On the high plane, the altiplano, surrounding La Paz, where the landscape is drawn in shades of dusty brown, new brick buildings stand out against the bright sky. Most are residences of a couple of storeys, but there are schools and clinics too. Some even boast cement balustrades, a flourish that echoes the Spanish colonial style. In a place where there are still adobe houses, and where a dowry may be measured partly in potatoes freeze-dried by nights spent above 4,000 metres, this is a transformation.

President Evo Morales’s government has shovelled money towards this part of the country ever since he was elected in 2005. But its time in power has been deeply divisive. Leopoldo Fernández, an opposition politician who is governor of the Pando province in the north, has been in prison for ten months without standing trial. In March Victor Hugo Cárdenas, an Aymara Indian who was once the country’s vice-president, had his house attacked by a mob after opposing a new constitution proposed by the government.

Abroad, Mr Morales’s government has revelled in the worsening of a number of its most important relationships. It expelled the United States’ ambassador, along with his country’s drug-enforcement agents. The accusations of American plots against the government had abated in anticipation of the new Obama administration, but business has now returned to usual, with President Morales expelling another American diplomat and lambasting the United States for refusing to renew a preferential trade agreement that is linked to Bolivia’s performance on combating its drug barons. Bolivia’s relations with Peru are awful and it has failed to convince Brazil to abandon plans for new hydro resources in the Amazon which will lessen its demand for Bolivia’s gas.

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