Lowland Indians abandon Bolivian president

LA PAZ, Bolivia -- Bolivia's long-downtrodden indigenous majority adored President Evo Morales as he championed a new constitution that promised the nation's 36 ethnicities unprecedented autonomy.

But three years after voters overwhelmingly approved that document, making poor, landlocked Bolivia a "plurinational" republic, the country's first indigenous president is under attack for essentially ignoring it.

Lowlands Indians have quit his Movement Toward Socialism over his insistence -- without seeking their consent -- on building a road across a virgin jungle preserve and for forging ahead with natural-gas projects on their traditional lands.

Neither marathon marches nor weeks-long occupation strikes have swayed Morales, an Aymara Indian who was a rabble-rousing coca growers' union leader before first winning the presidency in December 2005.

Fellow native Bolivians, ironically, probably now represent the biggest threat to Morales' goal of winning re-election in 2014 to a third term. Even his allegiance among the Aymara and Quechua who dominate Bolivia's more populous highlands is flagging.

Lowlands peoples' anger with Morales was on display at a Jan. 25 banquet in the eastern city of Santa Cruz, where leaders of Bolivia's main lowlands indigenous federation, known as CIDOB, forged an alliance with Santa Cruz's business-friendly Gov. Ruben Costas, Morales' arch-nemesis.

Three years earlier, federation activists had battled Costas' confederates in the streets with sticks and rocks, defending Morales' revolution against a pro-autonomy campaign by the wealthy agribusinessmen Costas represents.

Now the two groups were breaking bread at an exclusive club where Bolivia's indigenous were more accustomed to waiting tables.

"Traitors are never scarce," a wounded Morales complained afterward. "I don't understand how some of our leaders can sign agreements with representatives of big landowners, with the oppressors of the past."

Morales had expropriated tens of thousands of acres of land the government had declared fallow or ill-gotten from major landowners and turned it over to indigenous groups with historic claims.

Nothing formal was signed at the Santa Cruz banquet, but formerly implacable foes entered a marriage of convenience. The target: Morales.