A Man for the People; Indigenous leader Evo Morales is a rising political star.

Byline: Jimmy Langman

Evo Morales is not a conventional politician. He's an Aymara Indian who grew up in the harsh southern highlands of Bolivia. The son of a llama shepherd, he didn't graduate from high school but instead worked as a trumpet player in a bar band when he was a teenager. Later, his family became coca farmers in Bolivia's Chapare region, and Morales used his natural charisma to become the leader of six coca-growing unions. That's an influential job in a nation where nearly 70 percent of the people are indigenous and mostly poor. The United States treated Morales as persona non grata in the 1990s, when he led coca farmers in sometimes violent challenges against U.S.-imposed coca-eradication programs. But today the 44-year-old indigenous leader is a congressman and president of the leftist Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party. More important, he's positioned himself as a serious contender for president when voting is held again in two years.

Morales's political rise represents yet another diplomatic headache for the United States in Latin America. Like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Argentina's Nestor Kirchner, who has endeared himself to his countrymen by talking tough to the International Monetary Fund, Morales frequently rails at the IMF and Washington for their "neoliberal" economic policies. Morales calls for a "fundamental redistribution of wealth." If elected, he tells NEWSWEEK, he vows to reverse many of the free-market reforms that his country has adopted. "Neoliberalism is the cause of [most] of the political confrontations in Bolivia and Latin America--and unless it is changed, there will be more confrontations," he says.

Despite such controversial rhetoric, Bolivian political analysts say that Morales has tempered his views. Seeking to widen his political base, Morales appears to be more supportive of Bolivia's political process than he's been in the past. Case in point: he played only a minor role in the violent populist uprising in October that hounded Bolivia's previous president, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, out of office. Morales is frequently invited abroad to meet with foreign leaders and to speak to anti-globalization and other gatherings.

Politically independent President Carlos Mesa knows he can't effectively govern Bolivia without striking deals with MAS, the second largest party in the nation's Congress. He recently praised Morales for acting "responsibly." The two ...