A Galician will put Bolivia back on the map

Rodrigo Paz was indeed born in the capital of Galicia because his parents had taken refuge there after being forcibly exiled by General René Barrientos, the dictator. The family then lived in other Latin American countries before returning to Bolivia in 1982. But two years earlier, in 1980, the then dictator Luis García Meza had ordered a massive attack against Jaime Paz and his political colleagues in exile, from which the only survivor was the father of Bolivia's current president-elect.

The country still remembers that, after returning from forced exile, Jaime Paz Zamora held the highest office in the country between 1989 and 1993, during which time Bolivia managed, with great effort, to overcome the brutal debt crisis that was then ravaging the entire continent. His son, Rodrigo Paz Pereira, leader of the Christian Democratic Party (PDC), will be sworn in as president of the nation on 8 November, after defeating former president Jorge ‘Tuto’ Quiroga, backed by his Free Alliance (AL), in a historic second round - the first time this has ever happened. The result was 54.57% to 45.43%, so overwhelming that Quiroga himself conceded defeat before the count was completed, signalling that the Bolivia that has bid farewell to the left embodied by the Movement for Socialism (MAS) is now history, sad but past.

Twenty years of Evo Morales and Luis Arce's governments have left the country exhausted: a sharp drop in gas exports due to lack of investment; annual inflation above 23%; a dramatic fuel shortage, subsidised until the country's dollar reserves were exhausted; and a dramatic flight of foreign capital. This is the legacy of two decades of radical left-wing policies, with the nationalisation of energy resources, the break with the United States, and Bolivia's close alliance with Chavista Venezuela and Castro's Cuba, seasoned with an intense strengthening of ties of dependence on China, Russia and Iran.

Contrary to the specific constitutional prohibition on self-representation, Evo Morales, the Amerindian driving force behind this enormous shift, sought to run for office again. When he failed to do so, he threatened the judges who ruled against him and in favour of constitutional legality, prompting him to attempt to paralyse the country with general strikes, boycotts of the media and transport routes, and attacks on production assets.

Judging by the results of the two rounds of elections, it seems crystal clear that the twelve million Bolivians (almost 90% of the electorate voted) want to forget the Castro-Bolivarian-Masista nightmare and regain their place on the geopolitical map of Latin America. This is what Rodrigo Paz has promised, and Tuto Quiroga has also sworn to respect it from the opposition. 

Even though the state of public finances inherited from socialism is more than lamentable, the new president has promised that, despite the adjustments, social benefits will be maintained, but not the unsustainable fuel subsidies. According to his words, there will be ‘capitalism for all’, based on a policy of opening up to the private sector, which was stifled by the socialists, and a sharp reduction in public spending, especially that intended to buy votes and the no less damaging remuneration of thousands of useless beach bars, under which MAS militants and hangers-on have taken shelter for the last twenty years.

Bolivia's new shift towards the centre-right has, for the moment, earned it a rapprochement with the United States, whose Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, was quick to describe the change as ‘an opportunity to transform the country after two decades of mismanagement’. This reaction comes almost simultaneously with increased US military pressure on the Venezuelan tyranny of usurper President Nicolás Maduro and the breakdown of US cooperation with Gustavo Petro's Colombia, whom Washington also describes as a ‘drug lord’, equating him with the Chavistas. The shift is all the more radical given that, under the pretext of fighting drug trafficking, the United States has poured tens of billions of dollars into Colombia over several decades. 

The Bolivian change also comes just days before the second round of midterm legislative elections in Argentina, where Peronism-Kirchnerism has revived to the point of seriously threatening the legislature, and above all the presidency of Javier Milei, to whom both President Donald Trump and the International Monetary Fund have promised substantial financial aid to prevent the return to power of the populist fascism founded by Juan Domingo Perón and embodied in recent years by CFK, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. All this seems to categorically disprove the prediction of some opportunistic analysts who forecast that Trump would ignore what was happening south of the Rio Grande during his second term in office.