As Bolivia celebrated its two hundredth year of independence last week, the mood on the streets and in the countryside was far from jubilant. National elections take place on Sunday, and Bolivia is confronting a spiraling economic crisis and the total collapse of the left-wing Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) that has been in power for the past two decades. It looks more than likely that the right wing will win power, with the latest polls putting far-right Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga in the lead at 24.5 percent and center-right Samuel Doria Medina in a close second at 23.6 percent. Bolivia now stands on the brink of a new historic cycle without the MAS in power.

The Collapse of the Left On a dusty roadside in the windswept Altiplano village of Sullkatiti, two Aymara elders discuss the recent road blockades led by supporters of former president Evo Morales. The conversation switches to Spanish, and we all discuss the upcoming elections. “I used to like Evo, but these blockades are very bad. Who can we vote for here?” the woman asks despondently. The MAS, led by Morales since 2005, presided over massive social transformations, including the newfound political visibility of Bolivia’s indigenous movements and a dramatic reduction in poverty and social inequality in one of Latin America’s poorest countries. But in recent years, charges of corruption and the cooptation of social movements have blighted the party, in addition to a high-profile struggle over its leadership. “The decline of the MAS cannot be understood without recognizing the disconnect between social movements and their own bases,” Roger Adan Chambi, a lawyer and Aymara researcher explains. “The social movement has ceased to be a movement and has become just another arm of power, often blinded by cronyism and the allocation of positions.” For the past two years, the MAS party bases have been engulfed in bitter and prolonged divisions between “Evista” and “Arcista” factions. The former supports Morales and the latter the current president, Luis Arce, whom Morales had nominated as his successor. The dispute has led to political deadlock, with Evista representatives blocking the Arce administration’s legislation related to financial spending, worsening the economic picture. In the run-up to the elections, Evistas embarked on a series of blockades, primarily in the Evista heartland of tropical Cochabamba, which impeded the movement of vehicles and food around the country. Morales is unable to run in the elections both because he does not have an official party to run under and because he is prohibited by constitutional term limits that prevent indefinite reelection. Blockade clashes culminated in June in a violent standoff in the town of Llallagua, a strategic urban mining center with connections to the coca-growing Chapare area and to the ayllus (indigenous societies) of the Norte de Potosi. Three police officers and a campesino were killed in scuffles as Evista blockaders protested the electoral authority’s rejection of Morales’s candidacy. Amid a growing public backlash against the blockades, Arce’s decision to send in special police units to quell the protest marked a turning point. The internal collapse of the MAS raises poignant questions about the future of indigenous movements within the plurinational state. Forty-one percent of Bolivia’s population is indigenous, the second highest in Latin America, with a five-hundred-year history of marginalization and racialized oppression. Morales, who governed between 2005 and 2019, was the first indigenous president of Bolivia, and the MAS has historically been constituted principally by indigenous and peasant movements. “MAS’s success, and also its greatest mistake,” Chambi observes, “was centering an entire political project around a single figure: Evo Morales. This decline weakens the indigenous movement as it has been articulated in recent years, but it also opens the possibility of rethinking an indigenous political project outside of partisan and caudillo tutelage.”

Dollars, Depression, and Debt As Bolivians take to the polls, the burning issue is the economic crisis. Inflation is running at over 20 percent, prices for basic goods have mushroomed, and fiscal deficit now exceeds 12 percent of GDP. Meanwhile, in the cities, trucks snake around the streets in days-long lines outside gas stations because of chronic shortages. Given its dwindling gas and oil reserves, Bolivia imports most of its fuel and subsidizes the cost, but with a fiscal squeeze it cannot cover both debt repayments and the subsidies. Bolivia allocated more than $3 billion in gas subsidies last year. Its external debt stood at $13.3 billion at the end of 2024, with foreign exchange reserves at an unprecedented low. The lack of dollars arises from vastly decreased exports of hydrocarbons, the profits from which were the basis of the MAS’s redistributive economic agenda over the past two decades. The informal rate of dollar exchange is now around fifteen bolivianos to the dollar, more than double the official rate of 6.97.

