The cost of pension reforms has been perhaps the biggest error committed in the process of modernizing Bolivia's economy.
Carlos Mesa
My government has the challenge of addressing the issue of gas. The issue of gas cannot be addressed today without the participation of all Bolivians alike.
Bolivia is not yet a country of equals.
I want Bolivians to support their president.
I will not be able to rule without you. You and I have the same responsibility. I do, as Bolivia's number one servant. Servant - one who serves the nation, not one whom the nation serves.
When I came back from Bolivia, my Spanish was in some ways as good as my English. I am rusty today. But I am comfortable talking in Spanish. I am not flawless or fluent, but I am comfortable. It takes me a day or two speaking a lot of Spanish to get back into a rhythm.
David Dewhurst
As an indigenous leader from Bolivia, I know what exclusion looks like. Before 1952, my people were not allowed to even enter the main squares of Bolivia's cities, and there were almost no indigenous politicians in government until the late 1990s.
Evo Morales
The most important thing is the indigenous people are not vindictive by nature. We are not here to oppress anybody - but to join together and build Bolivia, with justice and equality.
In 2006, I entered the presidential palace in the main square of La Paz as the first indigenous president of Bolivia. Our government, under the slogan 'Bolivia Changes,' is committed to ending the colonialism, racism and exclusion that many of our people lived under for many centuries.
Bolivia is a majority indigenous nation, but that majority has always been excluded.
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.
Natural disasters in Bolivia have been getting worse with the passage of time. It's brought about by a system: the capitalist system, the unbridled industrialization of the resources of the Planet Earth.
In 2005, before I was president, the state of Bolivia had only $300 million from hydrocarbons. Last year, 2007, the Bolivian state - after the nationalization, after changing the law - Bolivia received $1,930 million. For a small country with nearly 10 million inhabitants, this allows us to increase the national economy.
The Bolivian government has promised to guarantee autonomy in the framework of unity, legality, and with the goal of equalizing the different regions of Bolivia. It's right there in the constitution.
We want to overcome our historical problems with Chile. The sea has divided us and the sea must bring us back together again. Chile has agreed, for the first time, to talk about sea access for Bolivia.
The relationship between the government of the United States and social and indigenous movements has always been difficult. Not just in Bolivia but worldwide. We need to have bilateral relations characterized by mutual respect.
All of Africa's resources should be declared resources of the state and managed by the nation. Our experience in Bolivia shows that when you take control of natural resources for the people of the town and village, major world change is possible.
I want to stress that at no time Bolivia acts untimely or irresponsibly.
I'm just the democratic voice of Bolivia.
We are starting a process of decolonization in Bolivia. All this is bringing about change and we will continue.
It's easy for people in an air-conditioned room to continue with the policies of destruction of Mother Earth. We need instead to put ourselves in the shoes of families in Bolivia and worldwide that lack water and food and suffer misery and hunger.
I never wore a tie voluntarily, even though I was forced to wear one for photos when I was young and for official events at school. I used to wrap my tie in a newspaper, and whenever the teacher checked I would quickly put it on again. I'm not used to it. Most Bolivians don't wear ties.
I ask one more thing from our father above - God save Bolivia.
I'm going to have to campaign to teach Bolivians who the president is, because apparently they haven't realized I'm here yet.
There is a national consensus building here that drugs are doing a great deal of damage to the Bolivian society.
Bolivia was the first country to stop hyperinflation in a democracy without depriving people of their civil rights and without violating human rights.
It's difficult to explain a giraffe to a Bolivian who lives on the Altiplano. But when they see one, I think they'll like it.
I would say I'm a fiscal conservative and a social liberal, if that contradiction can make sense, because in Bolivia, we have a great problem, which is the inequity of income distribution. The rich aren't that rich, but the poor are very poor.
I only became involved in politics when democracy returned to Bolivia. Then, unluckily in democracy, we ran into the inheritance of 20 years of military government, a great deal of debt, and a great deal of expense.
I'm not going to say that the problems of my government, or those of Bolivia, are the fault of the United States. But they could have done a little more to help us.
We are turning all Bolivians into capitalists.
Without U.S. input, the countries of South America joined forces in 2008 to shut down a coup attempt in Bolivia and prevented a war between Ecuador and Colombia.
Venezuela, with Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, is a full member of Mercosur. And many other Latin American countries, CARICOM, Bolivia have expressed their support for Venezuela. The Arab League, the full Arab League has voiced its support.
Bolivia recently did what every country should do - banned the use of animals in circuses.
I have known Evo Morales for many years, since the days of the union movement. From a historical and sociological standpoint, the election of Evo Morales is extraordinary, with great prospects and potential for the Bolivian people.
It's stupid, just because I was born with a French passport, I have the right to travel all around the world, but if I was born in Mali, or Venezuela or Bolivia I couldn't.
I was taken out of school by my dad when I was 11 and lived in Mexico City, then later in Paris. I went with him to excavate in Bolivia and Peru. I never finished high school. I was a straight F student anyway. My father admitted to me later that he'd thought I would come to no good.
Perhaps no country in Latin America is more picturesque than Bolivia, and the most memorable Bolivian city may be Potosi.
The poorest country in South America, Bolivia, had been devastated by neoliberal economic policies.
After the ignominious collapse of the Copenhagen global climate change summit in 2009, Bolivia organised a People's Summit with 35,000 participants from 140 countries - not just representatives of governments, but also civil society and activists.
La Paz, Bolivia, is the most extraordinary city.
We shot 'Telusa Telusa' song in Bolivia. It took us 50 hours to get to the location. We shot in high altitudes, and oxygen cylinders were kept handy.
My father came from a country called Bolivia. He was of Spanish descent. I never went to Bolivia until I was 60 years old, but apparently when he was 17, he had already planned his entire academic curriculum so that he could graduate high school and enter college in the United States. That's how much he wanted to come to this country.
My father was Bolivian, which makes me half-Bolivian. It's where I got some of my exotic features and certainly my skin tone.
There is a disturbing reincarnation of socialist and nationalist dictatorships raising their heads around the world and even in our own back yard. You see it in places like Venezuela and Bolivia, stoked in no small part by Cuba, and also in Central Asia, and troubling trends in Russia and China.
By the late 1970s, repression and economic chaos were causing increasing unrest throughout Latin America. Army strongmen were forced to cede power in Peru, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and the Dominican Republic.
Argentina has elected a centre-right president, Mauricio Macri. Bolivia's Evo Morales, having lost a referendum that would have allowed him a fourth presidential term, spends his time muttering about CIA plots and issuing threats to jail journalists who persist in reporting influence-peddling scandals. The economy is a sputtering shambles.
When I was super young, we were hiking to the top of the 14,000-foot peaks in Colorado. You know, when I was in my early teens, we went to Bolivia and climbed to the tops of the highest mountains in the Alps. You know, those experiences were so exciting that when I came back to school, I was actually quite bored.
