"It's OK, there are plenty of other countries, like China, that will be willing to help us," Morales told me on a rare break from campaigning shortly before the election. Countries like China and Venezuela may be exactly where he turns, and their loans and investment would surely help. But despite having repeatedly described himself during the campaign as "Washington's nightmare"--a phrase quoted repeatedly in the US press--Morales is not likely to buck the broader and wealthier US and European business community, and may well stick with a modestly reformed version of the status quo. That won't satisfy the more radical Aymara Indian activists, who are intent on breathing life into the symbols of the increasingly powerful indigenous movement.

"The identity of people and of communities has become a very important issue in the country," Pablo Mamani, a sociologist who teaches at the public universities in El Alto and La Paz, told me shortly before the election. "The Aymara will all vote for Evo, because we want to see an Aymara in the presidency. But if he is not really allowed to govern, the militant social organizations can create a scenario of very severe conflict between the people and the state."

The nation's right-wing movements, particularly those concentrated in Santa Cruz, Bolivia's wealthiest department, where the energy and agricultural export businesses are based, may well encourage that. In the past year they've been waging a fierce campaign for autonomy--essentially, a separate local government that would shrink the central government's power over the region and its ability to extract taxes. With Morales's victory--which nonetheless failed to win his party control of the Congress--that battle will surely intensify.

"Bolivia is facing a big problem," Carlos Rojas, the burly president of a leading association of agricultural producers, told me from his spacious Santa Cruz office. "We don't accept Mr. Morales's policy about land," he said, referring to Morales's support for redistribution of large idle estates, most of which are concentrated in Santa Cruz. "We will have a conflict with him.... The only way for the country to move up and get out of poverty is by working, every day and all the time. If the social movements go and block the roads, we cannot work. We believe it's important to give Mr. Morales the opportunity to work for this country. But if he's not effective, he's going to be out--probably before the end of his term."

Some Bolivians are already planning on that. "We believe MAS [Movement Toward Socialism, Morales's party] won't change anything," said Abraham Delgado Mancilla, a soft-spoken and serious 28-year-old Aymara law student who helped organize the massive protests that ultimately brought down the last two Bolivian presidents. We were walking through the packed streets of El Alto--a burgeoning, impoverished city of homemade brick buildings in the Andean peaks rising above La Paz--where Mancilla lives and continues to organize students and neighbors. "The state doesn't serve us with this system. So we must move forward. What happens in Bolivia is twenty years of reforms, and nothing changes," he said. "We're still poor. The only road to solving poverty is by nationalization and radical redistribution of land," he added, his tone rising as he grew more agitated. "Evo will not be able to do what he says. His programs will change nothing. We're waiting for him to fail. And if he does, the people will come out with even more force," he said.

I asked him what that would mean. "I think what's going to happen is there will be a civil war."

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