We want to govern with our indigenous ancestors' models: That means a different concept of participation, community work and honesty.

In Bolivia there are Catholic, Evangelical, Methodist, Baptist churches, and so on. In Bolivia there are indigenous religious beliefs like the rite of Pachamama Mother Earth, which shows us that Mother Earth is our life, we are born out of the Earth we live on the Earth and return to the Earth.

I want to stress that at no time Bolivia acts untimely or irresponsibly.

We welcome private investment, but any company or national firm will be a partner of a venture where the result will go mainly to the Bolivian people. Of course, any investor is entitled to recover their investment and take profits. But be assured that these new functions with our partners will also be reinvested in our country for the benefit of the Bolivian people.

Sooner or later we will reach a point where communitarian socialism turns global because capitalism is not even the solution to capitalism itself.

In Iraq, [American administration] said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction endangering mankind. With this pretext, the U.S. intervened militarily, and all they did is take control over oil fields, and oil wells.

Bolivia's majority Indian population was always excluded, politically oppressed and culturally alienated. Our national wealth, our raw materials, was plundered. Indios were once treated like animals here. In the 1930s and 40s, they were sprayed with DDT to kill the vermin on their skin and in their hair whenever they came into the city.