REPORTER: David OShea
BAND MAN, (Translation): I have in my hands the book that all of us must sign to comply with the formalities for the inclusion of our festival in the 'Guinness' book - The Fifth International Festival of the Bands!
These are historic times in Bolivia. Today the country's new President is guest of honour at the largest ever gathering of brass bands. Over 6,000 musicians all playing together to set a new world record.
After years of violence and unrest, Evo Morales was elected President in December with 54% of the popular vote - Bolivia's last three presidents didn't even make 25%.
But the most significant record set is that Evo Morales is the first indigenous leader in this majority indigenous country.
MAN (Translation): This golden trumpet is a symbol of harmony for Bolivians.
As a young man Morales played in his local band and today he's being honoured with a golden trumpet. Until now Bolivia has been ruled by a tiny, white elite and Morales represents the downtrodden majority. A former militant union leader, he's more accustomed to attacking governments than leading them, and he's promised to completely overturn the old social order.
EVO MORALES, BOLIVIAN PRESIDENT (Translation): Sooner or later there must be a profound transformation. I want an organised, united and proactive nation, to make history. I want not only a new president but a new economic model. I want a profound transformation. That's what we stand for.
The old economic models have failed Bolivia. The poorest country in Latin America, it became a lot poorer in the 1990s after a disastrous program of privatisation imposed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
Bolivians reacted furiously to the sale of their national assets. Since 2000, over 100 people have been killed in protests and one president after another has been forced to resign.
Evo Morales is the fifth president Bolivia has had in four years, and he's not expecting an easy ride.
EVO MORALES, (Translation): Oligarchies and transnationals won't just wave, tip their hats and give up. They'll resist. They don't want to lose their cash cow. They want to continue sucking the Bolivian people's blood. There lies our struggle.
But when I arrive in Bolivia, politics has been put on hold. Like the rest of Latin America, normal life stops here for Carnival. The biggest party is in Oruro - the folkloric capital of Bolivia. UNESCO has declared the Oruro Carnival as a masterpiece of cultural heritage.
Evo Morales was born in this region and is very much at home here today. Sitting with the President in the VIP stand is his older sister, Donya Ester - because he's not married he has made her his first lady. That's his younger brother, Hugo, in the stand opposite. But it's the Cuban Ambassador who clearly has the President's ear.
The President's enemies are worried about his friendship with Cuba's Fidel Castro and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez.
TITO HOZ DE VILA, OPPOSITION SENATOR: What worries us is that he is having lot advisors coming from Cuba and Venezuela, and that they are not precisely the advisors we think are the best.
Traditionally the American Ambassador comes to the first day of Carnival but this year he was apparently unable to attend. He may have felt uncomfortable about dancing with the new President. But Vice-President Alvaro Garcia Linera - who once spent five years in jail for membership of a leftist guerrilla movement - was having a great time, as was the Cuban Ambassador.
REPORTER (Translation): Getting close to Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, isn't that a risk and something the US won't like?
EVO MORALES (Translation): I don't see it that way. I can talk to Bush, Fidel Castro, Chavez or the President of Iran, or the President of Libya. What's the problem? We have a culture of dialogue. If the country benefits from talking to Bush or Chavez or any other country, so be it. What matters is getting a good deal for the country while respecting our ideas and sovereignty and our right to self-determination. I actually feel stronger being seen next to Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro.
The high plain of Bolivia is over 4,000m above sea level. A 7-hour drive from the capital, I find the isolated house that Morales was born in. His parents were illiterate llama herders. It's still another half an hour drive to Orinoca where he grew up. There have never been any medical services out here, as Morales well knows - four of his siblings died of preventable disease.
Later today he will return to Orinoca for the first time since becoming President. His family and old friends are preparing a traditional welcome.
Morales is coming to launch a campaign to connect rural villages across Bolivia to the Internet, starting in the isolated village where he grew up.
Here everyone knows or is related to the Morales family and everyone is hoping that with him as President they will see the quality of their lives improve. Evo's older sister, Donya Ester, still lives here in Orinoca and remembers Evo was a lively child.
DONYA ESTER, EVOS SISTER (Translation): He was always a mischievous kid, restless. All boys are like that but he was a bit more difficult than the others.
This is the first time a helicopter has been anywhere near Orinoca. The entire village has come out to greet its favourite son.