New Horizons of Extractivism The electoral campaigns from across the spectrum are oriented around the question of the economy and the solution proposed by all is clear: extractivism. Huáscar Salazar Lohman, an economist at Bolivia’s Centro de Estudios Populares (CEESP), explains, The electoral process has exposed two underlying problems facing present-day Bolivia. On the one hand, the profound disarticulation of the popular movement, which has lost its historical capacity to set the political agenda and incorporate its demands into the public electoral debate, something that the disintegration of the MAS has only worsened by further fragmenting its organizational bases. On the other hand, in the face of a growing economic crisis, the only solution emerging from across the political spectrum — both from the traditional right (which appears likely to win the presidency without major complications) and from those who defend supposedly leftist banners — is the exacerbation of an extractive capitalism focused on lithium, new hydrocarbon exploration, and, especially, the deepening of the agro-industrial and mining model. In the Andes, the pishtaco is a mythic figure that rises to extract the fat from its indigenous victims. Some identify far-right candidate Tuto, who is topping the polls with a hard-line austerity agenda, as such a figure. Representing the interests of US capital and Bolivia’s traditional elites, he previously served one year as president from 2000 to 2001 and was vice president from 1997 to 2001 in the government of ex-dictator Hugo Banzer. His proposals include spending cuts to reduce the fiscal deficit and plans to stabilize the dollar exchange rate, financed by a $12 billion international rescue program from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. In a packed Tuto rally in the working-class Villa Adela neighborhood of El Alto, an Aymara and leftist stronghold, the sight of cholitas (urban indigenous women) wearing Tuto campaign swag is a peculiar vision given the politician has certainly been no friend to urban-working-class or indigenous movements. “They are all thieves here,” mutters the lady serving fideo by the side of the road. Tuto’s closing campaign party goes on into the small hours of the night, a sign of possible realignment in the post-MAS era. Meanwhile Medina has fashioned himself as the moderate candidate, describing himself as the “extreme center.” But as the owner of a hotel chain and Bolivia’s Burger King franchise, he upholds the interests of big business, and he previously served in the neoliberal government of Gonzalo “Goni” Sanchez de Lozada. He has pledged to bring dollars to Bolivia in one hundred days and adopt measures including shrinking the state and removing subsidies. Amid widespread criticism of his handling of the economic crisis, the current MAS president, Arce, is not running in the elections. Instead Santa Cruz lawyer Eduardo del Castillo is running as MAS’s candidate, a moderate presence in the party who served as minister of government under Arce and commands little support from the social movements that formed the MAS’s base. He has performed well in the TV debates but is polling extremely low at just 1.83 percent amid broad disillusionment with the ruling party. If he fails to win 3 percent of the vote, the MAS will be forced to dissolve under Bolivian electoral regulations — the nail in the coffin for the once leading light of the Latin American left. Splitting from the MAS, his former party, to run with Alianza Popular is thirty-six-year-old Andrónico Rodríguez, the coca-growers union leader, Morales’s former protégé, and current president of the Senate. He is the leading leftist candidate, but lukewarm performances in the television debates and his enduring ties to former ally Morales have hampered his campaign, and he is polling at a distant fifth place, with 8.46 percent of the vote. Moreover, his choice of vice president, Mariana Prado, has garnered criticism from social movements such as cooperative miners and the peasant union confederation, who believe she lacks popular legitimacy. Feminists have also denounced Prado, who in 2018 testified as a character witness for a wealthy La Paz man who was convicted of killing his girlfriend. He can count on the support of the rural Chapare sector, but whether he can make a broader appeal to the rural masses and the urban working class remains unclear. Cooperative miners, a powerful but controversial sector, have also nonetheless pledged support for Rodríguez. Frequently criticized by indigenous and environmental groups as “depredadores de la naturaleza” (destroyers of nature), the cooperative miners have been involved in the expansion of (illegal) gold mining in Bolivia together with transnational capital, particularly Chinese and Colombian interests. But the final outcome of the election is hard to predict given that a large sector looks set to cast null votes after Morales urged his supporters in tropical Cochabamba to do so in protest of his exclusion. Enough null votes could bolster Evista calls to dismiss the outcome of the elections as illegitimate. Morales undoubtedly retains enduring loyalty from large sections of the rural population in recognition of the positive transformations he initiated and his strong political positions that reflect their interests. But his failure to mobilize the bases beyond the Chapare coca-growers reflects the lack of wider enthusiasm for an electoral project with him at the helm. The CSUTCB, the powerful peasant union confederation that was the cornerstone of the MAS, pledged its support for Rodríguez.

Bolivians are going to the polls in an election that could mark a shift to the right – and the end of nearly 20 years of rule by the leftist Movimiento al Socialismo (Mas).

The party, which came to power with the first election of Evo Morales in 2005, risks losing its legal status if it fails to reach 3% – a threshold it has not hit in polls.

Two opposition candidates are virtually tied: centre-right business tycoon and former planning minister Samuel Doria Medina followed closely by rightwing former president Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga.

