(Photo: Jeff Watts)

Controversial Bolivian president Evo Morales delivered a speech at AU during his first visit to Washington, D.C., last month. Bolivia’s first indigenous head of state, praised by some for his populist policies and slammed by others as Bolivia’s socialist counterpart to Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Cuba’s Fidel Castro, spoke in Spanish, with a simultaneous translation, to the crowd. The event’s sponsors included the Embassy of Bolivia, the Washington Office on Latin America, and AU. Morales was in Washington to speak at the Organization of American States.