REPORTER (Translation): What a welcome home, Mr President.
EVO MORALES (Translation): Thank you. I'm very happy.
REPORTER (Translation): Is it your first time back here?
EVO MORALES (Translation): No, I always come at Carnival. Hey, there! How are you?
This is the Vice-President's first visit to Orinoca, and within minutes of his arrival he looks like everyone else.
TELECOM GUY, (Translation): From now on, colleagues, No more exclusion. No more exclusion from the digital field. No more exclusion not only in Orinoca, but in the whole country.
EVO MORALES (Translation): To all my brothers, sisters, cousins, countrymen, aunts and uncles, I thank you with all my heart. And now, let's all enjoy the festivity. Thank you very much.
REPORTER (Translation): How old were you when you left here?
EVO MORALES (Translation): I'd have been about 15 or 16.
REPORTER (Translation): Do you think it's changed?
EVO MORALES (Translation): Not much.
The party went on for hours. Evo Morales and his vice-president, Alvaro Garcia Linera, enjoyed themselves no end. They have a unique partnership and won the election largely because of their combined appeal. Where Morales's support was strongest amongst the poor, Linera was an urbane academic who helped win over the middle class.
JIM SHULTZ,THE DEMOCRACY CENTER DIRECTOR: Alvaro Garcia Linera has been one of the most visible pundits on television talking about politics and analysing politics for the past five years. Middle-class people are very accustomed to him being in their living room and being the smartest guy they've seen on television. People like that the smartest guy on television is standing right there next to Evo Morales. And they make a great duo.
When Morales was 15 years old, a terrible drought hit Orinoca and many families moved to the tropical lowlands to make a living growing coca - the main ingredient in cocaine. At the same time, the United States was launching its war on drugs. Social researcher Jim Shultz has lived in Bolivia for eight years.
JIM SHULTZ: In the '80s and the early '90s Bolivia was, in fact, a very big producer of coca for the illegal drug trade. And families, including Evo Morales's, went to Chapare to grow coca, not because they decided they wanted to be drug traffickers - that's not what it is about - you know, it was about survival.
In 2000, Dateline reported from Chapare where the army was working hard to eradicate coca - with US funding. Morales had become president of the coca-growers' union, and told Dateline the government should crack down on the crime, not the crop.
MORALES FROM PETER'S STORY, (Translation): If the US is serious about combating drugs, they should end the demand first, then there'd be no need to turn one coca leaf into cocaine. We wouldn't need militarisation or forceful eradication.
The coca growers of Chapare are famously militant, and it's their support that propelled Morales to power. They're old comrades-in-arms and today they're welcoming him to the local radio station.
ALVARO GARCIA LINERA, (Translation): We're in a situation in which a former coca leaf grower is now President of 8.5 million Bolivians.
The United States equates coca with cocaine but here it's seen very differently.
ALVARO GARCIA LINERA, (Translation): Mr President, certainly the subject of coca touches the soul of this country. The use of coca for ritual and cultural purposes doesn't go back 10 or 20, 100 or 200 years. If we go back 2,000 years or more, one can easily find evidence of the traditional, beneficial and cultural uses of coca leaves.
As Morales celebrates the end of Carnival with the coca growers, his own fondness for the leaf, a mild stimulant, is obvious. Recently one of his politicians even suggested that school children should drink coca tea instead of milk because it's a great source of calcium. And as the newly-elected senator for this region discovered, coca will continue to be the main source of tension with the United States.
Leonilda Zurita, who is also president of the women's coca-growers' union, had hoped to travel to the United States in February.
LEONILDA ZURITA (Translation): I was invited to many universities in the United States - in Florida, New York and other places like Vermont as well.
REPORTER (Translation): Did you have a ticket to go?
LEONILDA ZURITA (Translation):I had 10-year visa valid from 1998 to 2008.
But on presenting her passport at the airport, Zurita was told she wouldn't be travelling.
LEONILDA ZURITA (Translation): They said I couldn't travel and I asked why. "Orders from the American Ambassador." "What's the problem?" "We don't know, but you can't travel."
The US Consul later gave her a letter which read:
(Woman reads) "Section 212(a) 3B prohibits the issuing of a visa "to any person who has been, or who the consular official has reason to believe to be, involved in terrorist activities, or who has connections with terrorist organisations."
REPORTER (Translation): So you're a terrorist?
