US Counterinsurgency Wins in Bolivia: Intentional Factionalism Within MAS and the Capture of the Lithium Triangle

By Clau O’Brien Moscoso  –  Aug 20, 2025

On Sunday August 17, 2025, the first round of presidential elections in the Plurinational State of Bolivia were held in the small Andean nation of 12 million people. Now the country is headed to an October 19 run-off between centrist Christian Democratic Party Senator Rodrigo Paz, the son of a former president, and former right wing President Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga of the Libre Party. The election results on Sunday ended twenty years of MAS-IPSP (Movement Towards Socialism – Political Instrument for the Sovereignty of the People) in power with MAS candidate and current Interior Minister Eduardo del Castillo polling at between 1-2%, effectively completing the objectives of the 2019 coup.

The candidate with the largest popular support, former president Evo Morales, was excluded from Sunday’s elections and his supporters ran a “null vote” campaign in protest, which garnered 20% in the country with mandatory voting, far more than del Castillo and the other “leftist” candidate Andrónico Rodríguez, expelled from the syndicate (neighborhood union) in El Trópico de Cochabamba for launching his presidential campaign against the candidate collectively decided on with the syndicate’s own internal processes, in which they struggled during mass assemblies for months. These are the masses of Bolivia whose voices were excluded from Sunday’s elections.

Morales had been barred from running again after rulings from the Plurinational Constitutional Tribunal (TCP) and Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), and a lawfare campaign with the coordination of the current government, headed by former Economic Minister Luis Arce, against Morales and the largest political movement to ever hold power in the country. MAS’s candidate del Castillo himself has been implicated in the lawfare campaign against Morales, using old accusations from the Añez coup regime, and in the assassination attempt against Morales on October 27, 2024.

The country now faces certain neoliberalization, an opening up for private capital, and a reversal of the gains made in the last two decades. Through the capture of the current Luis Arce administration, especially but not exclusive to the Interior Ministry, a targeted lawfare campaign using the courts stacked with judges serving the interests of those preventing the popular block represented by Morales from taking power again, and an analysis informed by what is occurring in the countries with large lithium deposits (Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, and Puno, Peru), it becomes clear that the objective to destroy the cultural and democratic revolution (initiated by MAS) also included infiltrating and neutralizing MAS and Morales’s return to power.

What Bolivia and the world witnessed on Sunday was a counterinsurgent strategy from the US/EU/NATO Axis of Domination to ensure that the interests of the largely indigenous rural masses of the country would not be served. Lawfare and an eventual coup against Pedro Castillo in Peru in 2022, the capture of Argentina via Javier Milei after a brutal lawfare campaign against Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, and the imperial ambitions of Gabriel Boric in Chile (enthusiastically working with SOUTHCOM), have led to an encirclement of the “Lithium Triangle” and Bolivia in particular. Sunday’s election results only highlight whose interests were served by the rupture of MAS-IPSP. As Elon Musk himself said in the wake of the Bolivia 2019 coup, “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it!”

“Egos are to blame” and “the masses have been demobilized for two decades”: Missing the enemy, or why Western leftists fail again

“Anytime you make an analysis of an oppressed people in any aspect of their life and you leave out the oppressor you will never come to a correct analysis. On the contrary, you will blame the oppressed for all of their problems.” – Kwame Ture

What some may qualify the crushing defeat of Bolivia’s MAS as “ego wars” or “issues with personalities”—referring to the rift between Arce and Morales—is actually a continuation of the 2019 coup. It calls into question whether the 2020 election of the Arce government was truly a restoration of democracy or a second coup—this time internally, with the political party apparatus formerly aligned with a mass grassroots base turning against its internally selected and approved leadership now run by technocratic officers in La Paz removed from the militancy of MAS. These are the Westernized urban professional and middle class liberal petit bourgeois that either defend the Arce administration or claim the fault is on “both sides” for the destruction of MAS. More absurd still and from the West no less, others claim the popular block of indigenous campesino organizations, labor unions and other social movements that make up MAS’s base are divided or have been intentionally demobilized, while not addressing the enemy of US imperialism. The claim that the masses have been demobilized simply comes off as patronizing racist western chauvinism.

Five Myths About the Crisis of the Left in Bolivia

“Go to the people, live with them, learn from them, love them.” – Amilcar Cabral

While the MAS political party apparatus lost, the masses of people supporting the twenty year democratic and cultural revolution that led to the creation of a plurinational state, a new constitution with guaranteed rights and improved  material conditions of the country’s most vulnerable and forgotten populations who continue to support that project, and as evidenced by the mass marches of millions, strikes and road blockades, the thousands of people that maintain a 24 hour per day security guard in Lauca Ñ after the failed assassination attempt, and in the number of voters who voted “null” to express support for Evo’s candidacy. Western leftists remain either woefully uninformed but very vocal in their “takes”, or intentionally muddying the waters. For what reasons, perhaps some undisclosed conflicts of interest would answer that question.

Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. – Karl Marx

The first “March to Save Bolivia” took place in September 2024, with 3.4 million people participating. Intense political repression and persecution followed, including the arrest of multiple union leaders and militants. Then came the assassination attempt against Morales on October 27, 2024 after which he has not left Lauca Ñ in the department of Cochabamba. The “Second March to Save Bolivia,” a march called for by Morales and his mass base of supporters, arrived in the capital city of La Paz on Friday May 16, 2025, with 3.6 million participants. Their objective was to register the candidacy of Morales for the first round of presidential elections, held this past Sunday, under a different political party since the MAS party structure had been stolen by the urban and professional petite bourgeois in La Paz. The march was met with tear gas, heavy police repression and at least 50 political prisoners being detained, according to international solidarity activists. A second march took place on May 20. The scenes looked like battles between the popular indigenous movements and the coup government of 2019, which supporters of Morales say uncovers President Luis Arce’s true intentions of using right wing tactics to ensure Morales would not be able to run again.

Lawfare in the courts
A sustained lawfare campaign has been underway via the TSE (Supreme Electoral Tribunal), TCP (Plurinational Constitutional Tribunal) and President Arce’s government to disqualify the former president using a disputed interpretation of Article 168 of the Plurinational Constitution which states that “the term of office of the President and Vice-President of the State is five years, and can be re-elected once continuously.” On November 13, 2024 the TSE ratified that it would comply with the 1010/2023 sentence of the TCP that considers that the limitation of article 168 of the Constitution also applies to discontinuous applications,” a provision which they say disqualifies Morales.

However, the judges making these rulings themselves have extended their terms with Arce’s support in a move many have questioned. Lawfare Observatory, dedicated to analyzing cases of lawfare in Latin America and the Caribbean, have outlined the various ways lawfare is being deployed in Bolivia, both through attempting to disqualify Morales’ candidacy, and through old cases used during the Añez dictatorship, the most egregious false charge against Morales being rape of minors.

Attacks on those who did not participate in the lawfare campaign only intensified. On May 5, Lilian Moreno, the judge who annulled the arrest warrant against the former president for a case of aggravated human trafficking, was detained and arrested by Bolivian police in Santa Cruz and transferred to La Paz. A new ruling was issued which reactivated the arrest warrant against Morales.

New political instrument and party
The newly reconstituted political instrument for the sovereignty of the people, Evo Pueblo, and the Unity Pact, now leaving behind MAS-IPSP, the party that brought Morales and the indigenous mass base and movements he represents to power, registered Morales’s candidacy under the Partido de Acción Nacional Boliviano (Pan-Bol) and Frente Para la Victoria (FPV) parties. However, the Arce backed electoral board (TSE) blocked both parties from participating in Sunday’s elections.

This action came days after Arce declared he would not be seeking re-election to prevent further fragmentation in the Bolivian left and urged Morales to decline his presidential bid. Morales responded by saying only the people could tell him to decline his candidacy. Instead of Arce, del Castillo ran under the MAS party, among the top figures in the Arce government responsible for the persecution of Morales,  who the former president has accused of being tied to narcotrafficking, the CIA, and DEA. MAS and del Castillo’s resounding loss on Sunday should come as no surprise and, perhaps, the point of this candidacy was to lose and ensure a right wing government would come into power–either Rodrigo Paz or former president Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga. Verified leaked chats confirm Arce’s control over electoral bodies to ban Evo from running, meanwhile the MAS candidate, Eduardo del Castillo, could only garner a mere 2%.

Elections without the masses: popular block excluded from elections
This Sunday’s elections, in other words, went ahead without the candidacy and campaign backed by the country’s popular block, the indigenous campesinos and workers organized at multiple levels of society–through neighborhood unions, labor unions, student groups and political homes, and other mass organizations. These are the same people that came out multiple times, in the millions, agitating for their rights and to protest the Lenin Moreno-esque Arce government. Some of these people remain political prisoners.

The western influenced discourse (and fallacy) that the popular block of Bolivia is divided, or demobilized–or is following the cult of personality in Morales–once again shows why an analysis without the historical and material context falls short. If we lose sight of the enemy, we’ve already lost.

(Black Agenda Report)