Two decades of leftist rule in Bolivia came to an end on Oct. 19, when voters chose Rodrigo Paz, a centrist senator, to be the country’s next president as it seeks to recover from a grinding economic crisis.
Paz won convincingly after polls had shown a razor-thin margin, defeating right-wing candidate and former President Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga by securing 54.2 percent of the vote. But his party did not secure a legislative majority, meaning that he will have to make compromises to govern effectively.
Both Paz and Quiroga advanced after the first round of voting in August, in which Bolivians rebuked the left-wing Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party after years of persistent infighting and intractable economic woes.
Inflation in Bolivia hit its highest level in more than three decades this year, due to a foreign currency shortage caused by plummeting gas exports. Consumer prices have skyrocketed, and Bolivians have waited in long lines for suddenly scarce essentials, such as petrol, eggs, sugar, and cooking oil.
Paz surprised observers by winning the first round of voting, galvanizing Bolivians with promises of economic recovery and a slogan of “capitalism for all.” He also ran a social media-savvy campaign aided by his running mate, the popular and combative former police officer Edmand Lara.
MAS did not advance a candidate to the general election. Evo Morales, the party’s charismatic former leader and a former Bolivian president, was barred by the country’s top court from running in this year’s election and had urged supporters to boycott the August vote.
Morales, the country’s first Indigenous leader, became a beacon of the Latin American left as his policies lifted millions out of poverty. But he resigned in 2019 amid allegations of electoral fraud, and MAS never found a true replacement. His successor, Luis Arce, broke from Morales in a feud that roiled the party and did not run for reelection.
Both Paz and Quiroga courted the United States during their campaigns after Morales turned the country away from Washington and toward China, Russia, Venezuela, and Cuba. Paz visited the United States in September and met with Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau.
On Oct. 21, the U.S. State Department joined eight right-wing Latin American governments in congratulating Paz and pledging to work together on “shared goals of regional and global security, economic prosperity, and growth that benefit all our nations.”
Paz ideology “gelled well with [the] Republican Trump,” said Amalendu Misra, a professor of international politics at Lancaster University. “[His] victory can be partly credited to him having the blessings of the United States and voter recognition of that critical feature.”
The son of former President Jaime Paz Zamora, the younger Paz attracted disillusioned MAS voters who were hesitant to embrace the far-right Quiroga, who served as interim president from 2001 to 2002.
Quiroga promised deep economic reforms that would likely privatize state-controlled industries and vowed to attract foreign investment, including from the United States. Paz, meanwhile, found a middle ground by pledging to keep many of the social programs instituted by Morales.
“Paz Pereira has the opportunity to build a national consensus by reaching out to the disgruntled MAS leaders for the sake of rescuing Bolivia’s economy and image,” said Misra, who compared Paz’s victory to the “ideological shift” seen in Argentina when conservative Javier Milei came to power amid dissatisfaction with Cristina and Néstor Kirchner.
Paz, however, is still largely unknown and has not clarified many of his policies. He has pledged to reform the constitution and to avoid turning to the International Monetary Fund to relieve Bolivia’s dollar shortage, but he has yet to specify how he will manage either objective, said Farit L. Rojas, professor of democratic theories at Universidad Mayor de San Andrés in La Paz, Bolivia’s administrative capital.
“There is no clear idea of how Paz Pereira will govern,” Rojas said.
His campaign, following global trends, lived almost entirely on social media, using TikTok and Instagram to reach young voters with populist messages aimed at ending corruption. “Television advertising was almost nonexistent,” Rojas said.
This strategy was driven largely by Lara, who formed a last-minute alliance with Paz in May after his previous running mate dropped out. Lara won over Bolivia’s significant Indigenous voting population by repeatedly criticizing Quiroga’s running mate, Juan Pablo Velasco, for racist messages he had posted on social media.
Many voters were galvanized more by Lara than by Paz, and Lara was the first of the two to give a victory speech once early results were known, Rojas said.
Still, the new government will have to quickly prove itself to avoid the political unrest that has often paralyzed the country, especially in rural areas that traditionally support MAS. Bolivia has been relatively calm since the first round of voting in August, after Morales expressed acceptance of the results and avoided making any statements that could lead to violence.
Paz will have to ensure that his slogan of “capitalism for all” is implemented in such a way that “benefits not only the wealthiest sectors but also the poorest,” Rojas said, perhaps by maintaining state control of companies that are “economically successful or socially necessary.”
The new government will also face key decisions on Bolivia’s vast lithium reserves, estimated at around 20 percent of the world’s total. The previous government signed controversial contracts with Chinese and Russian companies to extract lithium, but they were not approved by Bolivia’s legislature. Paz has pledged to review them.
The United States has expressed interest in Bolivia’s lithium, seeing it as crucial to winning its economic arms race with China.
“Paz Pereira’s win is a godsend for Washington, at a time when the latter is desperately seeking to reduce its rare-earth dependence on China and exploring new suppliers,” Misra said.
But any efforts to increase mining will create resistance in rural and Indigenous communities, raising both environmental concerns and the potential for political unrest, and Bolivia is highly unlikely to break away from Chinese investment entirely. “I think [Paz Pereira] will be cautious,” Rojas said.
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