LA PAZ, Bolivia — Bolivia’s socialist movement has been defeated for the first time in two decades, according to prelimi
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tommyboy — 7 months ago(August 18, 2025 05:48 PM)
LA PAZ, Bolivia — Bolivia’s socialist movement has been defeated for the first time in two decades, according to preliminary election results, as voters chose a centrist senator and a right-wing former president to go head-to-head in a presidential runoff that could bring dramatic change for this South American nation.
Centrist senator Rodrigo Paz and former president Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga won the most votes Sunday in a crowded race for president in this country of 12 million people, according to unofficial results from an early count that shows the two far out in front in a trend analysts say is irreversible.
Their victories mark the end of a socialist era for Bolivia, where the leftist movement of former president Evo Morales has dominated politics since his historic 2005 election as the country’s first Indigenous president. As the country faces its worst economic crisis in 40 years, voters here demanded a change.
Morales’s so-called “economic miracle” was once hailed as a socialist success story during his three terms as president. His government was credited with lifting millions out of poverty and into the middle class. He funneled billions of dollars into public works projects that transformed society, including aerial cable cars that float over the Andes here in the high-altitude administrative capital. Morales’s continued popularity, after three terms and a controversial attempt at a fourth, helped propel the 2020 election of the current president, Luis Arce, his former economy minister and chosen successor.
But much like his leftist Latin American contemporaries at the start of this century, Morales’s government spending depended on an influx of cash from the global commodities boom. Everything changed after the plummet in prices of natural gas, Bolivia’s main export. Gas exports declined, imports rose and the central bank began running out of dollars. Bolivia, which once supplied half of its own diesel fuel, produced only 12 percent by 2023.
In recent months, Bolivians have been forced to sleep in their cars to wait to fill their tanks amid widespread fuel shortages. Inflation, which until 2023 was controlled at 2 percent, was more than 16 percent in July. Those who depend on government-subsidized food products have had to form long lines to buy bread.
“We’re bankrupt, there are no jobs here, everything is more expensive and the money is never enough,” said Julia Ayala Casa, as she voted for Paz in southern La Paz in a traditional pollera skirt worn by Indigenous Aymara and Quechua women here. “We have to get in line just to buy oil. There’s a line for everything.”
“We have put up with these socialist politicians for so long, and now we need to make a change,” said Janeth Alvarez, 45, a secretary who voted for Quiroga alongside her daughter in La Paz. She sees Quiroga as well prepared for the moment, and supports his proposals for reducing ministries and lowering subsidies for gas. “The crisis is at its peak. … With how expensive things are getting, we can’t save anymore. We’re living month to month.”
Paolo Monroy, a 30-year-old who works in administration, said he once believed Morales brought important change to the country, empowering the poor and those living in rural areas. But his support for Morales declined after seeing the allegations of corruption and electoral fraud against him, “and a lot of ignorance of the part of our leaders as well.”
“The left has already shown that it does not work for Bolivia,” Monroy said. “We need radical change.”