CUBA has been blockaded by the United States for nearly 60 years; Venezuela is battling against a raft of US sanctions choking its economy; and Nicaragua is expecting imminent US legislation blocking loans and requiring it to override its constitution and hold early elections. Is Bolivia, and Evo Morales’s socialist government, next in the US’s firing line? 

The US has made no secret of its hostility to Morales, dating back to before his successful presidential election victory in 2005. This replaced a neoliberal regime in hock to foreign, mostly US, corporations while 75 per cent of the rural population lived in extreme poverty.

Having won the 2005 presidential election with an absolute majority, the first in Bolivia for 40 years, Morales was re-elected in 2009 with 64.2 per cent of the vote and again in 2014 with 61.3 per cent.