The techno-fantasies of Evo Morales.

• Author: Glendinning, Chellis
• Position: Loss of What We Don't Need

Cochabamba. On 22 January 2006, newly inaugurated President Evo Morales made his exuberant procession through the streets of La Paz to join the throngs of supporters awaiting him in the Plaza de los Heroes. To the excited crowds, Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano announced that the historic event signaled "the end of fear." Vice-president Alvaro Garcia Linera shouted that, in the new government, poor Bolivianos would be given equality at last.

And President Morales proclaimed, "Our job is to finish the work of Che Guevara!"

It was a triumphant day--for the most destitute country in South America had finally risen above the centuries of oligarchies and dictatorships to elect one of its own: the first indigena to lead the nation in 500 years.

But who, at that peak moment, was remembering that Che Guevara was not just the hero of courage and confrontation whose life's work lay unfinished due to assassination in Bolivia? He was also Cuba's great pusher of industry, development, and modernization.

And so, true to his words, Morales has pursued industry, development, and modernization.

From flores to progreso

Perhaps the tip-off to this lunge toward technological expansion arose when billboards leading into the tiny agricultural town of Tiquipaya were abruptly changed from "EL CAPITAL DE FLO-RES" to "EL CAPITAL DEL PROGRESO"--and high-rise apartments and office buildings, suddenly and without local input, began to tower over tin-roofed shanties and women hawking papayas on the Reducto.

Or perhaps the tip-off came when President Morales proclaimed via his government TV station that the goal was to make Bolivia's economy like that of Brazil, which is currently viewed as the #1 (and, according to financial advisers in the US, only) country in Latin America to invest in.

Or perhaps it surfaced when he claimed access to wireless Banda /tocWUniversal Broadband as a "human right"--despite that international scientists have proven that electromagnetic emissions can cause sleeplessness, anxiety disorders, depression, cancer, genetic breakage, heart disorders, immunological deterioration, and other health problems.

The discovery of lithium was the biggest boon to Morales' urge to emulate Brazil's rise to economic potency. The rarity of the "gold of the 21st century"--with its importance to the up-and-coming electric car battery industry, as well as to nuclear weaponry--has put Bolivia in the running to build a Saudi-Arabia-size bank account, with battery...