Deeply unpopular amid the country’s worst economic crisis in four decades, president Luis Arce, 61, decided not to run.

A former finance minister under Morales for 14 years, Arce took control of Mas gradually in recent years. He has nominated his 36-year-old minister of government, Eduardo del Castillo, who has been polling about 2%, to run for president.

Morales, 65, is the target of an arrest warrant for allegedly fathering a child with a 15-year-old that has led him to become entrenched in a coca-growing region of central Bolivia since October in an attempt to run for office again.

After registering with another party but being barred by constitutional and electoral court rulings, Bolivia’s first Indigenous president called protests that escalated into deadly clashes with police.

He is urging supporters to cast null votes on Sunday, claiming that if these outnumber the leading candidate’s tally, it would mean he had won.

“Before Morales’s call, null votes were about 10%; now they’re 12%. Even if it rises, I doubt it will go much higher – and null votes have many causes, not just him,” said political analyst Carlos Toranzo.

As polls have historically been unreliable in Bolivia, and many voters remain undecided, Toranzo believes there is still “a small chance” that a third name could make it to a potential runoff against Doria Medina or Quiroga: 36-year-old senator Andrónico Rodríguez.

The highest-polling figure on the left, placing between third and fifth, Rodríguez was once seen as Morales’s natural heir due to his Indigenous roots and leadership in the coca growers’ union, but was called a traitor for launching his own candidacy.

A longtime Mas member, the senator chose to leave the party and run with the leftwing coalition Alianza Popular – yet another sign of how fragmented the left’s vote has become.

Enrique Mamani, leader of the Aymara Indigenous organisation Ponchos Rojos, said he would back the senator, calling Morales the real traitor.

“Those calling for null votes are a handful of traitors to the struggle of our grandparents, who shed their blood and gave their lives so that one day we could have this right to vote,” he said.

About 7.9 million Bolivians are eligible to vote, with preliminary results due at 9pm local time.

The central issue of the campaign is the economic crisis, which analysts consider the worst since the 1985 hyperinflation, with shortages of dollars and fuel, long queues and soaring inflation.

If no candidate secures more than 50% of the vote, or at least 40% with a 10-point lead over the runner-up, an unprecedented second round will take place on 19 October.

For analyst Toranzo, one thing is certain: Mas will leave power, although it will be “difficult for them to hand it over, because they have held it for 20 years with near-absolute control of parliament, the judiciary and the electoral authority”.

Arce told the Guardian that he would respect the result if the right won.

Although acknowledging that his government was unpopular, he placed much of the blame for both the crisis and Mas’s decline on his former mentor, Morales, whose parliamentary allies, he said, “sabotaged and boycotted all our laws”.

“As Fidel Castro wrote in his book, ‘history will absolve us’ because in the long run the people will understand everything we had to endure,” said Arce, adding: “I’m sure the population will miss us afterwards.”

Between the null vote promoted by Evo Morales and the dispersion of the progressive camp, the right wing is poised to reopen the neoliberal path that the MAS had closed for twenty years.

Polls indicate that, adding up the probable null, undecided, and blank votes, there could be between 20% and 30% of voters who will not choose any of the candidates, a fact that will invariably favor the right-wing candidates. We have already seen this movie in Ecuador, when the Pachakutik candidate called for a null vote, favoring the candidacy of banker Guillermo Lasso against the then progressive candidate supported by Rafael Correa.

The example of what happened in Bolivia’s MAS, in its internal factional struggles, should serve as food for thought on the limits and methods of a partisan dispute capable of bringing about the return to power of the greatest enemy: the internal extreme right and imperialism.

This lesson must be part of the educational process for the entire Latin American left, especially in a context of the advance of the global far right and the most recent imperialist offensive in the continent, which, with Trump’s re-election, seeks new levels of submission and recolonization of the Latin American peoples in the context of the destructive dispute for global geopolitical leadership and unilateralism.

National elections will be held in Bolivia this Sunday, August 17, both in the country and in 32 countries where citizens will vote online. In total, nearly 7.5 million Bolivians are eligible to vote at one of the 34,000 polling stations to elect a president, vice president, 36 senators (four per region), and 130 deputies (63 in single-member constituencies and 60 proportionally, according to the votes obtained by each party’s presidential candidate), in addition to the seven seats reserved for indigenous representatives. All terms are for five years.

The 2025 electoral landscape is mainly marked by two factors: the serious economic crisis the country is going through and the structural crisis of the MAS. After the registration and withdrawal period, only eight candidates remain in the presidential race: six represent the right and two come from sectors that emerged from the Movement for Socialism, the hegemonic left-wing party that has been in power for two decades.

