Bolivia’s Minister of Communications Roxana Lizárraga decided to open the doors to the bedroom of recently-ousted President Evo Morales to members of the press. The double bed is made with clean sheets, the pillows are kind of small. Of the two nondescript bedside tables, one sports a mini reading lamp; on the other, an older office phone hides behind an open box of Kleenex. Scattered papers fill in the spaces, and on the nearby floor rests a tangle of electrical cords. The low headboard is framed in wood surrounding a fabric in muted shades of brown in a simple Andean graphic design.

“Fit for an Arab sheik,” Lizárraga pronounces, completing the racist trope. A camera crew zeroes in on a clear plastic holder from the Bank of Bolivia displaying various denominations of the country’s currency on the end table. It does little to defend her view but rather underscores the simplicity of the room.

The austere bedroom, bathroom with its functional whirlpool tub, conference room and bare kitchen make up the modest apartment on the 24^th floor of the 25 storey “Casa Grande,” the Big House, the $34 million dollar office building Morales built to house the government and its various ministries. The apartment looks more like the rooms in a small town’s chain hotel than an opulent pasha’s palace.

“They wouldn’t have done this if it had been a white, western, light-haired president,” wrote progressive Argentine newspaper Página 12.

Other Argentine journalists have not been so kind. In 2008, the “Cumbre de Dirigentes” (Leader’s Summit) was held In Tucumán, Argentina, a city situated in the northwest of that country and about a day’s drive from La Paz, Bolivia. The Argentine press ridiculed Evo’s arrival, when the president gamely climbed out of his small aircraft to step onto the top rung of a folding ladder that workers were struggling to hold still. Despite general knowledge that it is customary for the receiving airport to provide a better exit, reporters erupted in guffaws. “His airplane doesn’t even have stairs. That’s a painter’s ladder. Qué bárbaro!” they howled. “Qué bárbaro” has a double meaning: it’s a general exclamation meaning “how awful!” but its literal translation is “What a barbarian!”

Within Bolivia, Morales was also criticized for even having a plane. Though he protested that it was necessary for his role as head of state, no such criticism was leveled at his recent opponent, billionaire television personality as well as a former president Carlos Mesa.

In 2012, Morales declared a net worth of $350,000, with a salary of $2,100 USD a month. His opposition vigourously denounced him, claiming an unjustified increase of $110,000 in net worth in only six years. Morales’ office responded that his finances have always been transparent and are in line with his position as the country’s president.

On July 1, 2013, the Bolivian president’s plane was the object of a multinational abuse of power when numerous European countries denied him permission to enter and cross their respective air spaces. After departing from an international conference of oil-producing nations in Russia, Obama’s State Department requested that its Western European allies interrupt the Bolivian president’s plane in response to an unfounded rumour that former U.S. government employee Edward Snowden was on board. Snowden, who had released a trove of classified U.S. documents, had recently escaped to Russia.

After being denied permission to fly over Italy, France and Spain, Evo and his flight were brought down in Austria, where the plane was boarded, searched and held overnight before being allowed to depart the next day.

Morales was forced into exile on November 10, 2019 after elections, in which he gained a ten point lead over Mesa, were questioned by the Organization of American States (OAS). The United States and Canada were quick to recognize the new government and its self-proclaimed interim president, Jeanine Áñez. Áñez lifted an enormous bible above her head as she marched into the Casa Grande, calling the Big House’s images of the Pachamama (the Andean earth goddess) and displays of the rainbow-hued Wiphala flag “satanic”. She later said she would continue to allow the flag to be flown.

Former president of Brazil Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva believes in God. He said it himself when he left office. Speaking at an open air gathering on a summer night, December 28, 2010, near the equator in his native state of Pernambuco, Lula said, “I thank God because if it were not for his hand, it wouldn’t be normal for a migrant from Caetés, who ran away to escape starving to death, to go on and become the President of Brazil.”

Accused of receiving a luxury apartment as a bribe, Lula da Silva was sentenced to twelve years in prison and served almost two. Finally released pending appeal, it was revealed that Lula had actually purchased a modest apartment behind the oceanfront triplex. But the thought of the former street vendor and auto worker turned union leader living in Guarujá, the “pearl of the Atlantic”, with São Paulo’s elite was too much for the country’s ruling class to endure.

It wasn’t just Europeans and North Americans that Lula was referring to days before the opening of the London G20 on April 1, 2009. On March 26, Lula said:

“(The international economic crisis) was not caused by any black, indigenous or poor person. The crisis was caused and started by the irrational behaviours of white, blue-eyed people who acted like they knew everything before the crisis and now are demonstrating that they know nothing.”

Bolivia and Brazil are two of the richest countries in the world in terms of natural resources but both suffer from extreme disparity between rich and poor. In Bolivia, 65% of the country lives in poverty, and almost the same percentage, 62%, has been identified as indigenous. In Brazil, the poverty rate is 25%, and 70% of the poor are black or mixed race. Eighty percent of Brazil’s 1 percenters are white.

In their most recent elections, both countries showed a neat split between electorates based on race and wealth. In Bolivia, the Eastern half of the country, composed of the departments of cattle-raising Beni and gas-producing Santa Cruz, is flatter, whiter and richer than the culturally indigenous highlands of Evo’s West, and votes conservative. In Brazil, the line cuts the country diagonally, separating Lula’s Northeast, also home to the descendants of the 5.5 million Africans forcibly carried to the New World by Europeans, from the wealthy grandchildren of Italian and German immigrants who populate the Southwest.