[SomeRandomUser]

Regarding the wording used, "buddy" is an affective way of referring to one another between left-oriented political movements here. Extremely common in peronism but also used in several other countries from South America.

> He has the advantage of thousands of years of civilization over me. [Not sure I understood that sentence correctly.]

It refers to the bolivian/peruvian aboriginal culture from which Morales' is considered a representative so the translation is correct. It's just a political compliment, nothing more than that.

[kragen]

Thanks! I thought that might be what she meant, but I wasn't sure.

I'm not really sure if "buddy" is a good translation of "compañer@", but it seemed about right. "Comrade" might be an equally good translation if you wanted to prejudice people in the US against her.

[nandemo]

"Buddy" sounds really silly. "Comrade" is closer, but at least in Portuguese that would be "camarada", which carries a rather old-style socialist nuance, not "companheiro".

"Fellow", "brother" or even "mate" sound better in this context.

[JVIDEL]

Indeed the word is "companero", but its not as formal as comrade which also exists as "camarada", in this context its actually more like partner (in a professional sense) but not as informal as brother or pal in english.

Peron put that word en vogue around here.