And in December 2005, as if in a sudden rush of understanding of the power of their numbers, Bolivian Indians went to the polls with a common goal. In the 2001 census, 62 percent of the population had identified itself as indigenous. Six weeks after the rally in Villa Tunari, Evo Morales won the presidential election by 54 percent (the first such majority win in decades), with the lowest abstention rate ever. Native communities all over the country elected dozens of their own members as representatives to both houses of congress. Upon taking office—in a ceremony that included traditional Andean rites officiated by Quechua and Aymara amautas, or priests, President Morales appointed four cabinet ministers with Indian last names or cultural traditions and called for elections to an assembly charged with drafting a new constitution. Dozens of Indian delegates could be seen bustling in their brightly colored attire when the assembly was in session. In addition to Spanish, all of the 36 native tongues spoken in Bolivia were declared official languages in the draft constitution. Five centuries after the conquest, there was the possibility of a New World in Bolivia.

In the meeting hall of the unprepossessing municipal building of Achacachi, a town that lies more than 12,000 feet above sea level, councilwoman Gumersinda Quisbert, 42, sat on a broken-down plastic sofa, looking sturdily out at the world from under the gold brim of her bowler hat. Wrapped in a threadbare embroidered shawl, she spoke fiercely—although in halting Spanish—about the transformations in her home district, now led by an Indian mayor and an Indian council.

"Before, we campesinos had no way of getting into a government official's office," Quisbert said. She gave an example: "I was involved with my husband in a lawsuit, and whenever I went to court, since I wore a pollera [the traditional long petticoats and skirt] they always told me to wait outside."

Quisbert had spent the morning in a council meeting called to explain a construction budget to the representatives of a village in the district. The meeting was in Aymara, salted with modern terms in Spanish for "zinc roofing" and "ecological standards." The audience—as far as I could tell, just about all the adults from the village, including nursing mothers and their offspring—filled all the gilded imitation-Louis XIV chairs in the dingy room and listened with unwavering attention, asking what seemed to be pointed and direct questions of their elected representatives. The meeting felt as open and purposeful as, say, one in a New England town hall.