Evo Morales

The new republic should be based on diversity, respect and equal rights for all.

Bolivia is a majority indigenous nation, but that majority has always been excluded.

Dialogue is the basis of Indian culture, and we don't want to make any enemies. Political and ideological adversaries, perhaps, but not enemies.

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.

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.

Globalization creates economic policies where the transnationals lord over us, and the result is misery and unemployment.

Sooner or later, we will have to recognise that the Earth has rights, too, to live without pollution. What mankind must know is that human beings cannot live without Mother Earth, but the planet can live without humans.