Internationally, capitalism is in crisis. But in Bolivia, South America’s poorest country, it’s being managed with some success by the government of Evo Morales and his Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party, now three-and-a-half years into its second term in office.

On a Friday evening in late June, I sat down with Marianela Prada Tejada in the office of the Ministry of Economics and Public Finance. She’s presently the executive of the cabinet that runs the ministry, and has been working in different posts within it since 2007. She began our conversation by noting the bad reputation left-wing governments developed over the years in terms of economic management in Bolivia.

Pinning this baggage mainly on the unprecedented hyperinflationary crisis that occurred under the watch of the short-lived Democratic Popular Unity (UDP) administration in the early 1980s, Prada Tejada believes that UDP failure opened the door for the long neoliberal night that followed. As a result, a collective notion has lived on in the country’s imaginary, which says that “progressive governments, governments of the Left in Bolivia don’t know how to administer the economy of the country.” Even worse, she laughed bitterly, this time, with Morales, it was an Indian in charge. There was no doubt for the racist opposition that “a left-wing Indian was going to be a disaster for the country.”