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LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) — Analysts say Bolivia’s increasingly violent political crisis is exposing historical racial, ethnic and geographic divides that many thought had been overcome after 14 years of rule by the Andean nation’s first indigenous president and a new “plurinational” constitution.
While Sunday’s resignation of Evo Morales marked the exit of the last member of the wave of leftist leaders who took power in South America in recent decades, inside Bolivia the departure of the president who had stabilized the chronically unstable nation was a political earthquake.
Analysts say the movement to oust Morales was an urban middle-class revolt against what opponents said was fraud in his re-election. Wiith Morales now in Mexico, largely rural indigenous protesters are filling the streets to demand the return of the Aymara former president.
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