Evo Morales: indigenous leader who changed Bolivia but stayed too long

It was in El Chapare that Morales cut his teeth in the 1980s, helping organise his fellow coca farmers against US-backed efforts to eradicate the raw ingredient of cocaine.

And it was here that he fled to last weekend, after resigning the presidency – at the prompting of Bolivia’s top general – as deadly protests convulsed the country amid allegations of electoral fraud.

Pictured lying atop a blanket on a safehouse floor, Morales fondly recalled his time as a local leader on Twitter. He had often promised to return and retire here.

But late on Monday, Bolivia’s longest-serving president instead boarded a Mexican government jet bound for exile.

The intervening four decades form one of the more remarkable biographies of the modern era. It is a story that is idiosyncratically Bolivian, but reflects very Latin American currents of boom, bust and revolution – and speaks to a universal theme of power and its corrosive effects.

Morales was born to a poor family of llama herders in 1959, at a time when indigenous people were doused with pesticides when entering government buildings.

Twenty years later, he moved to Chapare where his activities as a trade unionist (and keen amateur footballer) saw Morales grow in stature and shrewdness. He overcame beatings, arrests, racist abuse and factional infighting to assume the leadership of the Movement for Socialism (Mas) – a broad bloc of miners, farmers and leftwing urbanites – and entered congress.

He soon gained prominence at the head of a popular rebellion against moves to sell Bolivia’s natural gas cheaply via neighbouring Chile – a historical enemy – to the United States.