IMPOSSIBLE INDIAN

On January 22,2006 Evo Morales was inaugurated as new president of Bolivia, making him only the second indigenous head of state anywhere in the hemisphere in the last ISO years, since Benito Ju�rez served as president of Mexico in the mid-nineteenth century (the other is Alejandro Toledo from neighboring Peru, elected in 2001). Despite the unusual quality of this election, this is the type of news item that does not generally linger long in the US media eye. Bolivia is a famously small and poor South American country, with a history of such frequent coups that even Latin Americanists can generally be pardoned for not remembering the name of the current presidente-de-paso. On the US radar …