LEONILDA ZURITA (Translation): That's what they call me. It almost sounds like praise. The way I understand it, terrorists are those guilty of destroying their own people, those who take up arms to kill those around them. They're the terrorists, to cite one example.
REPORTER (Translation): I don't understand why they call you a terrorist. There must be a reason...
LEONILDA ZURITA (Translation): I'd like to know that too. They call me that because I'm a leader who fights for women's rights, for human rights, for democracy, for a better life.
Back at the radio station, the party continues with the Vice-President and the Senator letting loose.
ALVARO GARCIA LINERA, (Translation): We're celebrating. The Challa. It means happiness, a good harvest, fertility. All of that together.
As Morales leaves the coca growers get salsa lessons from a group of Cuban doctors - they were an election gift from Fidel Castro. Morales knows his friendship with international bogeymen like Castro won't be smiled on in Washington. During his election campaign he described himself as "America's worst nightmare".
REPORTER (Translation): Are you still a nightmare for the US? You once said that.
EVO MORALES (Translation): Well... There have been so many accusations - that Evo is a drug trafficker, a murderer, a narco-terrorist from the coca mafia, that Evo is funded by Chavez, Fidel Castro, Libya, FARC. If the White Houe makes these allegations, it's because they're afraid. It's not fear of Evo Morales but fear of an original, indigenous and popular movement, fear of the national consciousness about our sovereignty. That's why we are now a nightmare for the US. Why would the White House make allegations against a peasant who's not even a professional? Something's going on.
Two hours from La Paz, the US Ambassador, David Greenlee, is on a public relations tour to reassure people that Washington is here to help. He's visiting a school to donate some computers and connect them to the Internet. And he gets a warm welcome. Ambassador Greenlee is an experienced diplomat - he needs to be. Posted in a country aligning itself with America's enemies, he chooses his words carefully.
REPORTER: So you don't have nightmares about Evo Morales?
AMBASSADOR GREENLEE: You know, I never had them.
REPORTER: No? But he did say that he was America's nightmare.
AMBASSADOR GREENLEE: He was projecting himself onto us. I think that what we see is a President who was democratically elected and we respect that. We certainly support democracy and we're going to do what we can to have a productive and solid relationship with this government, as we have with governments in the past.
REPORTER: So you don't see him as a Hugo Chavez-style president?
AMBASSADOR GREENLEE: I don't get into styles of presidencies and I don't get into third countries. OK. Thanks so much.
The opposition says that Morales should model himself on left-wing leaders with a less radical agenda.
TITO HOZ DE VILA: Even though he hasn't gone to high school and to university he is a person who learns a lot, listens a lot and is an intelligent person. Now, unfortunately, he is very much influenced by Fidel Castro and by Hugo Chavez and we would prefer that the influence would come from Lula of Brazil or from Lagos from Chile.
REPORTER: There has been a lot of suggestion that the US was involved in an attempt to overthrow Hugo Chavez. Would there be any attempt to do that here if things go bad?
AMBASSADOR GREENLEE: My God, what kind of questions are these? We support democracy unequivocally, without condition.
JIM SHULTZ: If you are Evo Morales and you can position yourself not totally in the orbit of Chavez in Venezuela and engaged but certainly not under the thumb of the US and George Bush, that's a pretty good place for you to be. Because what is the US's real fear? The US's real fear is they will end up pushing Evo Morales and pushing Bolivia into the arms of Hugo Chavez, who is a US adversary, and they don't want that.
Top of the President's agenda is finding a way to regain control of Bolivia's natural resources. It has enormous reserves of natural gas that are worth a potential US$250 billion. But Morales accuses multinationals, like the Spanish-Argentinean giant Repsol, of paying less-than-generous royalties.
In the capital, La Paz, serious negotiations are under way with Repsol. Morales believes he has a mandate to renegotiate contracts signed by previous governments. Repsol's president, Antonio Brufau, must be nervous.
ANTONIO BRUFAU, (Translation): We told the President to trust us to do the best for Bolivia, while obviously respecting the interests of Repsol, as we should.
One thing stands in Morales's way - Bolivia's constitution. The President wants to ensure that Bolivia's poor get their share of the country's wealth, but he feels his hands are tied.
EVO MORALES (Translation): At the moment I feel like a prisoner of neo-liberal laws. You want to do something but the law won't allow it. If you go against the law they'd bring a lawsuit because you acted unconstitutionally on a project, on a plan or on some Supreme Decree.
