Socialism is defeated as Bolivia heads to presidential election runoff

LA PAZ, Bolivia — Bolivia’s socialist movement has been defeated for the first time in two decades, according to preliminary election results, as voters chose a centrist senator and a right-wing former president to go head-to-head in a presidential runoff that could bring dramatic change for this South American nation.

Centrist senator Rodrigo Paz and former president Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga won the most votes Sunday in a crowded race for president in this country of 12 million people, according to unofficial results from an early count that shows the two far out in front in a trend analysts say is irreversible.

Their victories mark the end of a socialist era for Bolivia, where the leftist movement of former president Evo Morales has dominated politics since his historic 2005 election as the country’s first Indigenous president. As the country faces its worst economic crisis in 40 years, voters here demanded a change.

[Socialist Evo] Morales’s so-called “economic miracle” was once hailed as a socialist success story during his three terms as president. His government was credited with lifting millions out of poverty and into the middle class. He funneled billions of dollars into public works projects that transformed society, including aerial cable cars that float over the Andes here in the high-altitude administrative capital. Morales’s continued popularity, after three terms and a controversial attempt at a fourth, helped propel the 2020 election of Arce, his former economy minister and chosen successor.

But much like his leftist Latin American contemporaries at the start of this century, Morales’s government spending depended on an influx of cash from the global commodities boom. Everything changed after the plummet in prices of natural gas, Bolivia’s main export. Gas exports declined, imports rose and the central bank began running out of dollars. Bolivia, which once supplied half of its own diesel fuel, produced only 12 percent by 2023.

In recent months, Bolivians have been forced to sleep in their cars to wait to fill their tanks amid widespread fuel shortages. Inflation, which until 2023 was controlled at 2 percent, was more than 16 percent in July. Those who depend on government-subsidized food products have had to form long lines to buy bread.

“We’re bankrupt, there are no jobs here, everything is more expensive and the money is never enough,” said Julia Ayala Casa, as she voted for Paz in southern La Paz in a traditional pollera skirt worn by Indigenous Aymara and Quechua women here. “We have to get in line just to buy oil. There’s a line for everything.”