Stewart: Your story is remarkable, how does a farmer, a poor farmer without a high school education become the first indigenous President of Bolivia? It’s an amazing journey. 

Morales: I understand that we all have rights. It’s not just professionals and intellectuals that can become President. People who have other experiences, who have a working life as well can also become President. Therefore indigenous person’s can also become President.

Stewart: In Bolivia. In America, It’s a little rigged, [Laughter] I’m just saying.

Morales: So if it’s rigged then something needs to be done to change that. [Applause]

Stewart: You’re unusual. I want to talk about what you ran on, what you promised. You promised to nationalize resources and help distribute some of the money to the poorer folks in Bolivia, convene a constitutional assembly and institute agrarian reform. You did that within eight months of your election. [Applause]

Stewart: What are you trying to pull? [Laughter]

Morales: On the issue of nationalization of oil, in 2005 before I became President, The Bolivian state received only $300 million dollars from its oil and gas exports. And now since they’ve been nationalized the Bolivian state receives more than $2 Billion dollars. [Applause] Therefore, we’ve followed through on what we promised. Second, in terms of the Agrarian revolution, there were many lands in just a few hands and now we’ve made a change. Many people have access to land, that’s the change we’re bringing about.

Stewart: How have you made the, maybe the ones of European decent, the ones that have had the power for many years-comfortable with this type of change? What have you done for them? 

Morales: We are going forward with the idea of a multi-cultural state, a multi-national state, trying to live in unity at the same time respecting our diversity. We’re so diverse, there are blue and green eyed people like you.

Stewart: What? Thank you for noticing. [Laughter]

Morales: But, we need to all come together so we can live united.

Stewart: We have a tendency to group the South American leaders [together]. If you visit Castro, if you visit Chavez, then we all of the sudden get scared. [Laughter]
And so that understanding and dialog is important for us to open up as well.

Morales: I know that we’re different not only within the nations but with among nations as well. Those differences among the various nations must be respected, but what better among political leaders, presidents, or with social movement leaders, than coming together to think about how we can support life and human kind. It is my sense that in this new millennium, it should be the millennium of life. And from here, or from Cuba, Venezuela, Africa, we need to create and come together to save lives and to save human kind.

In recent days at the United Nations I’ve heard a lot of talk about global warming, climate change, but they don’t say why and where all that is coming from. There appear to be few political leaders or movements that say, ‘where is all this coming from’? Perhaps from a western culture, perhaps excesses in relation to industry. Or perhaps because of excessive luxury, excessive consumption. And if we all think about human kind, then we need to think about how we can change that situation. And I personally know that there are presidents who send people to save lives, but I also know there are presidents in countries and presidents that send people away to take lives. If we compare these two things and weigh these two things certainly we’re going to come to the conclusion that these policies must change and in this millennium must be to save lives. And please don’t consider me to be part of the access of evil. [Laughter]

Stewart: Evo Morales! [Applause]