The President's signature on these documents marks a turning point for Bolivia. He's forming a constituent assembly to rewrite Bolivia's constitution. Morales says the assembly will represent the interests of the indigenous majority for the first time.
EVO MORALES (Translation): I want to say to you, with much respect to the Bolivian people, the fight for our independence, our second independence has arrived and will arrive with the Constituent Assembly.
Morales must be doing something right. His approval rating has leapt to a whopping 75%. Outside the presidential palace people celebrate the first step towards a new constitution. Expectations of their new president are high and he will need to deliver soon to maintain his support.
REPORTER (Translation): You have made many promises to the Bolivian people. Won't it be difficult with so many sectors opposing you? How will you manage? What promises? Nationalising the gas, returning land...
EVO MORALES (Translation): We're going to do it. We've only been in power for a month. You can't demand that of me. We haven't even set up our work teams. We will nationalise. It isn't a promise, but an obligation. It's our duty to exercise property rights over our natural resources.
One thing is certain, Morales will need time if he is going to succeed, and few Bolivian presidents have time on their side. In 182 years of independence, Bolivia has had 190 presidents so I thought a question about whether he will break the pattern was justified. I was surprised by how he responded.
REPORTER (Translation): Bolivia's had five presidents in four years. How long will you last?
EVO MORALES (Translation): I think that question's a provocation, an aggression. If you're a journalist, I ask you to please ask decent questions. But... How long will I last? Please!
REPORTER (Translation): 5, 10 years?
EVO MORALES (Translation): I've treated you with respect and don't accept any provocation or aggression.
JIM SHULTZ: I think that to have a foreigner pose that question, I think it could be misinterpreted. This is a president who lives every day under death threats, this is a president who has been under attack by the US Government for as long as he has been in political life. Evo Morales is close to Hugo Chavez, who in fact did have a coup staged against him, which seems to pretty clearly have US fingerprints on it.
Only a few days ago Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez accused the US of undermining Morales. He said Washington had waited a few years before trying to bring down the Cuban and Venezuelan governments, but there would be no honeymoon for Evo Morales.
BAND MAN, (Translation): I have in my hands the book that all of us must sign to comply with the formalities for the inclusion of our festival in the 'Guinness' book - The Fifth International Festival of the Bands!
These are historic times in Bolivia. Today the country's new President is guest of honour at the largest ever gathering of brass bands. Over 6,000 musicians all playing together to set a new world record.
After years of violence and unrest, Evo Morales was elected President in December with 54% of the popular vote - Bolivia's last three presidents didn't even make 25%.
But the most significant record set is that Evo Morales is the first indigenous leader in this majority indigenous country.
MAN (Translation): This golden trumpet is a symbol of harmony for Bolivians.
As a young man Morales played in his local band and today he's being honoured with a golden trumpet. Until now Bolivia has been ruled by a tiny, white elite and Morales represents the downtrodden majority. A former militant union leader, he's more accustomed to attacking governments than leading them, and he's promised to completely overturn the old social order.
EVO MORALES, BOLIVIAN PRESIDENT (Translation): Sooner or later there must be a profound transformation. I want an organised, united and proactive nation, to make history. I want not only a new president but a new economic model. I want a profound transformation. That's what we stand for.
The old economic models have failed Bolivia. The poorest country in Latin America, it became a lot poorer in the 1990s after a disastrous program of privatisation imposed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
Bolivians reacted furiously to the sale of their national assets. Since 2000, over 100 people have been killed in protests and one president after another has been forced to resign.
Evo Morales is the fifth president Bolivia has had in four years, and he's not expecting an easy ride.
EVO MORALES, (Translation): Oligarchies and transnationals won't just wave, tip their hats and give up. They'll resist. They don't want to lose their cash cow. They want to continue sucking the Bolivian people's blood. There lies our struggle.
But when I arrive in Bolivia, politics has been put on hold. Like the rest of Latin America, normal life stops here for Carnival. The biggest party is in Oruro - the folkloric capital of Bolivia. UNESCO has declared the Oruro Carnival as a masterpiece of cultural heritage.
Evo Morales was born in this region and is very much at home here today. Sitting with the President in the VIP stand is his older sister, Donya Ester - because he's not married he has made her his first lady. That's his younger brother, Hugo, in the stand opposite. But it's the Cuban Ambassador who clearly has the President's ear.
