“It seems like the map is changing.” December 30, 2005 Fidel Castro He received in Havana with these words a still little-known Aymara leader who had just won, two weeks earlier, the presidential elections in Bolivia, a historic milestone in a country governed since its founding by the white and Creole minority. With the blessing of the Commander, Evo Morales became part of an ideological trinity, along with Fidel and Chávez, that would redesign the political cartography of Latin America at the beginning of this century.
Experienced in the union struggles of the peasantry of Chapare (the coca-growing region of Bolivia), Evo Morales burst into Bolivian politics hand in hand with the Movement towards Socialism (MAS) and arrived at the Palacio Quemado in 2006 with a clear vocation to break with neoliberal tradition of the governments that had preceded him. The MAS has been in power since then (with the brief one-year break due to the 2019 coup d’état) and today, almost two decades later, it has entered into a process of implosion.
Morales (2006-2019) and whoever was his political dolphin, the current president Luis Arceare now irreconcilable enemies and their dispute for the leadership of the MAS may lead to a fracture of the party in the face of the presidential elections August 2025, in which both leaders could confront each other. Between cross accusations of sexual abuse of women and incitement to social destabilization, Evo and Lucho, as they are called in Bolivia, advance without brakes towards a clash with unforeseeable consequences for the future of the left in the South American country.
As it could not be otherwise in the country with the most coups d’état on the planet, The current MAS crisis has its origins in a civil-military rebellion orchestrated in 2019 against Morales after the elections in October of that year. With the approval of the Organization of American States (OAS), a handful of unscrupulous politicians, soldiers and police officers took power and forced Morales (winner at the polls) to embark on the path of exile. One year later, The MAS recovered the presidency after the interim government of the coup leader Jeanine Añez (today in prison).
From his Argentine exile Evo had appointed Arcehis former Minister of Economy, as successor ahead of a figure with more political weight, former Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca. Arce was considered the brain of the Bolivian “economic miracle”although today Evo refers to him as a mere “cashier.” He obtained a resounding 55% of the votes in the 2020 elections and, little by little, he was distancing himself from his mentor both in ideological and programmatic terms. His government tilted towards the center as the years went by. And today it claims to be an intermediate point between Evism and the traditional right.
Investigation against Evo
The latest episode in the relentless fight waged by both leaders has been the recent investigation opened by the Prosecutor’s Office against Morales for a alleged crime of statutory rape and three other processes. The main case refers to an alleged daughter that Evo would have had when he was president with a 15-year-old girl. A relationship that according to the accusation would have been consented to by the minor’s parents in exchange for certain political favors. The case – Morales’ lawyers argue – was already dismissed by the Court in 2019. There was also a precedent in 2016, a scandal encouraged by the press about an unrecognized son of Evo who, over time, turned out to be false. But the image of the then president was damaged for many months.
The confrontation between Evo and Lucho has divided the MAS into two halvesan acronym over which both factions are now fighting. The congresses of both parties held in recent months have been annulled by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal. The crisis was exacerbated at the end of June when General Juan José Zúñigaa soldier close to Arce, threatened Morales with arrest if he ran for president again considering that the Constitution disqualified him from doing so (an issue on which there are different interpretations). Then, Zúñiga stood with a tank and a checkpoint of soldiers in the Murillo square in La Paz, in front of the Government headquarters. The cantinflesca riot, without support from the vast majority of the garrisons, ended in a few hours with the coup plotters arrested. Evo maintains that it was a maple self-hit to divert attention and present themselves as a victim.
The president’s popularity was at rock bottom due to a devastating economic crisis (there is a fuel shortage and a worrying lack of foreign currency). Four months later, the situation remains the same or worse. Evo blames his former minister for having squandered his legacy in less than five years. Morales governed the country between 2006 and 2019. The international economic situation was on his side during the first years of his mandate, with raw material prices through the roof. He cleaned up the country’s finances, accumulated monetary reserves, reduced the fiscal deficit and contained inflation. All of this without giving up one bit of its ideological banners of nationalization of the main industries and reformulation of social policy to redistribute wealth. His figure grew larger over the years. He swept the ballot box and served as supreme leader of a gigantic movementunique in the world, in which there was space for the popular sectors (that 50% of the indigenous population) and for a middle class whose standard of living improved considerably.
The problem of succession
His figure was so large and charismatic that he dwarfed those who accompanied him on the trip. This is an evil that the progressive Latin American governments of the last two decades have suffered. Evo chose Arce and today he wants to “kill the father” (that is, remove him from the electoral race). Raphael Belt He passed the baton to his vice president Lenin Dark, became neoliberal overnightand today he spends his days in Belgium with an arrest warrant if he steps into Ecuador. Cristina Fernández de Kirchnera political animal if there ever was one, was entrusted to Alberto Fernández and both ended up throwing things at each other in the Casa Rosada and fertilizing the ground for the emergence of the far-right Javier Milei.
The debacle of Peronism in Argentina should serve as a warning to the leaders of the MAS. Infighting not only weakens parties. They also cause citizen disaffection and the consequent appearance of outsiders with undemocratic credentials. In Bolivia the opposition is still somewhat confused, but it is already emitting some signs of a possible search for unity to unseat the MAS from power. The former presidents Carlos Table (candidate in the last two electoral dates) and Jorge Tutorial Quiroga They visited the far-rightist in prison a few days ago Luis Fernando Camacho (former governor of the wealthy department of Santa Cruz and convicted for his participation in the 2019 coup).
In the crossfire between Evo and Lucho, the street seems to be on the side of the former president. His recent “march to save Bolivia” was a success. The Government responded with judicial proceedings and the Evism counterattacked by presenting to court a woman who said she had been sexually abused by Arce. From Chapare, where Morales lives, he has warned the president that he will not give up presenting his candidacy in 2025: “If it is not good, it is bad.” His followers threaten to “set fire” to the country if their leader is arrested. Roadblocks have already begun. But the president is not intimidated: “I did not agree to be your puppet,” he told him in a message broadcast on television. Evo leads the polls in voting intention, ahead of an unpopular Lucholess than a year before the elections. Their club duel today darkens the horizon of the Bolivian left.
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