Barring mishap (i.e. "successful CIA intervention"), Evo Morales could soon become Latin America's first wholly indigenous leader.
High up on the Bolivian altiplano near Lake Titicaca, an Aymara priest holds a green plastic lighter to a carved wooden cup containing strips of paper. Despite the fierce gusts of the early morning wind, the paper catches and smoke billows forth. The priest, dressed in traditional, brightly coloured robes, holds the smoking vessel before the presidential candidate.
"We have lost perhaps 500 years," says the priest. "Mother moon, mother earth, we ask you in this place to support us." The candidate, smoke blowing in his face, looks deferential.
It is a symbolic moment in an extraordinary campaign that has seen this impoverished country of almost nine million take faltering steps to recovering control of its destiny. Wracked by unrest, uncertainty, external interference, the IMF and a corrupt elite, Bolivia faces an election on December 18 that could see the ascension of Latin America's first wholly indigenous leader.
Barring mishaps, Evo Morales, a former coca farmer and union chief turned leader of the Movement to Socialism (MAS), seems certain to win the biggest share of the vote. It is a prospect that has the US scrambling to label him a narco-terrorist and pawn of Cuba's Fidel Castro and Venezuela's Hugo Chávez. For many on the left, Mr Morales is the poster boy of anti-globalisation, an iconic figure who will chart an independent course for Bolivia, setting an example to others.