The President's enemies are worried about his friendship with Cuba's Fidel Castro and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez.
TITO HOZ DE VILA, OPPOSITION SENATOR: What worries us is that he is having lot advisors coming from Cuba and Venezuela, and that they are not precisely the advisors we think are the best.
Traditionally the American Ambassador comes to the first day of Carnival but this year he was apparently unable to attend. He may have felt uncomfortable about dancing with the new President. But Vice-President Alvaro Garcia Linera - who once spent five years in jail for membership of a leftist guerrilla movement - was having a great time, as was the Cuban Ambassador.
REPORTER (Translation): Getting close to Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, isn't that a risk and something the US won't like?
EVO MORALES (Translation): I don't see it that way. I can talk to Bush, Fidel Castro, Chavez or the President of Iran, or the President of Libya. What's the problem? We have a culture of dialogue. If the country benefits from talking to Bush or Chavez or any other country, so be it. What matters is getting a good deal for the country while respecting our ideas and sovereignty and our right to self-determination. I actually feel stronger being seen next to Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro.
The high plain of Bolivia is over 4,000m above sea level. A 7-hour drive from the capital, I find the isolated house that Morales was born in. His parents were illiterate llama herders. It's still another half an hour drive to Orinoca where he grew up. There have never been any medical services out here, as Morales well knows - four of his siblings died of preventable disease.
Later today he will return to Orinoca for the first time since becoming President. His family and old friends are preparing a traditional welcome.
Morales is coming to launch a campaign to connect rural villages across Bolivia to the Internet, starting in the isolated village where he grew up.
Here everyone knows or is related to the Morales family and everyone is hoping that with him as President they will see the quality of their lives improve. Evo's older sister, Donya Ester, still lives here in Orinoca and remembers Evo was a lively child.
DONYA ESTER, EVOS SISTER (Translation): He was always a mischievous kid, restless. All boys are like that but he was a bit more difficult than the others.
This is the first time a helicopter has been anywhere near Orinoca. The entire village has come out to greet its favourite son.
REPORTER (Translation): What a welcome home, Mr President.
EVO MORALES (Translation): Thank you. I'm very happy.
REPORTER (Translation): Is it your first time back here?
EVO MORALES (Translation): No, I always come at Carnival. Hey, there! How are you?
This is the Vice-President's first visit to Orinoca, and within minutes of his arrival he looks like everyone else.
TELECOM GUY, (Translation): From now on, colleagues, No more exclusion. No more exclusion from the digital field. No more exclusion not only in Orinoca, but in the whole country.
EVO MORALES (Translation): To all my brothers, sisters, cousins, countrymen, aunts and uncles, I thank you with all my heart. And now, let's all enjoy the festivity. Thank you very much.
REPORTER (Translation): How old were you when you left here?
EVO MORALES (Translation): I'd have been about 15 or 16.
REPORTER (Translation): Do you think it's changed?
EVO MORALES (Translation): Not much.
The party went on for hours. Evo Morales and his vice-president, Alvaro Garcia Linera, enjoyed themselves no end. They have a unique partnership and won the election largely because of their combined appeal. Where Morales's support was strongest amongst the poor, Linera was an urbane academic who helped win over the middle class.
JIM SHULTZ,THE DEMOCRACY CENTER DIRECTOR: Alvaro Garcia Linera has been one of the most visible pundits on television talking about politics and analysing politics for the past five years. Middle-class people are very accustomed to him being in their living room and being the smartest guy they've seen on television. People like that the smartest guy on television is standing right there next to Evo Morales. And they make a great duo.
When Morales was 15 years old, a terrible drought hit Orinoca and many families moved to the tropical lowlands to make a living growing coca - the main ingredient in cocaine. At the same time, the United States was launching its war on drugs. Social researcher Jim Shultz has lived in Bolivia for eight years.
JIM SHULTZ: In the '80s and the early '90s Bolivia was, in fact, a very big producer of coca for the illegal drug trade. And families, including Evo Morales's, went to Chapare to grow coca, not because they decided they wanted to be drug traffickers - that's not what it is about - you know, it was about survival.
In 2000, Dateline reported from Chapare where the army was working hard to eradicate coca - with US funding. Morales had become president of the coca-growers' union, and told Dateline the government should crack down on the crime, not the crop.
