The Real Reason People Fear Evo Morales

"Why are you going to go listen to that idiot? That racist indio (Indian) can't even talk during interviews," snarled my blonde-haired, green eyed Cuban friend when I told him I'd be covering the visit of Bolivian President Evo Morales. He was clearly unhappy with the friendship between Morales and Fidel Castro. My friend was not alone.

Here in the North, the Bush administration regularly denies visas to indigenous, mestizo (mixed Spanish and Indian), and even white members of Morales' cabinet. In the South, meanwhile, right-wing Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa recently published an article about Morales titled, "A New Racism Approaches the Region: Indians Against Whites."

"To put the Latin American problem in racial terms as do some demagogues is senseless and irresponsible," said Vargas Llosa.

Indian power ruffles feathers in the modern world.

The first time I saw Morales during his visit to New York for the United Nations General Assembly meeting this week, he was suited up as a midfielder in a soccer match on the Lower East Side. Though impressed by some of what I'd heard about the very smart reform agenda of the first indigenous head of state in Bolivia -- a majority indigenous country -- in 500 years, the journalist in me in was skeptical about political theater, even if it took the form of soccer, the only sport I really like.

Yet, even from a distance, he looked very much at ease, undistracted from his game despite the blaring cacharpaya (traditional Andean music) or the throngs of Bolivianos screaming "Evo!" at his slightest pass or shot. I asked Mathilde Lazcano, a Bolivian psychologist and social worker who has met Morales and who worked among indigenous populations for more than 20 years, why people were so effusive about Evo. "For most of our lives, the indigenas, the poor of our country could not express ourselves. I'm here because he (and) his movement brought to life my work," she said, adding, "He's the real thing."

After the match, which his team won despite the presidente's missing a penalty kick, he was whisked by his soccer-uniformed security crew through the crowd. He stopped for a moment and stood right near me. I studied his lanky frame, his straight hair and aquiline nose. Most striking were his intense, but warm brown eyes. He looked like a more genial version of the Geronimo pictures I grew up with. He looked "integro" or "integral" as some of my most respected Salvadoran revolutionary friends called those personifying the highest political -- and personal -- ideals. But my biggest surprise was when I saw how tall he was. Most Bolivianos I grew up with were short mestizos like the Chavez brothers who played on a soccer team my not-so-PC brothers in San Francisco's Mission district named the "Conquistadores" or (Spanish) "Conquerors." Like them, it was easier for me to identify with the Spanish and nationalist side of the mestizo equation than with the indigenous side.

The 5-foot-10-inch Evo came, it seems, to turn over the tortilla of our consciousness about Indians, race and power -- and about ourselves.

When I saw him on stage during a speech he gave the next day at the historic Great Hall of the Cooper Union, he started looking even taller. He nervously began by telling us that he was honored to stand at a podium where the likes of honest Abe Lincoln (another lanky president) have stood. But unlike Lincoln, he located himself in relation to not just the "intellectual and professional" and "western" tradition of power but also to the 2,000-year-old collective political tradition of the Aymara people he descended from. "For 500 years," said Morales, "we have had patience."

"It's amazing how he's able to weave and connect so many issues while connecting them back to his base," said my friend, a highly respected former Latin American diplomat in the audience.