I've never seen a Prime Minister of New Zealand

This week was the 200 year anniversary of Cochabamba. So not surprisingly we were treated to more marching bands and more public holidays. The event did provide us with one unique opportunity. Evo Morales acknowledged the day by gracing the Cochabambinos with his presence. This was a stroke of luck for me because I really wanted to see him in the flesh and I thought it would never happen. I felt especially lucky about this when I heard he had declined to attend the Santa Cruz annual event.

It is likely that this was because Santa Cruz is part of the Media Luna region which does not have a lot of affection for El Preseidente. In fact they hate him, more or less, in those parts. Evo is busy representing an indigenous majority meanwhile people in Santa Cruz, who are predominately mestizo and progressive/modern, do not agree with his policies.

That is not to say people love him in Cochabamba. There is plenty of graffiti about the town that says "Evo Cabron", "Evo Culo", "Asesino Evo" and "Vota NO". These comments are routinely supported by locals that we chat with. While they do not want to kill him they do not rate him and are looking forward to the day he is out of office. This is also supported by Facebook Data Mining that gives me suggestions to join groups like You Do Not Know HOW MUCH I hate Evo Morales. This surely reflects the inclinations of (the everyday, normal) Bolivians who I am connected to on that site.

Me personally, I can't get with that. There is no doubt he is an average politician and has made mistakes but he has also done some cool stuff. Like the new Constitution that acknowledges the indigenous diversity (plurinational) of the country and more recently the work he is doing to change the media's practice of describing campesinos in defamatory ways. On this latter point I am a little strident. Surely the fact that he needs to pass this law reflects the everydayness of racism here and highlights why people in Santa Cruz fail to connect with his position.

Whatever the case it was really fun to see the president march through Cochabamba this week. It was a really hot day and it must have been hard work walking the streets. The other thing that was great was the support Evo got on his march. Everyone was running up the street cheering for him and chanting his name. I had a big cheesy grin on my face and skipped up through the crowd trying to get a decent photo of the man. It was so refreshing to be around Bolivians actually supporting their president. The reality is that I have not seen Bolivians outwardly supporting him in all my travels. As such I now have a small, but important, bit of context on Bolivia. There are some people living in a city that like who they have running the country.