may replace the business-friendly president, Vicente Fox, who is barred from another term.

Traditional, market-friendly politicians can still win in all of these countries. But at the moment, polls show a general leftward drift that could result in policies sharply deviating from longstanding American economic remedies like unfettered trade and privatization, better known as the Washington Consensus.

"The left is contesting in a very practical way for political power," said Jim Shultz, executive director of Democracy Center, a policy analysis group in Bolivia. "There's a common thread that runs through Lula and Kirchner and Chávez and Evo and the left in Chile to a certain degree and that thread is a popular challenge to the market fundamentalism of the Washington Consensus."

The shift has not been as dramatic as leaders like Chávez, whose open antagonism toward the United States is rare among other leaders, might like. Presidents like da Silva and Tabaré Vázquez in Uruguay practice the kind of fiscal restraints accepted by Wall Street.

Still, the prospects for a further turn to the left could signal a broad, popular distancing from the Bush administration, whose focus on fighting drugs and advocating regional free trade has failed to generate much backing.

While the Bush administration may be pleased that its most trusted and important ally, President Alváro Uribe in Colombia, will probably win re-election in May, Washington's most fervent adversary, Chávez, is also expected to cruise to victory late next year.

And the left may mount a strong challenge in countries like market-friendly Peru. There, a nationalistic cashiered army officer, Ollanta Humala, who compares himself to Chávez, has gained ground and is now second in the polls to a conservative congresswoman.

No one, though, quite offers the up-by-the-bootstraps story that Morales does. He grew up poor in the frigid highlands. Four of his six siblings died young, he said. When the mining industry went bust, the family moved to Bolivia's coca-growing heartland, where Morales made his mark as a leader of the coca farmers, who cultivate a shiny green leaf that is the main component used to make cocaine.

That made him a pariah to the United States, which has bankrolled the army's effort to eradicate the crop. But under Morales's leadership, the cocaleros have fought back in recent years, paralyzing the country with road blockades and playing a role in uprisings that toppled two presidents in 20 months.

Now, Morales travels Bolivia's pockmarked mountain roads in a relentless campaign, blasting Andean music that heralds him ("We feel it, we feel it, Evo presidente," goes a standard line).

Morales delights in it all - the ceremonial greetings at isolated, windswept towns, the potluck lunches of potatoes and beef stew that he gobbles down.

It may seem improvised, but those who know Morales said his is a calculated campaign that draws its strength from the support he has built across Bolivia through his political party, the Movement Toward Socialism.

Using a political opportunity that would have been unthinkable for an indigenous leader a generation ago, Morales vows to sharply veer Bolivia away from the liberalized trade and privatizations that have marked the country's economy for a generation. His own proposals lack specifics, but they tap into the latent discontent of voters upset that market reforms did little to improve their lives.

Michael Shifter, who is closely tracking Latin American campaigns for the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue, said, "Evo is the expression of that frustration, that resentment and the search for answers."

In two days of interviews on the campaign trail, Morales complained that open borders had brought in cheap potatoes from Argentina. He offers a range of solutions, like loans to microbusinesses and the creation of more cooperatives. He says his government will demand a bigger take from the foreign corporations that are developing Bolivia's large natural gas reserves.

"We will have an economy based on solidarity and reciprocity," Morales said. "We do not dismiss the presence of foreign investment, but we want it be real fresh investment to industrialize our hydrocarbons, all under state control."

He seems to relish talking about the United States, noting that criticisms from American officials have boosted his popularity in an increasingly nationalistic country.

His talk resonates with people like Herminio López, a leader in the hamlet of Piusilla. "We are sure he will not defraud or fool us, like all the others," he said. "Eighty-percent of us are poor and for us to have someone like him makes us proud."

Morales knows well what appeals to his supporters.

Aside from an economic transformation, he offers such symbolic proposals as changing the Bolivian flag. Instead of just three bars, the flag of his government would also feature the rainbow squares of the wipala, the indigenous flag of the Andes.

"We are very close, my friends," Morales told the crowd here in Morochata. "This moment is not just for Evo Morales. It is for all of us."