One of the causes of the MAS crisis stems from Evo Morales’ lack of a conscious policy to promote the renewal of the national leadership. This led to a fratricidal opposition against the government of Luis Arce, the loss of party control, affiliations to ghost parties, and 22 days of blockades of the country’s main roads by tens of thousands of militant indigenous Evo supporters in an attempt to force his illegally banned candidacy.

All of this was fundamentally caused by the erosion of Arce’s government and the economic crisis it led the nation into, which forced him to renounce re-election. The result of this self-destructive dispute, aggravated by serious moral accusations and maneuvers on both sides between Evo and Arce, plus the majority indigenous support for Evo, also produced a total division of the party leadership, social movements, and the MAS’s bases of influence.

The party is fractured into three factions: those who support Evo Morales (president between 2006 and 2019); those who back the current president, Luis Arce; and those who support the young Andrónico Rodríguez, the current president of the Senate. The divisions deepened when Morales returned to Bolivia after his exile in Argentina—following the 2019 coup—and the suspension of his arrest warrant in November 2020.

Little by little, Evo entered into open confrontation with the Arce government, which was increasingly moving to the right, crystallizing the divisions in most of the social movements that had supported him for years. It is a sad reflection of the crisis of one of the largest and most socially integrated political organizations in Latin America, which governed the country (except for the brief period of the 2019 coup) uninterruptedly for 20 years and today causes demoralization and discouragement among its popular base.

A scenario of economic crisis

In addition to this fragmentation, the election is taking place in the worst economic context since 1985, when the Democratic and Popular Unity (UDP)–the first progressive front after the dictatorship–lost the elections, returning power to the neoliberal right for two decades.

In the first seven months of 2025, Bolivia recorded cumulative inflation of 16.92%, the highest level in 40 years. The Bolivian currency lost half its value on the parallel market this year, although the official exchange rate remains artificially stable thanks to state intervention. There is a shortage of dollars and the prices of imported products have doubled. Supermarkets adjust their prices monthly. Medicine shortages, exacerbated by the lack of foreign currency, have led to price increases of up to 130%.

Until a few years ago, gas provided billions in revenue and allowed the country to accumulate significant international reserves to finance massive social policies. But since 2015, production has been in decline and the contract to sell gas to Argentina has been terminated. According to data from the National Institute of Statistics, between January and June of this year, gas exports—the main source of income—fell by 35.5%. Today, the lack of fuel causes endless lines of trucks in rural areas and long lines for gasoline in cities.

The government insists that the crisis is temporary, but in reality it is a response to both the global fall in commodity prices and the long-term limits of the MAS policies, which did not break with the historical model of an extractive economy dependent on primary exports, with high external debt and low industrialization. Although they did break with imperialism by granting most of the exploitation licenses to BRICS companies.

In this adverse scenario, only two of the eight presidential candidates are from the left, both from the MAS: Eduardo del Castillo, 38, former government minister (2020-2025) and the ruling party’s candidate after Arce’s withdrawal; and Andrónico Rodríguez, 36, president of the Senate and former coca leader in Chapare, now at odds with Morales and supported by the Popular Alliance. Rodríguez proposes “sovereign industrialization” of mining, with state production of metals such as lithium, silver, and copper, and local manufacturing of batteries and components for renewable energy, in addition to austerity measures and fuel subsidy cuts.

The remaining six candidates are all from the right, led by billionaire Samuel Doria Medina (Alianza Unidad) and Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga (Alianza Libertad), both with between 20% and 24.5% of the vote. Quiroga, a former interim president and former IMF and World Bank official, proposes privatization, the elimination of subsidies, and the criminalization of blockades. Medina, a businessman from La Paz, advocates the closure of state institutions, austerity, and Nayib Bukele’s security strategy.

All right-wing candidates support the pro-Western extractivist model and an agreement with the IMF. Those on the left, in less credible polls, are far behind: Rodríguez with between 5.5% and 8.4%, and Del Castillo with just 2%. On August 6, Evo Morales called for a null vote. According to averages, the null vote could reach 25%, with undecided voters accounting for between 5% and 14%. Thus, votes not cast for any candidate could reach between 30% and 40%, which would favor the right, as happened in Ecuador with Pachakutik and Guillermo Lasso.

End of the MAS cycle

In this context of economic crisis and corruption scandals plaguing the Arce government, it is difficult for the outlook to change. The division of the MAS is a defeat for the popular movement on a national and international scale. Although Arce belatedly attempted to call Morales, Andrónico, and other leaders to a meeting in July, the split was already irreversible. It would be a symbolic gesture for Arce’s MAS to withdraw its candidacy and support Andrónico, who is in the best position.

