COCA FARMERS' HERO HOLDS SWAY IN BOLIVIA

US Dismayed As Socialist Becomes Nation's Power Broker

He has been described as the new Simon Bolivar, the visionary soldier who
tried to unite the South American continent. His own model, judging by the
poster fixed to the wall of his office in the parliament building of the
Bolivian capital of La Paz, is more recent: Che Guevara.

Whatever happens in Bolivia in the near future, it will not be without the
say-so of Evo Morales: champion of cocaine producers and indigenous
peoples; socialist, anti-imperialist and America's declared enemy.

Morales and his Movement Towards Socialism have served as the lightning
conductor in a month of violent clashes that led to the flight into exile
of Bolivia's President, 72-year-old Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, nicknamed
'El Gringo' for his closeness to the US.

Morales came second to Lozada in last year's elections, which marked the
explosion of an indigenous political movement on to Bolivia's political scene.

While Carlos Mesa may have been sworn in as interim President, few in the
country are in any doubt that it is the era of Morales that has dawned in
the past few weeks.

Morales's rise has been rapid. The son of an impoverished peasant farmer,
his advance as leader of the Aymara indigenous peoples, one of Bolivia's
two Indian groups that make up more than 60 per cent of the population, has
caught the US, which has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in its
drug war in Bolivia, unawares.

Washington has been horrified by the appearance of a series of left-leaning
South American leaders rejecting its assumption of leadership of the region
- - including Lula in Brazil. Morales wants Bolivia's cocaleros to be allowed
to grow and market their cocaine after years of US-funded efforts to stem
production, the most successful eradication programme of America's drug wars.

Morales rejects the 'neo-colonialism' of the US in South America, calling
for an anti-capitalist, local, indigenous and socialist future for his
country. And Bolivians are listening.

He wants the country's natural resources to be nationalised, including the
natural gas that Lozado wanted to sell to the US via Chile - a move that
triggered the uprising. Above all, Morales wants the long-suppressed voice
of the indigenous peoples to have full expression. Little wonder that,
before the presidential elections, US ambassador Manuel Rocha warned
Bolivians that voting in Morales could lead to US aid being slashed.

But whether America likes it or not, Morales is in the driving seat, as
both a power broker and a man who, if elections were held now, would become
Bolivia's first indigenous president.

A handsome man of 43, a stocky bachelor with thick black hair, he revels in
being blacklisted by the US.

His door in the parliament building in La Paz is always open to those from
all sectors of society who seek his ear, although it is among the poor that
he has his greatest appeal. He is a son of Indians of the Altoplano, who,
like so many others, took over a small parcel of land in Chapare in the
1980s and went into the coca business.

With the imposition of the US-funded Plan Dignity - the sometimes violent
campaign to eradicate cocaine production - Morales emerged at the head of
the cocaleros and is unembarrassed by his advocacy of the coca industry. In
an interview last year he laid out where it fits into his vision for Bolivia.

'There is a unanimous defence of coca because the coca leaf is becoming the
banner for national unity, a symbol of national unity in defence of our
dignity. Since coca is a victim of the United States, as coca growers we
are also victims of the United States, but then we rise up to question
these policies to eradicate coca.

'Now is the moment to see the defence of coca as the defence of all natural
resources, just like hydrocarbon, oil, gas; and this consciousness is
growing. That is why it is an issue of national unity.'

Morales has expanded his power base from the poverty-striken pueblos, once
enriched by coca but unable to find new markets for the bananas, manioc
root and other crops the government said they should grow, to the small
businessmen who swelled the anti-Lozado protests.

While the US embassy in La Paz atempts to link him to a coup attempt
against Lozado, the popularity of Morales is more a result of US policy
than his charisma.

Plan Dignity - launched in 1998 - was a huge success, destroying at one
stage more than 80 per cent of coca production, but it failed to produce
new sources of income for coca farmers, and the brutal, military nature
with which it was carried out fuelled resentment.

The most hated unit - the Expeditionary Task Force of 1,500 former Bolivian
soldiers - is paid, fed, clothed and trained by the US embassy. The farmers
call them 'America's mercenaries' and accuse them of shootings and beatings.

According to a former guerrilla, sociologist Alvaro Garcia Linera, Morales
has also benefited from the emergence of a youthful intellectual elite,
preaching indigenous autonomy. These activists have fuelled the rejection
of the traditional Spanish-speaking ruling class, in favour of tribal-based
communitarian culture. But Linera warns of dangers ahead - Bolivia, he
says, is on a slow slide towards war.