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Introduction Tiwanaku, January 21, 2006 Félix Muruchi Poma The indigenous people—who are the majority of the Bolivian population . . . historically we have been marginalized, humiliated, hated, insulted, and condemned to extinction. This is our history: our people were never even recognized as human beings. . . . This early morning, I am very happy to see our brothers and sisters singing in the historic Murillo plaza: the Plaza Murillo, like the Plaza San Francisco, where, 40 or 50 years ago, we did not have the right to enter. . . . This is our history, our experience. And, above all, I want to say to our indigenous brothers and sisters who have gathered here in Bolivia: the campaign of 500 years of indigenousblack -popular resistance has not been in vain. Evo Morales Ayma, Inaugural Address Iremember January 21, 2006, a day that brought a close to one phase of the political work to which I have dedicated a great deal of my life. This was the day that Evo Morales, a peasant, a coca-producer of Aymara origin, a person indigenous to the altiplano like me, received the bastón de mando, the symbol of indigenous authority in the Andes.This act marked the beginning of a new epoch in Bolivian politics: for the first time since the founding of the Republic in 1826, a First Nations person became president. Along with hundreds of thousands of people who had arrived from both around the country and all over the world, I traveled to Tiwanaku to witness the symbolic possession of office.The joy and emotion I felt were reinforced by the wonderful music played by different indigenous groups scattered about the ancient archaeological site where the ceremony unfolded. Throughout the dusty fields that surrounded the ruins of Tiwanaku, the center of an empire that endured six hundred years, I saw people dressed in all kinds of indigenous clothes:men in chullos,the characteristicAndean hats with flaps over the ears, and red ponchos, women in traditional wide skirts and bowler hats that had actually been introduced by the Spanish.Everyone there had on something that could be identified as indigenous dress. The thunder of drums and fireworks filled the air along with a powerful feeling of brother- and sisterhood that spread through the crowd like wildfire: coca, bread, bananas, and tea were freely distributed, and people shared whatever they had. Many people had traveled through the night along bumpy dirt roads in dilapidated buses or open trucks,but their hunger and exhaustion were forgotten in the contagion of enthusiasm and the joy of the moment.The hope was palpable that an indigenous leader—one of our own—as president would improve the lives of our people far more than the criollos, descendants of the Spanish conquerors, had ever done. I was among the multitude that danced to the rhythm of the music that pulsated and echoed throughout the valley. Amidst the revelry, the pututus—large horns that serve to announce meetings, assemblies, and, during the times of the Inka, the arrival of the chaskis, the empire’s messengers—boomed, focusing everyone’s attention. The rite that marked the transfer of authority was about to commence. People began to applaud, and the cry “¡Jallalla Evo!” (long live Evo!) bounced off the hills surrounding the meadow. Evo gradually approached the stage that had been set up at the Door of the Sun.While I was quite far away, between the loudspeakers and the radios that people tuned to the event, we listened in a hushed silence to the symbolic transmission of office. A momentous change, and it was over in only a few minutes. Around me people cried and embraced,as through our tears we shared the dream that Evo’s taking office meant for all of us. When I was born in 1946, some sixty years earlier, indigenous people in Bolivia lacked almost all basic rights. Our decades of struggle led us to this day: for the first time, the majority of the Bolivian people truly felt represented as Evo Morales assumed his position as President of the Republic.In the following pages,I offer my personal story as a participant in these social and political struggles,marked as much by incremental defeats as by victories, to offer one partial vision of what brought us to this day. introduction xxii ...

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