Bolivian President Evo Morales was sworn in for a second, five-year term on Friday in a ceremony attended by fellow Latin American leftist leaders including Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
Morales, 50, was taking up the new mandate with almost unlimited power after last year changing Bolivia's constitution to get rid of a one-term presidential limit.
On December 6, he easily won re-election against a conservative former governor, Manfred Reyes Villa, who has since fled to the United States, fearing Morales's threats to jail him for alleged tax evasion.
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Since coming to power in January 2006 as Bolivia's first fully indigenous leader, Morales, a former coca farmer and union leader, has steadily increased his control over his country.
Following in Venezuala's footsteps, and backed by Bolivia's indigenous majority, he has nationalized key industries and rolled out what he calls a socialist "revolution."
Along the way, he has sidelined a fractured conservative opposition in Bolivia's lowland east which had unsuccessfully sought to block his control of natural gas reserves there and stall land reforms giving greater autonomy to indigenous communities.
Like Chavez, he has also wielded fierce anti-US rhetoric, and has kicked out the US ambassador and US anti-narcotics officials.
Latin American neighbours attend ceremony
His investiture Friday in Bolvia's legislative assembly was attended by presidents Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Fernando Lugo of Paraguay and Michele Bachelet of Chile.
A visiting senior US State Department official in charge of international affairs, Maria Otero, also observed.
With his left hand held up and his right on his heart, Morales swore to rule "for the country and the people" before receiving the symbolic presidential medal and sash.
Chavez, who flew into foggy La Paz early Friday for the ceremony, said Morales's re-election "is an example of Latin America's people waking up from what President Rafael Correa called the long neo-liberal night."
On Thursday, he underwent a mystical indigenous ceremony to also become the spiritual leader of Bolivia's Amerindians.
