By Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, August 11, 2008

LA PAZ, Bolivia, Aug. 10 -- Bolivians voted Sunday to keep President Evo Morales in office, with unofficial returns on a recall referendum giving him a victory even larger than the one that put him in office more than two years ago.

But despite drawing more than 60 percent of the vote, according to partial counts from polling stations, Morales appears to have not fundamentally changed the prevailing political deadlock in this Andean nation. The governors in eastern Bolivia, who form the powerful opposition to Morales, also held their seats by wide margins, leading to concerns that the voting results could exacerbate tensions here.

The president, vice president and eight of the nine state governors were subject to Sunday's recall vote. Three governors, including Morales opponents from La Paz and Cochabamba, were defeated. Meanwhile, the governor of Santa Cruz, the relatively wealthy lowlands state that has led the fight for more regional autonomy and to remove Morales, was backed by nearly 70 percent of voters, Bolivian television reported.

Speaking to a cheering crowd from the presidential palace in La Paz, Morales described the result as a "triumph" and a testament to "all the revolutionaries in Latin America and the world."

"What the Bolivian people have expressed with their votes today is the consolidation of the process of change," he said. "We are here to keep advancing in the recovery of our natural resources, the consolidation of nationalization, and the state takeover of companies."

Even before Sunday's vote, the nation's first indigenous president had had a tenuous hold over the resource-rich half of his country. The mayor of Santa Cruz called last week for the military to overthrow Morales. Protesters have blockaded airports to prevent the president from traveling, and other leaders have vowed that they will not recognize Morales as the country's leader unless he accedes to their demands.

"The stalemate continues," said George Gray Molina, a Bolivian economist and political scientist. "It depends now on how the government proceeds. If they push through an aggressive agenda, they will see a lot of resistance and maybe violence. If he's a conciliator and tries to negotiate . . . he'll have a chance of governing with a lot of political support."

Morales, a coca growers union leader of Aymara descent, was elected in December 2005 by 54 percent of the vote. The result was widely seen as historic in a country in which the indigenous majority has lived for centuries under repression and in poverty.

As president, Morales has been a polarizing figure, casting himself as a defender of the poor, and a determined opposition has prevented him from achieving some of his major initiatives, such as passing a new constitution. Analysts said his margin of victory will probably provide the momentum for another push to pass the stalled constitution.

"The conflict has increased between the president and the regions. The president has won, but his opposition in the east won by more than the president," said Jorge Lazarte, a political analyst and former member of the constitutional assembly. Another attempt to pass a new constitution, he said, "is going to divide the country."

The opposition is led by business interests in the eastern regions, which are rich in agricultural products, minerals and gas. They oppose Morales's socialist agenda and maintain that he is trying to consolidate power in the central government at the expense of the states. Four of these states -- Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando and Tarija -- have voted this year for autonomy, though the central government considers those referendums invalid.

On an election day, voting in Bolivia eclipses nearly all other activities. All vehicles, except certain registered cars, were not permitted on the streets. Restaurants refused to serve alcohol during voting hours. Voting is mandatory, and long lines formed at polling stations across La Paz, which revealed in microcosm the divisions at work in the country.

In the sprawling mud-and-brick city of El Alto, on a plateau above La Paz, pro-government posters and graffiti testify to Morales's enduring popularity. Thousands of rural migrants, many of them of Aymara and Quechua descent, have fueled the rapid growth of this city. Many regard the president as the rare leader who has concerned himself with helping the indigenous poor.

"All of us that are here came out to support him. He is changing this country in a way that no other president has before," said Isabel Quispe, 39, who sat at a wooden table in the concrete courtyard of a one-story, mustard-yellow school in the San Roque neighborhood of El Alto. "Other presidents put money in their pockets and gave none of it to us."

In this courtyard, many women wore bowler hats, shawls and flared skirts -- traditional dress for the Bolivian highlands. Quispe, who cradled her crying 2-year-old son on her lap, works in a small school-supplies shop in El Alto. Under the Morales administration, she receives a $30 payment for her school-age son, contingent upon school attendance. Quispe said the cash-transfer program, one of two popular with the lower classes (the other aids elderly people), "saves me. We are always short of money, and this helps us very much."

Far down the mountains, in the wealthier neighborhood of San Miguel in southern La Paz, the contrasts to El Alto were stark. Instead of trash and dirt lots, voters walked to the polls with their dogs past chic cafes and BMW and Mercedes-Benz dealerships. Here, many voters think that Morales does not represent their community, that he is leading the country down a dangerous socialist path towards economic stagnation.

"I voted for him in 2005 because of my hopes for change. But he hasn't shown himself capable of managing the country," said Gabriel Barrero, 21, a industrial engineering student at a military college in La Paz. "He has created a lot of division between whites and Indians, between rich and poor. He arrived with good intentions. But he hasn't been able to show concrete improvements. For that reason, I'm now voting for him to go away."

Barrero describes himself as mestizo and middle class. He does not receive any government payments and is increasingly concerned about growing inflation. The Bolivian government has increased its revenue by renegotiating contracts with foreign oil and gas companies, but Barrero thinks this should be invested in private enterprise and not in handouts to the poor.

"I feel things have gotten worse," he said. "I am not the only one. Half of the students from my high school class have left the country, and the other half wants to leave. There isn't any sense of security that this country is developing."