Bishop says Bolivians jubilant after election of indigenous president

Published: 2006-01-26

LIMA, Peru (CNS) -- The dancing in the street that followed the Jan. 22 inauguration of Bolivian President Evo Morales, the Andean nation's first indigenous chief executive, expressed a "sense of jubilation, of regaining lost dignity, and of feeling that a son of the Andes could be an example for other countries in Latin America," said the secretary-general of the Bolivian bishops' conference. "As church, we view the change with great hope, because it expresses the will of the people," said Bishop Jesus Juarez Parraga of El Alto Diocese, where most of the population lives in sprawling, low-income neighborhoods at the edge of La Paz. "What people want are the values and principles that the church has always proclaimed -- the inclusion of all social and ethnic groups in the country, justice and equal opportunity so that people can have decent work and wages," the bishop said in a telephone interview. Morales, 46, was born in the Andean highlands, the son of Aymaran farmers. As a child, he herded the family's sheep and llamas. A key figure in the political opposition in recent years, he led anti-government protests and became a member of Congress representing the Movement to Socialism. He now has the task of guiding an impoverished country in which street protests have ousted two presidents since October 2003.

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