Arturo Von Vacano

Evo! Arturo Von Vacano

This collection of essays spans the period 2005-2008, when Evo Morales was consolidating power despite extreme opposition by both elites in Eastern Bolivia and the United States. While Hugo Chávez is no longer on the political scene, and the Castro brothers in Cuba represent an older brand of Latin American socialism, it has fallen on Morales to be a new leader of the Latin Left. Arturo von Vacano, a leading journalist, novelist, and commentator on Bolivia over the last fifty years provides, through commentary pieces and essays, an analysis of the precarious first three years of the "Evo Experiment." This refers to the emergence of the first indigenous president of Bolivia, a leader who rose to power from the coca growers' movement in the 1990s to become the head of the MAS (Movement towards Socialism) and eventually establish an economically-viable model of democratic socialism in a country long dominated by racism and foreign dependence.