evo marales said if he loses the vote he'll just return to being a coca farmer...

Muttering incantations at a witches' market above La Paz, Faustino Tinta set fire to a dried llama fetus and wax trinkets, an offering his client hopes will help Bolivian President Evo Morales survive a recall vote.

Tinta, 53, is one of dozens of witch doctors who tend a warren of stalls in the Morales stronghold of El Alto, making offerings that promise luck at work or in love, or to call up spirits and banish curses.

In his stall herbs hang on the wall next to a carving of Jesus and a picture of Morales. Outside, at around 4,000 metres above sea level, snow falls on the ground.

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Dried llama fetuses are seen for sale as offerings at the witches' market in El Alto, on the outskirts of La Paz, Bolivia. Dozens of witch doctors tend to a warren of stalls in the town, where clients have been making offerings to help President Evo Morales survive a recall vote.

DAVID MERCADO REUTERS

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"Snow. It is a happy omen," Tinta said, sprinkling alcohol on the palms of 23-year-old miner Javier Ramos. "Many people have come to make offerings to Pachamama for Evo." August is the month of Pachamama, or Mother Earth, central to Andean culture.

Ramos wants spirits to protect him while he works underground at a gold mine and to ensure that Morales wins tomorrow's vote and pushes on with his nationalization and pro-poor reforms.

Morales is expected to survive the recall vote but South America's poorest country is gripped by a political crisis that could deepen as right-wing opponents seek to derail his socialist reforms.

Morales and eight of Bolivia's nine provincial governors face recall votes. Confident of victory, he approved the votes in an apparent bid to undermine his opponents and sap momentum from autonomy movements in natural gas-rich eastern provinces.

The president is very popular in and around La Paz, but his reforms, from energy and mining nationalization to the centralization of energy revenues, have polarized Bolivians.

"Evo is ... going to win the referendum," said soothsayer Maria Samo, tossing coca leaves on to a crucifix placed on a piece of woven material in her own stall nearby.

"There, look: that is his luck," added Samo, pointing to two stray leaves, their dark green upper side facing upward.

The dark side of the leaves denotes luck while the silvery underside is cause for worry, she said.