As sociologist and historian Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui wrote in ReVista magazine, cocalerosplayed an important role in the 1999-2000 "water war", an uprising against the privatisation of the municipal water supply company in the city of Cochabamba, an event that also boosted Morales" political ascent. Alongside other grassroots movements, this "eventually led to the election in 2005 of… Morales, an Aymara native, as the first indigenous president in the Americas". Once in office, he swiftly moved away from the US-led eradication-and-prohibition approach to coca with a policy commonly referred to as "Coca yes, cocaine no", which permitted growers to cultivate plots of coca within specified limits.