International Panorama: Bolivia, Evo Morales and the reason for the coup

The main cities of Bolivia, La Paz among them, They are besieged by pickets of angry people against a system that, before and after, she perceives as ignoring her. Morales operates on that disgust. The previous government of Luis Arce was also the target of Evo’s coup, at the cost of destroying the ruling party, the MAS, because the president did not endorse a presidential candidacy prohibited by justice, which also keeps him disqualified.

Arce, a former ally and then enemy of Evo, is also one of the causes of the current crisis. In a typical populist maneuver of what the Argentine sociologist Guillermo O’Donnell called “delegative democracy” o “plebiscitaria”, sought to guarantee support for an eventual re-election with a trail of subsidies, particularly for fuel.

But, with the country’s decline in domestic gas and oil production due to the key absence of investments, the State had to begin importing them in increasing volumes, paying what they are worth on the world market, and reselling them at bargain prices. In a country with a GDP of just US$55 billion annually, in 2023 the expenditure carried out by subsidies exceeded the original budget and reached US$1,822 million, 4% of GDP. A year later, the figure grew to US$ 2,381 million, and only for diesel and gasoline.

In 2025, the year of the national elections, the pressure continued to rise. Figures from organizations such as the Jubilee Foundation confirmed that the amount hovered above US$2 billion. But The cost of imports was close to US$3 billion. Of course, there was not enough fuel for consumers, forced to queue for days at service stations, and there were no dollars in the market either.

Paz, an economist son of an important president of Bolivia, Jaime Paz Zamora, won those elections with 54% of the votes over the hard right of Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga, who had 45%. But the most eloquent data came from the first round in August, in which the leader surprised by jumping to first place from the third place reserved for him in the always failed polls. There Morales’ MAS was out of the game with just 3.2% of the vote, failure diluted, according to the former coca-growing president, by a flow of blank votes.

The truth is that these numbers described the depletion of the population and the need for radical change to restore order after 20 years of political control and maneuvers by the MAS. But it was not an easy path. Paz, by eliminating subsidies, triggered a devastating effect. Gasoline increased 86.1% and diesel, central for transportation, 163.4%.

Inflation, meanwhile, fell from 25% to 14% and the dollar from 20 to 11 bolivianos, but those positive numbers, compared to the others, are abstractions at the base of the pyramid. The result is that the same people who had suffered anguish during the Arce government, and long before, found himself in an alley againin addition to a defective fuel import by the new government that ruined cars and trucks.

In these complicated hours, the president is blamed for not daring to go all out and, instead, “seeking to look good with everyone”as Javier Paz García points out in The Duty. This economist reproaches that the three anti-Morales forces have 90% of parliamentary representation, but they do not agree. “A legislative power in the hands of those who were in opposition to the MAS is blocked as if the MAS had 50%, and we have inexplicable things like a Tuto at times supporting Lara.” He alludes to the vice president, Edmand Lara, a former police officer and lawyer with an opportunistic discourse who, since his inauguration, set out to weaken the president by treating him as “cynical, lying and corrupt.”

The summary is that Paz is locked in: if he does not move forward, the situation worsens, and if he does, he intensifies these contradictions. Negotiate with the IMF a loan of 3 billion dollars, but the organization proposes adjustments that the country can hardly comply with. The size of the crisis is seen in that the police and the army fail to sweep away the pickets and free the routes or arrest Evo. That is the swamp where Morales is now floundering to demand the overthrow of Paz, which would bring the inexplicable Lara to power.

The coca leader, who was born in an Aymara village and grew up in Chapare Quechua (although we do not know if he speaks any of those languages), relies on a story with truths and lies to claim centrality. For almost 15 years (between 2006 and 2019), with Arce as Minister of Economy, he combined international tailwinds with strong state intervention.

In 2006, with the nationalization of hydrocarbons, The State retained 82% of the income from gas exploitation. This filled the fiscal coffers. With these funds, the government financed social bonds, public works, subsidized fuel to keep inflation low, and accumulated a record level of reserves. But Evo treated the gas fields as an inexhaustible source of money and, as in the Venezuelan Chavismo he admires, he avoided reinvesting to sustain the business.

At the same time, it imposed harsh fiscal conditions on foreign companies and centralized everything in the state-owned YPFB, which lacked sufficient technical capacity. Private investments in exploration came to a halt and the wells discovered in the ’90s and 2000s were exhausted. Without new megafields, production began to plummet from 2014-2015. That collapse canceled important markets, including Brazil and Argentina, who observed how the supplier breached contracts and finally discarded it. Bolivia thus raffled off its place as the energy heart of South America to become a secondary actor.

To try to balance the accounts, Evo moved the agricultural frontier to benefit soybeans and cattle, running over the original indigenous settlers. And even, in the agreement “Sowing Bolivia 2015” with the entrepreneurs of the agricultural and livestock business, his government gave the green light to the use of glyphosate to increase yields. Simulations.

The loss explains why in 2016 people voted in a referendum against Morales running for a fourth term in 2019. Legally he couldn’t do it, too. When he first came to power in 2006 he changed the Constitution, enabling a second term. He made three. The trick was that the first shift was discarded from the account because it was left before the constitutional reform.

In his third term he made the consultation to try to avoid his own Magna Carta. But the people, with the economy in decline, slammed the door. Morales ignored that ruling and ran again in October 2019. As the votes were not enough to avoid the second round, He turned off the counting system and, when he restarted it, he had enough votes.

The OAS, then commanded by Pepe Mujica’s former foreign minister, the Uruguayan Luis Almagro (the only diplomat who endorsed Morales running again), ended up denouncing the fraud. There was a popular uprising against Evo. The Central Obrera Boliviana, which is now leading part of the protests against Paz, suggested that Morales resign and leave. He took refuge in Mexico and there created the fable of a coup against him that never existed. More simulations.