The historic defeat of Bolivia's left after 20 years in power: 'The drastic division was like a shovel of dirt on the coffin'

Having been in power for almost 20 years, the leftist Movement for Socialism (MAS) suffered a historic defeat at the polls, according to preliminary results from the country's Supreme Electoral Court (TSE).

Completely split between the political groups of former President Evo Morales and current President Luis Arce, the party obtained 3.2% of the vote with Eduardo del Castillo. The best-placed left-wing candidate was Andrónico Rodríguez, with 8.15%.

Thus, the unprecedented second round in the Andean country will be between Senator Rodrigo Paz Pereira (Christian Democratic Party) and former President Jorge "Tuto" Quiroga (Free Alliance).

Considered a centrist, Paz Pereira received 32.08% of the vote, compared to Tuto's 26.94%, who is more aligned with the conservative right. The two will face off on October 19th.

With this result, Bolivia puts an end to the successful cycle of the movement led by Evo Morales, which caused profound transformations in one of the poorest countries in South America.

In the 2010s, the country grew at an average of 5% per year, driven by earnings from natural gas exports, especially to Brazil and Argentina.

But those boom years are over, and their memory no longer seems to be enough for the 2025 voters, who are facing an economic crisis with peak inflation and a shortage of dollars.

It's as if a "self-destruction" had occurred, summarizes Bolivian journalist and writer Fernando Molina, author of books such as Las cuatro crisis. Historia econômica contemporánea de Bolivia (The Four Crises. Contemporary Economic History of Bolivia).

"This drastic division between the two groups was like a shovel of dirt on the coffin," he says.

On one side is Evo, the most important figure in Bolivian politics this century. He urged the population to vote blank or void, in protest against his ban from running in another election, following a ruling by the Superior Electoral Court.

Evo was elected in 2005, making history as the first leader of Indigenous origin to come to power in the region's most Indigenous country. He was re-elected in 2009 and 2014, after constitutional changes allowed him to remain in power.

In the 2019 elections, after a referendum, Evo could not run for another term, something reversed in a later controversial court decision.

He won the contested election, but left the country after the Armed Forces turned against his government. His supporters have always spoken of a coup, which brought Senator Jeanine Añez to power for just under a year—today, she is convicted and imprisoned.

On the other side of the MAS party was President Luis Arce, the candidate supported by Evo in 2020 and winner of the elections called for that year. Three years later, the two men broke off for good and have since become rivals vying for the party leadership.

Arce is extremely unpopular, according to polls, given Bolivia's economic crisis—so much so that he didn't even run for reelection. His (and the MAS's) candidate was Castilho, a government minister, who barely got more than 3% of the vote.

Andrónico Rodríguez, president of the Senate and former political protégé of Evo Morales, didn't go much further.

MAS is a nationalist party that has always defended the nationalization and nationalization of natural resources within Bolivia, retaining above all the income from gas and mineral extraction.

This movement during the commodities boom allowed the Bolivian government to invest over the years in infrastructure projects, income distribution, and subsidies to the population.

During Evo's years in power (2006-2019), the country was marked by its steady growth, stability, and ability to contain inflation. Some even called it "the Bolivian economic miracle."

Arce was the Minister of Finance and, therefore, chosen by Evo to follow his project.

But this model showed its flaws, especially starting in March 2023, when a severe shortage of dollars in the country's reserves became evident, and long lines of citizens began to appear on the streets trying to obtain foreign currency. This opened the way for a parallel market.

"The entire focus was on gas reserves, which, at the same time, were not taken care of. Not enough investment was made to ensure that gas continued to feed the MAS model. So, it was a huge crisis for the left, because it vindicates, let's say, those who criticized it for decades," says writer and journalist Fernando Molina.

In addition to depleting reserves, Bolivia saw its two main buyers, Brazil and Argentina, adopt new gas supply strategies.

In the 2000s, Bolivian shipments represented approximately 50% of Brazil's natural gas consumption—today, they account for about 20%. The country's export record was reached in 2014. Since then, the flow has declined, and Bolivia's trade balance has become significantly deficient, leading to a dollar shortage.

Hydrocarbon exports as a whole plummeted from $6.6 billion in 2014 to $2 billion in 2023.

In the case of Brazil, the country began extracting gas from the pre-salt layer and began importing LNG by sea, with the construction of regasification terminals in ports.

Argentina has been investing in the production of shale gas from the Vaca Muerta reserve in Patagonia, which is transported to the rest of the country via a pipeline.

For Bolivian political scientist Moira Zuazo, given the knowledge of the decline in gas production and exports, the MAS did not promote an internal debate to overcome the problem of dependence on the natural resource.

"It was already known, since 2010 or 2011, that gas was running out, that the subsidy on hydrocarbon prices was not only unsustainable, but that it would eventually be phased out. This was already known, but there was no debate," says the associate researcher at the Free University of Berlin.

"Today, it's no longer just a question of a lack of resources to redistribute. A panorama of absolute economic uncertainty has set in, and people are facing a lack of perspective, of a future," adds Zuazo.

This whole scenario has led to economic - and political - instability in Bolivia in recent years.

In an attempt to maintain its social and economic program, the Luis Arce government began using official dollar reserves, which fell from US$15 billion in 2015 to US$1.9 billion at the end of 2024.

On the political side, the MAS split became evident in September 2023, when Evo Morales announced his presidential candidacy for the 2025 elections, openly challenging Arce, who expected to seek reelection.

"The moment Evo Morales is no longer able to bring everyone together — because, due to history and democratic mechanisms, he has to give way to Arce — two parties are formed almost immediately: Arce's and Evo's," explains Fernando Molina.

