Evo Morales (26 October 1959-) was President of Bolivia from 22 January 2006 to 10 November 2019, succeeding Eduardo Rodriguez Veltze and preceding Jeanine Anez. Morales led the MAS-IPSP (Movement for Socialism) party from 1 January 1998 to 17 August 2016, and Morales focused on promoting the rights of the Aymara people (Morales was the first man of indigenous descent to lead Bolivia) as well as implementing socialism and combating the influence of the United States and international corporations. He was overthrown by the military in the 2019 Bolivian coup d'etat.
Biography[]
Evo Morales was born on 26 October 1959 in Isallawi, Bolivia to a family of Aymara subsistence farmers, and in 1978 he moved to Chapare Province after serving in the Bolivian Army. Morales farmed coca and became a labor union leader, leading local workers in protests against the United States' imperialism in its cooperation with the Bolivian government to eradicate the manufacture of coca, which had been used by some Bolivian narcotraffickers to produce cocaine. In 1998, he became the leader of the MAS-IPSP socialist party and won second place in the 2002 elections before being elected President of Bolivia on 22 January 2006. Morales implemented leftist policies and bolstered social spending, seeking to reduce poverty and the influence of the USA in Bolivia. Morales' efforts seriously reduced poverty and illiteracy, and his policies on environmentalism, anti-imperialism, and indigenous rights made him popular. However, he was excessively authoritarian and radical and allowed for the cocaine industry to boom. On 20 October 2019, while MAS-IPSP lost 21 seats in the general election, Morales won re-election with 47.08% of a vote in an election which the Organization of American States deemed to be full of irregularities. On 10 November 2019, after widespread protests, Morales decided to hold new elections at an undetermined date. On the same day, army chief Williams Kaliman pressured Morales to step down after warning him that the military would protect the protesters, and Morales, his vice-president Alvaro Garcia Linera, and the Presidents of the Senate and Chamber of Deputies resigned, leading to opposition party leader Jeanine Anez becoming interim President.