These are vital questions, but they miss the larger significance of the rise of someone like Morales, for he is Bolivia’s first indigenous elected head of state. His victory marks a step forward in Latin America’s overall democratization, with positive long-term significance for economic and social development in the region.

To understand why, it is helpful to take a broad view of Latin America’s history and economic development. The societies of the Americas were forged by European conquests of indigenous populations, and by the racial and ethnic divisions that followed. Both the US and Latin America are still coming to terms with those historic divisions.

The Europeans who conquered and colonized the Americas after 1492 did not find vast empty lands, as they sometimes proclaimed, but rather lands populated by communities dating back thousands of years. A large portion of the indigenous populations quickly succumbed to diseases and hardships brought by the European colonizers, but many survived, often in dominant numbers, as in Bolivia and much of the highlands of the Andes mountain region.

Almost everywhere, these surviving indigenous populations became subservient members of European-led societies. The Europeans then brought millions of African slaves to the Americas. After emancipation in the nineteenth century, the African-American communities remained impoverished and largely bereft of political rights.

Thus, vast inequalities of power, social standing, and economic well-being were part and parcel of the forging of the Americas. Indigenous, African-American, and mestizo (mixed) communities have been fighting for their social, political, and economic rights ever since.

Democracy in Latin America has been a hard-won struggle. Even in the US, a country that fancies itself as a model of democracy, African-Americans were not truly enfranchised until the mid-1960’s. In Latin America, democracy has similarly been incomplete, unstable, and often inaccessible to indigenous, African-American, and mixed populations.

Moreover, given the vast inequalities of power and wealth in Latin America, and with a large part of the population bereft of land and education, the region has long been vulnerable to populist politics and rebellions, with leaders promising quick gains for the dispossessed by seizing property from the elites. The elites have fought back, often brutally, to protect their property. Politics has therefore often been more a violent than an electoral struggle, and property rights have often been tenuous.

A dominant pattern in both the US and Latin America has been the resistance of the dominant white communities to sharing in the financing of public investments in the “human capital” (health and education) of the black and indigenous communities. While European societies have developed social welfare states with universal access to public health and education services, elites throughout the Americas have tended to favor private-sector provision of health and education, in part reflecting white populations’ unwillingness to pay for social services for other ethnic and racial groups.

Morales’ election in Bolivia – where indigenous groups are estimated to comprise around 55% of the population and mixed-race people account for another 30% – should be viewed against this historical backdrop. Moreover, Bolivia is not alone: the shift from military rule to democratic politics in Latin America during the past 20 years is gradually, fitfully, but consistently, broadening political empowerment beyond the traditional elites and dominant ethnic groups. In Peru, for example, Alejandro Toledo is that country’s first indigenous president.

In the longer term, the spread of democracy in Latin America promises not only fairer societies, but also economically more dynamic societies, through increased public investments in health, education, and job skills. The region’s chronic under-investment in education, particularly in science and technology, is partly responsible for its economic stagnation during the past quarter-century. Unlike East Asia and India, most of Latin America did not make a breakthrough to high-technology industries, instead suffering a period of low GDP growth, debt crises, and macroeconomic instability.

This can now change, at least gradually. Bolivia would do well to follow the example of its eastern neighbor, Brazil, which has experienced a surge in educational and scientific investments since its democratization in the 1980’s. Rising educational attainment is helping to promote more technologically sophisticated exports as well.

Of course, Morales’ election also raises many important short-term doubts and questions. Will the new government follow responsible economic policies, or will Bolivia flirt yet again with destabilizing populist measures, as it has done so often in the past? Will Morales renegotiate the laws and contracts governing Bolivia’s vast natural gas reserves, as his government is rightly committed to do, in a way that does not scare away urgently needed foreign investment?

Bolivia has entered a new era of mass mobilization of its long-suffering but now victorious indigenous communities. The short-term outlook is uncertain. In the longer run, however, it’s right to bet on the economic benefits of democratization.

Jeffrey Sachs is Professor of Economics and Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University.