Actualidades Bolivia’s “Evo Phenomenon”: From Identity to What? By Robert Albro george washington university I thank God and the Pachamama for having given me this opportunity to con- duct the nation. President Evo Morales in an address to Bolivia’s congress (January 22, 2006) Everything is brought together not by an indigenismo, but by a way of reading the nation beginning with an indigenous lens. Vice-president Álvaro García Linera (Gómez Balboa 2006) At a moment of the coming to power for the first time of an indigenous polit- ical project in Bolivia, a predominantly indigenous nation, I consider the signifi- cance of the new president, Evo Morales, and his party the MAS (or Movement Towards Socialism), as they help us to understand Bolivia’s current indigenous pol- itics. I am concerned with changing conceptions of how the circumstances of being indigenous can be legitimately represented. It is impossible to refer to a singular “indigenous movement” in Bolivia. But nor is the MAS just one among a variety of indigenous options. Instead, I emphasize how Morales and the MAS epitomize coalitional strategies of indigenous cultural and political engagement—strategies that have effectively expanded the possibilities for indigenous belonging. Put another way, the MAS represents an increasingly pervasive stance of the acceptance of “indigenous” priorities by increasingly large numbers of non-indigenous allies, particularly during the direct action protests of recent years. 408 J ournal of L atin A merican A nthropology Journal of Latin American Anthropology,Vol. 11, No.2, pp. 408–428. ISSN 1085-7025, online ISSN 1548-7180. © 2006 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permissions to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions website, www.ucpress.edu/journals/rights.htm.