MORALES FROM PETER'S STORY, (Translation): If the US is serious about combating drugs, they should end the demand first, then there'd be no need to turn one coca leaf into cocaine. We wouldn't need militarisation or forceful eradication.
The coca growers of Chapare are famously militant, and it's their support that propelled Morales to power. They're old comrades-in-arms and today they're welcoming him to the local radio station.
ALVARO GARCIA LINERA, (Translation): We're in a situation in which a former coca leaf grower is now President of 8.5 million Bolivians.
The United States equates coca with cocaine but here it's seen very differently.
ALVARO GARCIA LINERA, (Translation): Mr President, certainly the subject of coca touches the soul of this country. The use of coca for ritual and cultural purposes doesn't go back 10 or 20, 100 or 200 years. If we go back 2,000 years or more, one can easily find evidence of the traditional, beneficial and cultural uses of coca leaves.
As Morales celebrates the end of Carnival with the coca growers, his own fondness for the leaf, a mild stimulant, is obvious. Recently one of his politicians even suggested that school children should drink coca tea instead of milk because it's a great source of calcium. And as the newly-elected senator for this region discovered, coca will continue to be the main source of tension with the United States.
Leonilda Zurita, who is also president of the women's coca-growers' union, had hoped to travel to the United States in February.
LEONILDA ZURITA (Translation): I was invited to many universities in the United States - in Florida, New York and other places like Vermont as well.
REPORTER (Translation): Did you have a ticket to go?
LEONILDA ZURITA (Translation):I had 10-year visa valid from 1998 to 2008.
But on presenting her passport at the airport, Zurita was told she wouldn't be travelling.
LEONILDA ZURITA (Translation): They said I couldn't travel and I asked why. "Orders from the American Ambassador." "What's the problem?" "We don't know, but you can't travel."
The US Consul later gave her a letter which read:
(Woman reads) "Section 212(a) 3B prohibits the issuing of a visa "to any person who has been, or who the consular official has reason to believe to be, involved in terrorist activities, or who has connections with terrorist organisations."
REPORTER (Translation): So you're a terrorist?
LEONILDA ZURITA (Translation): That's what they call me. It almost sounds like praise. The way I understand it, terrorists are those guilty of destroying their own people, those who take up arms to kill those around them. They're the terrorists, to cite one example.
REPORTER (Translation): I don't understand why they call you a terrorist. There must be a reason...
LEONILDA ZURITA (Translation): I'd like to know that too. They call me that because I'm a leader who fights for women's rights, for human rights, for democracy, for a better life.
Back at the radio station, the party continues with the Vice-President and the Senator letting loose.
ALVARO GARCIA LINERA, (Translation): We're celebrating. The Challa. It means happiness, a good harvest, fertility. All of that together.
As Morales leaves the coca growers get salsa lessons from a group of Cuban doctors - they were an election gift from Fidel Castro. Morales knows his friendship with international bogeymen like Castro won't be smiled on in Washington. During his election campaign he described himself as "America's worst nightmare".
REPORTER (Translation): Are you still a nightmare for the US? You once said that.
EVO MORALES (Translation): Well... There have been so many accusations - that Evo is a drug trafficker, a murderer, a narco-terrorist from the coca mafia, that Evo is funded by Chavez, Fidel Castro, Libya, FARC. If the White Houe makes these allegations, it's because they're afraid. It's not fear of Evo Morales but fear of an original, indigenous and popular movement, fear of the national consciousness about our sovereignty. That's why we are now a nightmare for the US. Why would the White House make allegations against a peasant who's not even a professional? Something's going on.
Two hours from La Paz, the US Ambassador, David Greenlee, is on a public relations tour to reassure people that Washington is here to help. He's visiting a school to donate some computers and connect them to the Internet. And he gets a warm welcome. Ambassador Greenlee is an experienced diplomat - he needs to be. Posted in a country aligning itself with America's enemies, he chooses his words carefully.
REPORTER: So you don't have nightmares about Evo Morales?
AMBASSADOR GREENLEE: You know, I never had them.
REPORTER: No? But he did say that he was America's nightmare.
AMBASSADOR GREENLEE: He was projecting himself onto us. I think that what we see is a President who was democratically elected and we respect that. We certainly support democracy and we're going to do what we can to have a productive and solid relationship with this government, as we have with governments in the past.
