After months full of tensions and clashes in which it even seemed that the elections would be suspended, and in the midst of an inflationary crisis that has reduced much of the progress made in the last twenty years, the Bolivian people voted twice and ended up obtaining barely dramatic results. Before 10pm on October 12, the day of the counting, it was already known that Rodrigo Paz (Santiago de Compostela, 1967), son of former president Jaime Paz Zamora, was the new president of the country, and around midnight, his main opponent, Tuto Quiroga, recognized the results. Bolivia, after two decades of state populism, begins the journey towards a new order.
Two weeks before the August elections, Paz, candidate of the PDC (Christian Democratic Party), was in fifth place in the polls, with 5% of voting intentions. From that moment on his rise was unstoppable. The reasons are several: although his intentions were clearly those of a right-wing candidate – or at least center-right (“capitalism for all”, was his slogan) – his evasive answers on the role of the United States, the International Monetary Fund and the DEA in the country, or whether he would be in charge of bringing Evo Morales to justice, allowed a good percentage of undecided voters, who supported the populist MAS project, to choose him as the best option. in the face of the right-wing ideological rigidity embodied by Quiroga.
His vice presidential candidate, Edmand Lara of Cochabamba, helped capture those votes. The charismatic ex-policeman, skilled in communicating via TikTok, considered close to popular sectors and a champion of the fight against corruption, has even overshadowed Paz with his ill-timed and furious declarations (three years ago, amid the libertarian furor, Lara triumphed in a poll asking who the “Bolivian Milei” could be). Identity politics also works in Bolivia, and voting for someone “who comes from below and is one of us” – the words are from an indigenous trader – makes all the sense in the world.
The situation is not suitable for large celebrations. Paz, who takes office on November 9, inherits a country in crisis thanks to the poor management of President Luis Arce, known as the architect of the economic model that governed the country after Morales came to power in 2006. The MAS was instrumental in the growth of the middle class, empowering sectors of the “chola” bourgeoisie and allowing marginalized groups to come to power; At the same time, Morales increased public spending, squandered his political capital with short-term or inefficient projects, got lost in a caudillismo that led him to ignore the very Constitution promulgated by his party and, benefiting from a decade of abundance in the prices of gas and petroleum products, did not prepare the country for the end of the economic boom. A hegemonic project to refound the country as a plurinational state, which counted on the support of two thirds of voters at the end of the first decade of the century, driven by an annual growth of around 5% (one of the highest on the continent), arrived at the elections harassed by a strong internal clash between Arce and Morales: its candidate obtained just 3% of the votes, and the party, almost zero representation in the legislative assembly.
The MAS has had 20 years to consolidate public institutions, but it leaves them quite weak, with a corrupt justice system that no one believes in. On the other hand, the advance of illegal mining pollution and deforestation shows how “living well” has failed, the alternative development plan to capitalism presented by Morales in 2006 as a new form of relationship between Bolivians and nature, learned from ancestral cultures.
Paz’s first challenge is to stabilize the ailing economy. There is a recession and Arce has spent a good part of its reserves. Inflation is unforgiving and basic necessities such as beef or chicken continue to increase (“people are carrying ground meat and bones, meat is practically no longer sold,” a shop assistant at the Abasto market in Santa Cruz told a journalist Duty). Supplying the country with petrol and diesel, a problem that began last year and has become chronic, is urgent for the production chain: ordinary citizens and transporters stand in long weekly queues, and the food chain is affected (agricultural production requires 35 million liters of diesel per month, but in October only 8 million were distributed).
Paz also has to decide where to get financing to buy fuel, whether from the ill-fated IMF or somewhere else that involves less political capital spending. Furthermore, it must be assessed whether the price of petrol and diesel will continue to be subsidized, a sensitive issue in Bolivia: this subsidy is the main cause of the debt, but eliminating it could cause immediate social instability.
Paz promised decentralized capitalism, with 50% of profits for the national state and the remaining 50% for the regions; This idea is not new on the continent and in other experiences it has clashed with the limits of fiscal reality. He also won support with his speech against the so-called “Track State”, guaranteeing less regulation and a fairer tax system to legalize much of the 85% of the population living in the informal economy. His first important meeting was with private entrepreneurs from Santa Cruz, to whom he offered greater commercial openness and legal security. The entry into his team of José Luis Lupo, former vice-presidential candidate together with Samuel Doria Medina (right-wing leader who led the polls until June), reinforces the perception of a turning point towards a weakened neoliberalism (“I don’t believe in subsidies, gas has been nationalized and there is none, diesel has been subsidized and there is no diesel”, said Lupo during the election campaign).
Paz will have to resolve his relationship with Evo Morales. The former MAS leader, exiled in his Chapare stronghold in Cochabamba, is a fugitive from justice who still enjoys around 20% of the vote. Evo claimed the victory of the PDC (despite having asked for a null vote, his voters opted for Paz), he did not leave aside his political ambitions and is capable of destabilizing the country: he has already denounced Paz as a neoliberal and said he will resist his policies. For those who see Paz as “a Trojan horse” of masismo, he himself said that “justice will fall on those who must obey justice… the State did not apply the rigor of the law to Evo… Since we are the government, if there is justice, that justice will have to act”.
“I hope that Bolivia returns to the world and that the world returns to Bolivia,” Paz also said, assuring that relations with the United States will be restored. For now, the COB (Central Obrera Boliviana) has declared a state of emergency, ensuring that it will reject the decentralization of education and healthcare. ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America), an organization of ten Latin American and Caribbean countries with a left-wing ideology, suspended Bolivia from the alliance and branded Paz as “pro-imperialist and colonialist,” after declaring that it would not invite to its inauguration countries that did not have “democracy as a principle,” including Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua (Bolivia’s main allies in the MAS years). That said, Bolivia’s turnaround is clear; the direction, not so much.
