Bolivia’s exiled former president Evo Morales to return next week

Bolivia’s exiled former president, Evo Morales, is set to make a triumphant homecoming next week, leading an 800-vehicle convoy to the jungle-clad coca-growing region where he began his political career.

The Bolivian newspaper Página Siete reported that Morales would cross from Argentina into the southern border town of Villazón on Monday morning before heading 600 miles north to the province of Chapare.

Bolivia’s first indigenous president, who was driven into exile last November in what supporters called a US-backed coup, plans to arrive in the town of Chimoré on Tuesday, exactly a year after fleeing the same location on a Mexican airforce jet.

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The return of Bolivia’s first indigenous president comes after his Movement for Socialism (Mas) reclaimed the presidency last month when Morales’ former finance minister, Luis Arce, won a landslide election victory.

The former coca farmer, who led Bolivia from 2006 to 2019, has been living in Buenos Aires since Argentina’s government granted him asylum last year.

Arce will take office on Sunday, 24 hours before Morales’ return, with the guest list including leftist regional leaders such as Argentina’s president, Alberto Fernández, and the Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro.

For Morales, 61, the homecoming is a chance to celebrate a remarkable political revival by Mas and make a powerful statement about his own political relevance in a profoundly symbolic region.

“It’s really the equivalent of Trump going into Nebraska and Oklahoma to have campaign rallies,” said Jim Shultz, a Bolivia specialist.

The Argentinian newspaper Página/12 said Morales aides were billing the “caravan” to the Chapare as a “historic journey” that would conclude with a “great ceremony of welcome and thanks to the people”.

The Mas senator Leonardo Loza told Argentina’s RadioCut that followers were preparing a “historic gathering” in Chimoré to which he hoped up to 1.5 million supporters would flock from across Bolivia.

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Álvaro Ruiz, the head of the pro-Mas Federation of Municipal Associations of Bolivia, told reporters: “He will be coming back with the same strength and the same hope.”

Shultz saw an intensely personal side to Morales’s journey home. “I’m sure he’s miserable being outside Bolivia. I’m sure he misses the people, the attention, the food … on a personal level I’m sure he’s ecstatic to be coming home.”

But many, even within Morales’s party, are thought to be uneasy about the reappearance of a charismatic but deeply divisive figure whose reluctance to give up power contributed to the turmoil that engulfed the South American country after last year’s disputed election.

Shultz said it was unclear whether Morales would be content to take a backseat role in politics or aspired to be “a behind-the-scenes kingmaker telling underlings how to run the country”.

“The question is whether all we are looking at is somebody rebuilding their personal reputation and reconnecting with their support base, or whether we are looking at the opening of an alternative power base within the Mas … No one knows the answer to that question.”