REPORTER: So you don't see him as a Hugo Chavez-style president?
AMBASSADOR GREENLEE: I don't get into styles of presidencies and I don't get into third countries. OK. Thanks so much.
The opposition says that Morales should model himself on left-wing leaders with a less radical agenda.
TITO HOZ DE VILA: Even though he hasn't gone to high school and to university he is a person who learns a lot, listens a lot and is an intelligent person. Now, unfortunately, he is very much influenced by Fidel Castro and by Hugo Chavez and we would prefer that the influence would come from Lula of Brazil or from Lagos from Chile.
REPORTER: There has been a lot of suggestion that the US was involved in an attempt to overthrow Hugo Chavez. Would there be any attempt to do that here if things go bad?
AMBASSADOR GREENLEE: My God, what kind of questions are these? We support democracy unequivocally, without condition.
JIM SHULTZ: If you are Evo Morales and you can position yourself not totally in the orbit of Chavez in Venezuela and engaged but certainly not under the thumb of the US and George Bush, that's a pretty good place for you to be. Because what is the US's real fear? The US's real fear is they will end up pushing Evo Morales and pushing Bolivia into the arms of Hugo Chavez, who is a US adversary, and they don't want that.
Top of the President's agenda is finding a way to regain control of Bolivia's natural resources. It has enormous reserves of natural gas that are worth a potential US$250 billion. But Morales accuses multinationals, like the Spanish-Argentinean giant Repsol, of paying less-than-generous royalties.
In the capital, La Paz, serious negotiations are under way with Repsol. Morales believes he has a mandate to renegotiate contracts signed by previous governments. Repsol's president, Antonio Brufau, must be nervous.
ANTONIO BRUFAU, (Translation): We told the President to trust us to do the best for Bolivia, while obviously respecting the interests of Repsol, as we should.
One thing stands in Morales's way - Bolivia's constitution. The President wants to ensure that Bolivia's poor get their share of the country's wealth, but he feels his hands are tied.
EVO MORALES (Translation): At the moment I feel like a prisoner of neo-liberal laws. You want to do something but the law won't allow it. If you go against the law they'd bring a lawsuit because you acted unconstitutionally on a project, on a plan or on some Supreme Decree.
The President's signature on these documents marks a turning point for Bolivia. He's forming a constituent assembly to rewrite Bolivia's constitution. Morales says the assembly will represent the interests of the indigenous majority for the first time.
EVO MORALES (Translation): I want to say to you, with much respect to the Bolivian people, the fight for our independence, our second independence has arrived and will arrive with the Constituent Assembly.
Morales must be doing something right. His approval rating has leapt to a whopping 75%. Outside the presidential palace people celebrate the first step towards a new constitution. Expectations of their new president are high and he will need to deliver soon to maintain his support.
REPORTER (Translation): You have made many promises to the Bolivian people. Won't it be difficult with so many sectors opposing you? How will you manage? What promises? Nationalising the gas, returning land...
EVO MORALES (Translation): We're going to do it. We've only been in power for a month. You can't demand that of me. We haven't even set up our work teams. We will nationalise. It isn't a promise, but an obligation. It's our duty to exercise property rights over our natural resources.
One thing is certain, Morales will need time if he is going to succeed, and few Bolivian presidents have time on their side. In 182 years of independence, Bolivia has had 190 presidents so I thought a question about whether he will break the pattern was justified. I was surprised by how he responded.
REPORTER (Translation): Bolivia's had five presidents in four years. How long will you last?
EVO MORALES (Translation): I think that question's a provocation, an aggression. If you're a journalist, I ask you to please ask decent questions. But... How long will I last? Please!
REPORTER (Translation): 5, 10 years?
EVO MORALES (Translation): I've treated you with respect and don't accept any provocation or aggression.
JIM SHULTZ: I think that to have a foreigner pose that question, I think it could be misinterpreted. This is a president who lives every day under death threats, this is a president who has been under attack by the US Government for as long as he has been in political life. Evo Morales is close to Hugo Chavez, who in fact did have a coup staged against him, which seems to pretty clearly have US fingerprints on it.
Only a few days ago Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez accused the US of undermining Morales. He said Washington had waited a few years before trying to bring down the Cuban and Venezuelan governments, but there would be no honeymoon for Evo Morales.