The two have even drifted apart ideologically, especially over the future of the country's lithium reserves, one of the largest in the world.

Evo Morales advocates the nationalization of reserves and strict state control over the extraction of minerals essential for battery manufacturing.

Arce has been promoting a model of industrialization linked to the State, but with openness to strategic international partnerships with foreign technology, such as Russian and Chinese.

For Molina, this is compounded by a history of highly personalistic politics in Bolivia. In other words, even before being followers of an institution, a party, or an idea, activists follow a person. In this case, especially Evo.

"MAS didn't debate the big issue of succession. And that imploded MAS," agrees political scientist Moira Zuazo.

Evo Morales, for example, preferred to ask for blank votes rather than support for Andrónico Rodríguez, which caused the leftist candidacy to melt away.

"If there isn't a MAS bloc, that is, a Andrónico bloc, in the Assembly, Morales's enemies will be able to do whatever they want. So why does he do this? Because of his personalism, his cult of personality," Molina adds.

But, for the writer and journalist, in addition to the internal rupture within the MAS, it is also necessary to consider the global growth of the right.

In the second round, Jorge 'Tuto' Quiroga is considered part of a traditional right in the country.

Therefore, he is not an outsider or a rapidly rising radical right-wing politician, something seen, for example, with the election of Javier Milei in Argentina and, to some extent, of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil.

Nor does Samuel Doria Medina, a veteran presidential candidate famous for owning fast food restaurants like Burger King, have this profile. Medina led the polls during the campaign but finished third with 19.93%.

Still, the global right-wing movement, now led by Donald Trump in the US, is also present in these Bolivian elections, says Fernando Molina.

He says that in the Santa Cruz de La Sierra region, the country's economic center, agribusiness hub, and close to the border with Brazil, there is an influence from the Brazilian right.

"There are those who call themselves Bolsonarists in the eastern part of the country, with influence in some parties," says Molina.

Milei's election in Argentina and her successful control of inflation has been used as a right-wing trump card in the Bolivian campaign as well.

"All of this has restored some confidence to the more conservative sectors," comments Molina.

"But there are also these historical coincidences that occur simultaneously. Because, along with the shift to the right, comes a weariness in Bolivia of a 20-year government."

Despite the influence of global right-wing movements, the candidates from this political camp in Bolivia are, in theory, further from extremism than Bolsonaro or Milei.

For Moira Zuazo, this is partly explained by the fact that the transformations and advances of Evo's boom years in Bolivia were so strong that there is no "going back."

"What was achieved in terms of inclusion with the new Constitution, with inclusion, there is no going back," says the researcher.

Fernando Molina also argues that the Bolivian elite differs from the Brazilian or Argentine elite.

"It's a more oligarchic elite, less connected to international flows, less cosmopolitan. Our economy is more inward-looking, and it never learned the ideas of libertarianism. So, it's a traditional conservative elite," he says.

"It is also an elite that depends heavily on the state for its wealth, compared to other countries. So an anti-state elite would be against its own interests."

Ideologically, candidate Tuto Quiroga is further to the right, according to analysts. He represents traditional right-wing parties and is linked to military leaders who governed the country.

Quiroga assumed the presidency in 2001, when then-President Hugo Banzer resigned due to health problems. Banzer had been a dictator in the 1970s and democratically elected in 1997.

Samuel Doria Medina, a former minister in the 1990s, is seen closer to the center due to his history as a social democrat. He is a member of the Socialist International in Bolivia, an organization that brings together labor and social democratic parties—in Brazil, Ciro Gomes's PDT is affiliated with the organization.

During the campaign, in a shift further to the right than his origins, Doria Medina had the direct support of Luiz Camacho, former governor of Santa Cruz, who was arrested on charges of being one of the leaders of the coup against Evo Morales in 2019. He is considered a radicalizing factor in Doria Medina's now-defeated candidacy, explains Molina.

The businessman also received support from businessman Marcelo Claure, who became one of the centers of conversation in these elections for his attempt to mobilize the electoral debate in a campaign against MAS.

Medina is considered the richest person in Bolivia, despite having made his fortune in the United States. Claure is the global executive vice president of Chinese retailer Shein and owner of Club Bolívar, one of the country's most popular soccer teams.

"For the first time in history, if there is no fraud, the spoiled vote will be the most voted," Morales said after voting this Sunday in the coca-growing region of Chapare, protected by his supporters, reported the AFP news agency.

The former president is the target of an arrest warrant in an investigation accusing him of abusing a minor, with whom he allegedly had a child in 2016. He says this is a case of persecution.

There were no police at the scene, according to the agency.

Political scientist Moira Zuazo says the situation in the Chapare will need to be debated regionally in Latin America after the elections.

"Right now, you see a state with a huge void, which is Chapare, where no one campaigns, where the police have left," he says.

For Fernando Molina, Evo's situation mirrors other moments in the turbulent history of the Bolivian police.

"Whenever a leader of great importance is eclipsed, the things that are happening now happen, with a lot of fragmentation and uncertainty," he says.

But would Evo Morales, a politician now rejected by the majority of Bolivians, have the strength to return to the center of the political debate?

For Zuazo, it's too early to say that Evo and the MAS are "history." The researcher believes that the current downfall could be an opportunity for the movement to rebuild itself in a more democratic and pluralistic way.

For Molina, the Bolivian economic crisis will be difficult for the new government to resolve - and this could open up space for Evo again.

"If it's very difficult to resolve the crisis, there will be a lot of unrest, a lot of impoverishment, a lot of loss of rights. Ultimately, Evo Morales can channel this, and he's already preparing for it," he says.