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In this edition of Enlace Andino desde Bolivia we will talk about the political polarization that the country is experiencing. We will also tell you about a slight recovery in the economic situation that is allowing an improvement in the quality of life of Bolivians, who suffered severely from the pandemic. On the other hand, we will show them the extravagant ‘cholets’, buildings where the wealthy Aymara class live in the town of El Alto, in La Paz.
The political crisis in Bolivia has its origin in the referendum of February 21, 2016, when Evo Morales rejected the mandate not to allow him to run for a fourth term. In 2019, protests against him, allegations of fraud by the OAS, and pressure from the security forces forced him to resign.
In 2020, the Movement for Socialism (MAS), his party, won the elections again, this time with Luis Arce as the candidate. The new president, who has already served a year in office, far from having peace to govern, faces systematic protests from the regions, political opponents and civil groups opposed to the Government, who oppose its laws, to which qualify as authoritarian and persecutory.
One of the government’s actions is to prosecute and keep in jail the former temporary president who replaced Evo Morales, Jeanine Añez, whom he blames for a coup in 2019. His ministers and former senior military chiefs are also imprisoned. and police of the time.
The opponents accuse Arce and especially Morales, who continues to have a gravitating position in the Government, of political persecution. The MAS, on the other hand, accuses the opposition of seeking to destabilize the government in order to create the conditions for a new coup d’état.
Slight improvement in an economy hit by the pandemic
For the Arce government, politics is still a turbulent terrain, however, where it seems to be doing better is in the economy. According to official figures, in the second quarter of this year the country has grown 9.4%, although international organizations estimate that the country will close this year with a growth of 5%.
Industry analysts consider this growth to be actually a rebound effect of the abysmal drop during the pandemic.
The Arce government applied some entry measures, such as paying a hunger bonus of 143 dollars, to all those who had no income, in addition to imposing a wealth tax. Entrepreneurs consider that what has been done is insufficient to truly reactivate the productive apparatus because it would only make informal trade grow.
The ‘cholets’, symbol of the Aymara bourgeoisie
The city of El Alto is the second most populated in Bolivia and is home to the country’s Aymara bourgeoisie, which owns impressive buildings popularly known as ‘cholets’, a term that mixes the words chalet and cholo.
The famous ‘cholets’ are colorful constructions that began by claiming the Andean culture, but are now beginning to take new forms. And so, in El Alto you can find buildings in the shape of the Transformers characters, also with the image of Iron Man or even the Statue of Liberty on the top of the building.
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