Evo Morales speaks at a rally in Chapare, Cochabamba, June 2025. Photo: Bloomberg.
By William Camacaro – Aug 18, 2025
The Bolivian political landscape is currently characterized by a deep, self-inflicted crisis within the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) which has culminated in a devastating electoral defeat yesterday. As the country approached the crucial presidential elections of August 17, 2025, the party’s leaders—specifically former President Evo Morales and President Luis Arce Catacora—engaged in a series of personal attacks and internal conflicts that paved the way for their own defeat. This political irresponsibility, driven by ambitions and factionalism, has enabled the return to power of the very right-wing forces that the MAS struggled for years to overcome.
This right-wing victory poses a significant threat to progressive governance, both in Bolivia and regionally. The presidential race featured prominent opposition figures such as Samuel Doria Medina, a billionaire businessman and member of the Socialist International. He immediately conceded defeat in the first round and endorsed Rodrigo Paz Pereira, a Social-Christian senator and son of former Bolivian President Jaime Paz Zamora. The senator has since mentioned the possibility of reforming the Plurinational Constitution, which has been a bedrock of the long process of decolonization. Another candidate, Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga, who finished second, has vowed to continue to the second round on October 19 in his quest to become president. He is a neoliberal ally of former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, as well as an associate of prominent right-wing figures in the region, including María Corina Machado of Venezuela, Daniel Noboa of Ecuador, Dina Boluarte of Peru, and Javier Milei of Argentina, forming a broad front against the Latin American left.
The left’s defeat was self-inflicted. On one side was Andrónico Rodríguez, an indigenous leader of the Chapare coca growers’ movement. Despite being a protégé of Evo Morales, he was branded a “traitor” by some Morales supporters for launching his own presidential candidacy with his fledgling political party, Popular Unity, following the controversial disqualification of Morales’s candidacy. The other leftist candidate was Eduardo del Castillo, the official candidate of the MAS, a former minister favored by the Arce government. The nomination of Del Castillo, a white man, in a country with an indigenous majority was a political mistake that made him an unviable candidate for the party’s core demographic.
The political consequences of this electoral loss are likely to be dire. Candidate Samuel Doria Medina has already stated, when endorsing the first-round winner, that political prisoners must be released. This paves the way for the resurgence of figures like Jeanine Áñez, whom Bolivian prosecutors charged with command responsibility, during her interim presidency, for the murder of dozens of indigenous people during protests in defense of democracy, and Luis Fernando Camacho, who was the architect of the coup d’état and responsible for the brutal repression of indigenous people during their resistance against the Áñez dictatorship in 2019.
A central factor in this crushing defeat is the dramatic division within the MAS itself. Just five years ago, the party secured 55% of the votes; today, divided, its two main candidates obtained a combined 11.3% of the electoral vote. This leaves indigenous communities facing three far-right parties, all of which are more or less neoliberal. All of them seek to reform the constitution and privatize state-owned enterprises, and indigenous people are very likely to lose the social gains they have achieved in recent years. Candidate Quiroga has already stated that “land is not communal; land always has one owner,” and some leaders of the opposition have announced the possible political persecution and imprisonment of some MAS leaders. Rodrigo Paz and Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga will be running in the second round. The right-wing victory in Bolivia is not simply a change of government; it heralds a return to colonial hierarchies of domination.
This internal conflict is especially tragic given the historical importance of the MAS. The party’s rise to power under the leadership of Evo Morales represented a revolutionary “process of change” that, for the first time in Bolivian history, allowed indigenous people to access the highest levels of government. Before this change, indigenous people suffered systemic discrimination, including being prohibited from entering official state buildings, such as Congress, while wearing their traditional clothing or speaking their native languages. The MAS was more than just a political party; it was an instrument of political and social liberation for a long-marginalized population, founded on a progressive agenda and led by indigenous peoples.
The Dreadful Division of the Left in Bolivia Paves the Way for the Right
As Evo Morales was disqualified from running for office and expelled from the MAS, the infighting among party leaders managed to undermine the party’s prospects of remaining in power. Evo Morales’s former vice president, Álvaro García Linera, stated to the BBC that the parties were “looking for ways to gain advantage in their battle against the other. Luis Arce is fighting to prevent Evo Morales from being a candidate. Evo Morales seeks to weaken Luis Arce to enable his candidacy.”
In addition to the mutual accusations between Evo and President Arce, the leaders of the MAS in the Plurinational Congress, worked to torpedo the economic administration of the president’s government. And of course, Evo Morales’ call to his followers to vote null was politically suicidal. It must be made clear that this is not a defeat for socialism; it is a defeat caused by divisions within the revolutionary ranks and instigated by the Bolivian mainstream media and elements of the corporate sector in Santa Cruz and the United States.
It is likely that Washington took advantage of the divisions within MÁS leading up to this electoral disaster. The US had backed the coup against Evo Morales in 2019. In 2024, a leaked audio recording of the chargé d’affaires of the US embassy in La Paz confirmed the existence of a US plan to intervene in Bolivia’s political affairs to undermine the process of change (proceso de cambio). Minister counselor of the US Embassy in La Paz, Debra Hevia said: “We have been working for a long time to achieve change in Bolivia. Time is of the essence for us, but for it to be a real change, Evo and Arce have to leave power and close that chapter. From now on, we are going to get more involved with our embassy to strengthen our allies, organizations, and collaborators. For example, our government has always offered scholarships in Bolivia, and now we are going to offer even more because young people are our agents of change and are very, very important.”
Despite foreign meddling, it was internal divisions within the MAS that led to the alienation of the base and the resulting electoral outcome. María Soledad, a sociologist and activist from Cochabamba, affirms that what happened is a real tragedy: “Evo Morales and Luis Arce Catacora dedicated themselves to squandering and exhausting in three years all the strength accumulated over decades of political work by thousands of Bolivians. Now, a very long period of reconstruction will begin in a country where indigenous people are despised for their condition. The only positive thing is that this is not a start from scratch, because this country will never return to what it was before the process of change.”
The only way for the Bolivian left to recuperate the path of decolonization and the democratic participation of indigenous peoples is to re-establish the unity among the progressive grassroot movements.
On December 8, 2012, in his last live televised speech, President Hugo Chávez spoke to the Venezuelan people. Shortly after this event, Chávez traveled to Cuba for medical treatment and passed away on March 5, 2013. In that speech, President Chávez said, “Patriots of Venezuela, men and women, with a knee to the ground–Unity, Unity, Unity of the patriots. There is no scarcity of those who want to take advantage of difficult junctures to continue their efforts to restore neoliberal capitalism and to destroy the homeland. They won’t be able to succeed. No matter how great the difficulties that face us, no matter how serious, the responsibility of all patriots, revolutionaries, those who feel the homeland to the core … is unity, struggle, battle, and victory!”
(COHA)
William Camacaro
William Camacaro is a Venezuelan-American National Co-Coordinator in the Alliance for Global Justice. He was a co-founder of the Bolivarian Circle of New York “Alberto Lovera” and Senior Analyst for the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA). He holds a Master’s Degree of Fine Arts and a Master’s Degree in Latin American Literature from City University of New York. William has published in the Monthly Review, Counterpunch, COHA, the Afro-America Magazine, Ecology, Orinoco Tribune and other venues. He has organized delegations to Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela. He has been a long-time activist for social justice in the United States, such as organizing protests against police brutality in NYC, for the independence of Puerto Rico, and for the freedom of political prisoners. William has also been a leader in defense of progressive governments and social movements in Latin America.
