Horrific act politicized Morales

Bolivia's future president saw drug suspect set on fire

BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA

Bolivian soldiers arrested a suspected drug trafficker in the province of Cochabamba in 1981, doused him in fuel and burned him alive. The killing gave birth to Evo Morales' political career.

"I didn't have a particular political orientation or ideology at the time," Morales recounts in the documentary Cocalero, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January and opened on Friday in New York. "But I couldn't understand why the government would do that."

Driven by the memory of that killing, Morales went on to head Bolivia's influential coca union and led street protests that helped bring down two successive governments before he was elected president in 2005.

Cocalero, the directorial debut of 26-year-old Alejandro Landes, chronicles Morales' rise to power with the backing of the coca growers, or cocaleros, who fought U.S.-supported efforts to cut Bolivian drug production. Coca leaves, chewed for religious and cultural purposes across the Andes, are the main ingredient in cocaine.

"The cocaleros are the sons and daughters of the U.S. war on drugs," said the Brazilian-born Landes. "Their defense of the coca leaf detonated a nationalist wave that drove Evo to power."

The film follows the socialist Morales over the final months of his campaign, which ended with him becoming the first indigenous leader of South America's poorest country.

Ruled since colonial days by a white or mixed-race political elite, most indigenous Bolivians — the majority are Aymara or Quechua — didn't have the right to vote until a 1952 revolution abolished Spanish-language literacy requirements. Herbert Klein, author of A Concise History of Bolivia and director of Latin American studies at Stanford University, estimates Bolivia's voting population jumped fivefold, to 1 million, following that change.

Morales' critics often underestimate his political acumen, painting him as a puppet of his allies, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Cuban leader Fidel Castro. A reporter in the film asks Morales if his Movement Toward Socialism party has an office in Caracas and whether Bolivia will be "full of Cubans" if he wins, "just like Venezuela is."

The movie portrays Morales, 47, as a shrewd politician backed by an efficient team. Cocalero shows party officials drilling illiterate voters on how to read a ballot, courting business leaders in the opposition stronghold of Santa Cruz and galvanizing tens of thousands to turn out at political rallies where bags of coca leaves with Morales' photo are handed out.

The film captures intimate and revealing moments in Morales' life, including a scene where the candidate— wearing just a soccer jersey and underwear — jumps into a muddy river and drifts downstream while an aide yells, "Don't let him drown or we'll be without our president!"

On election eve, Morales tells reporters at an outdoor banquet he's not sweating because he's drunk but because he's hot. Then he downs another beer.

Landes doesn't ignore the brutish side of Morales' party.

Sperandio Ravatto, a Catholic priest in the coca-growing Chapare region, says the party forces members to pay their dues and metes out communal justice through beatings or by tying people to spiny trees covered with ants.

"The MAS is in charge here, in every way,'' Ravatto says.