Juan Evo Morales Ayma[a] (Spanish: [xwan ˈeβo moˈɾales ˈajma]; born 26 October 1959) is a Bolivian politician, trade union organizer, and former cocalero activist who served as the 65th president of Bolivia from 2006 to 2019.

Vocally criticizing neoliberalism, Morales' government moved Bolivia towards a mixed economy, reduced its dependence on the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), and oversaw strong economic growth.

Scaling back United States influence in the country, he built relationships with leftist governments in the Latin American pink tide, especially Hugo Chávez's Venezuela and Fidel Castro's Cuba, and signed Bolivia into the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas.

Morales' supporters point to his championing of indigenous rights, anti-imperialism, and environmentalism, and credit him with overseeing significant economic growth and poverty reduction as well as increased investment in schools, hospitals, and infrastructure.

[20] His parents then sent him to study for a degree in Oruro; although he did poorly academically, he finished all of his courses and exams by 1977, earning money on the side as a brick-maker, day laborer, baker and a trumpet player for the Royal Imperial Band.

[25] Setting up home in the town of Villa 14 de Septiembre, El Chapare, using a loan from Morales' maternal uncle, the family cleared a plot of land in the forest to grow rice, oranges, grapefruit, papaya, bananas and later on coca.

Many Bolivians hoped to set up farms where they could earn a living growing coca, which was experiencing a steady rise in price and which could be cultivated up to four times a year; a traditional medicinal and ritual substance in Andean culture, it was also sold abroad as the key ingredient in cocaine.

In his view, the United States should deal with their domestic cocaine abuse problems without interfering in Bolivia, arguing that they had no right trying to eliminate coca, a legitimate product with many uses which played a rich role in Andean culture.

[55] The election resulted in the establishment of a coalition government led by the right-wing Nationalist Democratic Action (Acción Democrática Nacionalista – ADN), with Hugo Banzer as president; Morales lambasted him as "the worst politician in Bolivian history".

[55] The conflict led to a schism, with Morales and his supporters splitting to form their own party, the Political Instrument for the Sovereignty of the Peoples (Instrumento Político por la Soberanía de los Pueblos – IPSP).

[57] The movement's bases defected en masse to the IPSP, leaving the ASP to crumble and Véliz to join the center-right New Republican Force (Nueva Fuerza Republicana – NFR), for which Morales denounced him as a traitor to the cocalero cause.

[58] Continuing his activism, in 1998 Morales led another cocalero march from El Chapare to la Paz,[59] and came under increasing criticism from the government, who repeatedly accused him of being involved in the cocaine trade and mocked him for how he spoke and his lack of education.

[67] Morales had not taken a leading role in these protests but did use them to get across his message that the MAS was not a single-issue party, and that rather than simply fighting for the rights of the cocalero it was arguing for structural change to the political system and a redefinition of citizenship in Bolivia.

[93] Although he had initially hoped for a female running mate, Morales eventually chose Marxist intellectual Álvaro García Linera as his vice-presidential candidate,[94] with some Bolivian press speculating as to a romantic relationship between the two.

[130] During Morales' first term, Bolivia broke free of the domination of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) which had characterized previous regimes by refusing their financial aid and connected regulations.

[133] In December 2006, he attended the first South-South conference in Abuja, Nigeria, there meeting Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, whose government had recently awarded Morales the Al-Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights.

[212] After it was revealed that USAID's Office of Transition Initiatives had supplied $4.5 million to the pro-autonomist departmental governments of the eastern provinces, in September 2008 Morales accused the U.S. ambassador to Bolivia, Philip Goldberg, of "conspiring against democracy" and encouraging the civil unrest, ordering him to leave the country.

[275][276] The proposal was initially declined due to municipal height restrictions in the historical district, though Morales' parliamentary majority in the Plurinational Legislative Assembly overrode the ban, permitting the tower's construction.

[275] He said the Casa Grande del Pueblo was a break with the past and described the previous residence, the Palacio Quemado or "Burnt Palace", as a vestige of colonialism and a symbol of neoliberal governments that stripped the State of its wealth, its heritage and its memory.

"[348] The report contradicted Morales' own statement the day prior in which he told Argentine journalist Juan Cruz Castiñeiras that claims that he had contracted the virus were "invented" by the right and that he "just had a cough problem, nothing more.

The broad pardon, which included Morales, was met by shouts of "democracy yes, dictatorship no" by members of the opposition who objected to the fact that at noon, discussion was ended, beginning the vote, leaving several assemblymen without a chance to speak.

"[365] The Ministry of Government subsequently informed the Spanish newspaper Okdiario that it had opened a statutory rape investigation to determine whether a romantic and sexual relationship existed between the young woman and Morales while he was president of Bolivia.

[6] Biographer Martín Sivak described Morales as "incorruptible, charismatic, and combative",[401] also noting that he had a "friendly style" and could develop a good rapport with journalists and photographers, in part because he could "articulate his opinions with simplicity".

[425] Based on interviews conducted among Bolivians in 2012, John Crabtree and Ann Chaplin described the previous years of Morales' rule with the observation that: "for many—perhaps most—Bolivians, this was a period when ordinary people felt the benefits of policy in ways that had not been the case for decades, if ever.

"[426] Crabtree and Chaplin added that Morales' administration had made "important changes... that will probably be difficult to reverse", including poverty reduction, the removal of some regional inequalities, and side-lining of some previously dominant political actors in favor of others who had been encouraged and enabled by his government.

[428] Crabtree and Chaplin's study led them to conclude that while Morales' initial election had brought "huge expectations" from many Bolivians, especially in the social movements, there had been "inevitable frustrations" at his administration's inability to deliver on everything that they had hoped.

Using the funds derived from the nationalised natural gas and oil businesses, his administration invested heavily in basic sanitation, agriculture, education, water resources, transportation and health with the strategic goal to tackle the structural causes of poverty.

[437] According to a 2013 study, "Evo Morales and his Movement Toward Socialism have used trumped-up charges of administrative irregularities, corruption, terrorism, and genocide against numerous opposition politicians, imprisoning some, driving many others out of the country, and intimidating the rest.

[458] Observers alleged that corruption among political figures and low-level criminal activity associated with the cocaine trade is normal with researcher Diego Ayo from the Vicente Pazos Kanki Foundation considering the power structure of the Bolivian State similar to that of a drug cartel.

[461][462][463] That same year senator Roger Pinto asked Brazil for political asylum for fear of an attack on his personal security and for having "evidence of corruption and links with drug trafficking at the highest levels of the government of President Evo Morales".