Bolivians are expected to approve a new constitution on Sunday that leftist President Evo Morales hopes will transform the impoverished country by giving its indigenous majority more power, even though the reforms were watered down to appease conservatives.
The referendum vote comes after three years of sometimes violent confrontation between the popular Morales and conservative opposition leaders who forced him to scale back his plans to run for re-election and radically reform land rights. If approved, the new charter will allow Morales to seek a second term in an election late this year and would give indigenous groups greater representation in Congress and more autonomy in their home areas.
It is part of a wider trend in South America of left-wing leaders reforming constitutions to extend their rule, tackle vast social inequalities and expand state control over the economy. Morales' strongest allies in the region have made similar moves. President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela won approval for a new constitution in 1999 and Ecuador's President Rafael Correa did the same last year.
Morales, an Aymara Indian and Bolivia's first indigenous leader, took office three years ago and survived a recall vote last August with 67 percent support. Opinion polls show the charter has 55 percent support.
"We've suffered for 500 years, so it's going to be a yes vote," Simon Cussi, 51, leader of a rural peasant group who was visiting La Paz, said while chatting with friends in Aymara. "We don't want to suffer another 500 years." Most Bolivians describe themselves as indigenous but politics and business have long been dominated by a small elite of European descent.
Despite its lofty aims, the proposed constitution is still a work in progress, with vague clauses that the judiciary may struggle to interpret and an implementation process that could be messy as politics here often run along regional and ethnic lines.
Congress, where the opposition has an edge in the Senate, amended the draft constitution after critics accused Morales of wanting to grab more power. But this month, Defence Minister Walker San Miguel angered the opposition by saying that Morales could issue decrees and bypass Congress to implement the charter.
While more battles are likely in Congress, it ratified the new charter in October just as opposition governors lost influence after protests in their resource-rich regions turned violent. Most of the new constitution was drafted in 2007 in a national assembly dominated by Morales' party, the Movement Toward Socialism, or MAS, and boycotted by the opposition.
More radical members of MAS say the president has since made too many concessions in key areas. The concessions include a pledge by Morales that, if the constitution passes, he could run for re-election in 2009, but not again in 2014. That promise relieved fears of the opposition that he might try to rule for years.
At the behest of wealthy ranchers, who feared their farms would be broken up and handed over to the poor, the charter was also revised so that limits on land holdings will only apply to future land sales and not be retroactive.
Among other changes, the 50-page draft would give Indian communities the right to apply traditional justice systems, and subject judges, including those on the Supreme Court, to popular votes. Currently, they are approved by Congress. The latest in a long series of charters in Bolivia's turbulent history, it would guarantee freedom of religion - a clause that has angered critics who accuse Morales of being anti-Catholic for embracing indigenous faiths.
It would also tighten the state's hold on natural resources after Morales nationalised the gas sector in 2006. In scathing newspaper editorials, the opposition says he has turned his back on globalisation, soured trade talks with the United States, and moved to return Bolivia to a barter economy with phrases in the charter mentioning communitarian trade.
"The official propaganda is that Bolivia is reinventing the philosopher's stone and that paradise on earth is within reach," said Harold Olmos, a columnist for La Prensa. "But the state isn't capable of making good on its promises."