Indigenous peoples in Bolivia in the context of "Indigenous people of the Americas"

The Indigenous peoples of the Americas are the peoples who are native to the Americas or the Western Hemisphere. Their ancestors are among the pre-Columbian population of South or North America, including Central America and the Caribbean. Indigenous peoples live throughout the Americas. While often minorities in their countries, Indigenous peoples are the majority in Greenland and close to a majority in Bolivia and Guatemala.

There are at least 1,000 different Indigenous languages of the Americas. Some languages, including Quechua, Arawak, Aymara, Guaraní, Nahuatl, and some Mayan languages, have millions of speakers and are recognized as official by governments in Bolivia, Peru, Paraguay, and Greenland.

Bolivians (Spanish: Bolivianos) are people identified with the country of Bolivia. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Bolivians, several (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being Bolivian.

Bolivia is, as its neighboring countries, a multiethnic and multilingual society, home to people of various ethnic, religious, and national origins, with the majority of the population made up of indigenous and Old World immigrants and their descendants. As a result, Bolivians do not equate their nationality with ethnicity, but with citizenship and allegiance to Bolivia. Aside from the indigenous populations, Bolivians trace their ancestry to the Old World, primarily Europe and Africa, ever since the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire and founding of first Spanish settlements in Tupiza and La Plata.

Juan Evo Morales Ayma (Spanish: [xwan ˈeβo moˈɾales ˈajma]; born 26 October 1959) is a Bolivian politician, trade union organizer, and former cocalero coca farmer who served as the 65th president of Bolivia from 2006 to 2019. Widely regarded as the country's first president to come from its indigenous population, his administration worked towards the implementation of left-wing policies, focusing on safeguarding the legal rights and improving the socioeconomic conditions of Bolivia's previously marginalized indigenous majority and combating the political influence of the United States and resource-extracting multinational corporations. Ideologically a socialist, he led the Movement for Socialism (MAS) party from 1998 to 2024.

Born to an Aymara family of subsistence farmers in Isallawi, Orinoca Canton, Morales undertook a basic education and mandatory military service before moving to the Chapare in 1978. Growing coca and becoming a trade unionist, he rose to prominence in the campesino ("rural laborer") union. In that capacity, he campaigned against joint U.S.–Bolivian attempts to eradicate coca as part of the war on drugs, denouncing these as an imperialist violation of indigenous Andean culture. His involvement in anti-government direct action protests resulted in multiple arrests. Morales entered electoral politics in 1995, was elected to Congress in 1997 and became leader of MAS in 1998. Coupled with populist rhetoric, he campaigned on issues affecting indigenous and poor communities, advocating land reform and more equal redistribution of money from Bolivian gas extraction. He gained increased visibility through the Cochabamba Water War and the Gas War. In 2002, he was expelled from Congress for encouraging anti-government protests, although he came second in that year's presidential election.