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 his role model, 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. Since coming to power in January 2006 as Bolivia's first indigenous head of state, Morales, a former coca farmer and union leader, has steadily increased his control over his country.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2010