When Evo Morales swept into power in 2005, the first time an Indigenous leader had ever been elected to Bolivia’s highest office, to be Indigenous here meant to support Mr. Morales unequivocally.
But a generation later, his party, the Movement Toward Socialism, known as MAS, won’t be on the ballot for president. As Bolivia heads toward an Oct. 19 runoff election, the Andean country is struggling with an economic crisis many feel is of the party’s making.
That doesn’t mean Bolivia is turning back the clock on Indigenous rights. Once considered a political monolith, Bolivia’s majority Indigenous population has spent the past 20 years deepening its involvement in public service, elected office, and the economy. Even as the MAS party fades, and despite concerns that a more conservative administration could try to reverse policies that led to more Indigenous empowerment, the political landscape in Bolivia has matured.
Why We Wrote This
For the first time since Bolivia elected an Indigenous leader to office in 2005, the party he founded did not make it to the ballot. But in many ways, it shows how far Indigenous rights have come in 20 years.
“Before, being Indigenous meant following MAS,” says Toribia Lero Quispe, a centrist-party senator and human rights and environmental activist. Today, “it means being a person who thinks for oneself, and who can choose any political party and still make their needs or challenges as an Indigenous person known,” she says.
Mr. Morales served as president from 2006 to 2019, at a time when Bolivia was labeled an “economic miracle.” But in recent years, the country has struggled with worsening inflation, gas shortages, and its worst economic crisis in four decades. Both candidates in the country’s presidential runoff are considered more conservative than MAS, and are expected to make painful economic reforms, moving Bolivia away from 20 years of socialist rule.
Eduardo Rodríguez Veltzé, former head of Bolivia’s judiciary and interim president before Mr. Morales came to power, says that the wildly popular cash-transfer programs, launched by MAS, are expected to be cut in an effort to return to economic stability. “But from the political view, it would be almost impossible to withdraw the rights, the empowerment” that Bolivia’s Indigenous population has claimed, he says. “Their time arrived and they have had 20 years of training themselves not to become actors who are to be managed – or mismanaged.”
On the plateau
Mr. Morales was part of the populist, leftist “pink tide” that upended the status quo in Latin America in the early 2000s, characterized by massive social spending and promises of change for the poor. His early years as president were defined by the nationalization of key industries such as gas and a global commodities boom. His government used the windfall to bolster broad social spending, including cash transfers for the elderly, women, and children, which benefited upward of 50% of all Bolivians. Extreme poverty more than halved and moderate poverty fell from 61% to 36% between 2005 and 2017.
Today, a shortfall of international reserves has led to struggles importing basic goods. Annual inflation reached 24% in June.
On a recent morning, more than 100 trucks, buses, and vans lined up along a major thoroughfare in El Alto, the country’s second-largest city that sits on a plateau overlooking the capital, waiting for diesel. It’s an increasingly common sight nationwide.
“People reacted to the economic situation in this election, saying ‘After 20 years of the same party that depleted everything, now’s our chance to change things,’” says Antonio Saravia, who campaigned as a vice-presidential candidate in Bolivia before dropping out of the race last summer.
But a backlash has been tempered by real gains made over the past 20 years. Rodrigo Paz, a senator and son of a former president, won the first round voting in August, though he didn’t surpass the threshold to win the election outright.
Mr. Paz had been polling in a distant third or fourth place, depending on the poll, but analysts believe he presented an attractive option for those skeptical of candidates further to the right. He has pledged to decentralize the government and suspend relations with leftist allies such as Venezuela.
Mr. Paz faces conservative former President Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga who is pledging judicial reform and a reverse of what he calls “20 years lost” in Bolivia. He is leading Mr. Paz by eight points in pre-election polls.
Inés Flores, a retired teacher who lives an hour outside El Alto, says the economic crisis is her top concern, but she is concerned about losing cultural protections without MAS at the helm.
“We want big changes for the economy, but other changes within reason,” says Ms. Flores, who began teaching language lessons in her native Aymara about 10 years ago.
In 2009, a majority of Bolivians approved a new Constitution that renamed the country the Plurinational State of Bolivia, recognizing the diversity of Bolivia’s population. There are 36 indigenous languages listed as official alongside Spanish, and the constitution gives Indigenous communities autonomy to carry out justice under their own legal systems.
Working-class Bolivians seek balance in a new leader, says Elizabeth Jiménez Zamora, a professor in the social science department at Bolivia’s Universidad Mayor de San Andrés. “The popular classes wanted an alternative to MAS, but someone that still represents them,” she says, “not someone excessively to the right who won’t recognize the past or recent gains.”
No hegemony
Initially celebrated for breaking the grip on power of Bolivia’s traditional elites, Mr. Morales soon started consolidating power for himself and his party. With the help of a judiciary stacked with appointees, he reinterpreted the constitution to try and run for a fourth consecutive term in 2019. It resulted in a political crisis that was largely his – and his party’s – undoing.
The MAS was so popular for so long, winning vast majorities in the legislature, that “they thought of themselves as a hegemony,” says Mr. Rodríguez Veltzé, the former president.
Their concentrated power “turned into vicious practices like packing the courts, launching political trials against political enemies, and exiling people,” he says. For some Bolivians, their policies and rhetoric felt like reverse discrimination, such as holding some public service positions for Indigenous applicants or requiring officials to speak an official language in addition to Spanish.
Former Morales supporters fear the next leadership could take revenge over MAS policies that sowed divisions.
Bolivia’s first-round presidential vote was a clear referendum on MAS, which only won two seats for the next legislative term and garnered barely 3% of the presidential ballots.
Now, Indigenous voters today organize with many political parties according to their interests, says Ximena Velasco-Guachalla, a Bolivian assistant professor of government at the University of Essex.
“The only reason we thought them electorally homogeneous [before] is because they didn’t have political alternatives,” she says.
Even before the 2019 crisis, many Indigenous communities had become disappointed with Mr. Morales’ disregard for Indigenous rights – despite Bolivia’s internationally lauded constitution – such as prior consent on megaprojects. His government’s attempt to build a highway through Indigenous territory in 2011 drove Ms. Lero to run for office in 2019, she says, seated in her legislative office in La Paz in front of the Bolivian flag and the Wiphala Indigenous flag, both constitutionally recognized symbols of the state.
A few blocks away, at La Paz’s City Hall, an intern with Radio San Gabriel, Bolivia’s oldest Aymara-language radio station, adjusts her headphones and prepares to cover a news conference. Noemi Quispe Quispe, in her early 20s, has never known a Bolivia where her native Aymara wasn’t an accepted part of life. She says she grew up believing her Indigenous language skills were an asset.
And regardless of who wins this weekend, she says, no election can take that away.
