The Miami Herald‘s Andres Oppenheimer argues that Bolivian Indigenous leader Evo Morales’s anti-Western rhetoric is wrong-headed–for, Oppenheimer askes, “What would Latin America be without Western influence?”
The Bush Administration is worried that Morales, who placed second in Bolivia’s last presidental elections and spearheaded the movement to topple the Andean nation’s last head of state, is fanning the flames of anti-American sentiment. And that such ill will will spread to “the vast indigenous populations of Peru, Ecuador, Guatemala and southern Mexico.”
Morales recently said “We have lived for many years a confrontation of two cultures: The culture of life, represented by the indigenous people, and the culture of death, represented by the West.” He added, “If we want to defend humanity, the system must be defeated, U.S. imperialism must be defeated.”