Gonzalo “Goni” Sanchez de Lozada, the president whose administration was toppled by the movement Morales commandeered, actually did great things for Bolivia. He curbed hyper-inflation relatively quickly and coupled privatization with increased social welfare systems. Yet, he failed to understand the coordinated guerilla campaign orchestrated against him, until it was too late. Frankly, we can see echoes of our own recent national experiences in the way Bolivian Chavists provoked Goni’s government with a blockade of La Paz and an ambush of a fuel convoy’s military escort, subsequently exploiting the collateral damage from their response to stoke public outrage.
Nevertheless, many Bolivians had high hopes when Morales came to power, especially the indigenous population, but also including the urban middle class. Tragically for the nation, those hopes were dashed. True to the example of his mentor, Hugo Chavez, Morales soon started imprisoning opposition leaders. Vicentini Orgnani’s own camera captures one such dissenting politician as Morales’ soldiers take him into custody.
Eventually, many of Morales core constituencies turned against him when he decided to blaze an expressway through the TIPNIS state park and indigenous territory, to serve his real masters, the cocoa growers (Vicentini Orgnani’s talking heads telling point out throughout his terms in office, Morales also held the presidency of the Bolivian cocoa growers’ federation). The local, less politically indigenous peoples started a massive protest march that provoked a swift and violent response from Morales (who used Venezuelan troops to do his dirty work, according to one survivor).