Faced with this scenario, the only positive option against the return of neoliberalism is to vote for Andrónico Rodríguez. Voting blank today is a political crime. Almost half of the electorate is under 35, a generation formed under the leadership of Morales and Arce, which today is disappointed and without prospects. But it is necessary to resist and build new alternatives. The MAS itself demonstrated, after defeating Jeanine Áñez’s fascist coup in 2019, that the progressive grassroots had the reserves to rise up against a racist and pro-imperialist coup. We must rediscover that path of struggle.

Source: Resumen Latinoamericano—Buenos Aires

Ahead of this Sunday’s presidential election in Bolivia, the latest polling from Ipsos Ciesmori, released last weekend, reveals a close horserace in Bolivia’s presidential race between perennial centrist candidate and business magnate Samuel Doria Medina (21.2%), former conservative and Banzerite President Tuto Quiroga (20%), as well as Manfred Reyes Villa, Cochabamba mayor, retired Army captain, and pro-Banzer right-winger, at 7.7%.

The two left-wing MAS-affiliated candidates, Senate Leader Andrónico Rodríguez and Government Minister Eduardo del Castillo, both poll below 10% despite the MAS leading in voting intentions early on in the cycle. Current President Luis Arce is not running due to his administration being marred by continuous crises, scandals, and unpopularity.

The unpopularity facing the MAS and the left, particularly amid various crises—inflationary, political, judicial, energy, and financial—has created the possibility that the right could win an election for the first time in more than 20 years. The “nill-blank-undecided” camp stands at 33%, with most of them being disaffected leftist voters ; most prominently, supporters of Evo Morales, who has been barred from running and wanted on pedophilia charges.

The race is likely to head to a second round in late October if no candidate secures 40% of the vote and a 10% lead over the next competitor. As things stand, two right-of-center candidates, Doria Medina and Quiroga, are likely to advance, a blow to the left’s progressive agenda. It would be the first second-round runoff in Bolivia’s history.

A right-wing government today would mean more poverty, more austerity, more militarism (and a likely return to heavy US influence), and less representation for Indigenous peoples and women.

The socialist movement’s downfall has been the right’s elation, and they have not been able to contain it, perhaps even overplaying their hand right before Sunday’s election.

Marcelo Claure, Bolivia’s richest man and loud financial backer of multi-millionaire Samuel Doria Medina , has declared Bolivia will soon be “free from socialism and communism” and says he looks forward to returning to the country under a “new government.” Claure, who lives between New York and Miami, backs a neoliberal, private-sector-focused corporate economic plan that suspiciously mirrors Doria Medina’s , calling for the privatization of key industries, inviting international financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund, and relying on “public-private partnerships.” Much of Doria Medina’s financing has also come from his personal fortune, ironically earned through state contracts.

Jaime Dunn, the right-wing libertarian Wall Street tycoon who dropped out of the race after claiming to be the “most talked about politician in Bolivia,” has also been actively lobbying for a right-wing government. Dunn has said that “Bolivia is a country of owners, not proletarians,” claiming both Doria Medina and Quiroga have “copied [his] economic plans.” He has celebrated what he calls “ an end to socialism and authoritarianism ” while proposing to dismantle all government industries, shut down the tax service, cut taxes for the wealthy, and end fuel and other subsidies, policies that would trigger a tsunami of chaos and suffering across the country.

Dunn openly praises Argentine President Javier Milei’s “chainsaw” cuts, which have already pushed more than half of Argentines into poverty; left thousands more living on the street; and sold the country off to crypto scammers, big exporters, and foreign investors.

The financier class has made its preferences crystal clear. In a Reuters piece , foreign investors expressed elation at the prospect of a new right-wing government, saying the election was “fueled by investors’ hopes that a political U-turn could help shore up the country’s fragile economy and pave the way for an IMF program.”

Carlos de Sousa, a debt strategist at Vontobel, said a change in government would be “quite positive for the economy.” Ajata Mediratta, a partner at Greylock Capital, described a non-leftist government as one that would bring about “liberalizing reforms” which “will eventually allow the economy to flourish” and “unshackle the economy.”

That’s a hell of a way to say people are going to suffer immensely under austerity and policies designed to enrich the wealthy and foreign capital.

Mainstream media, particularly in the US, has lavished coverage on the right-wing frontrunners , presenting their ideas and personalities in a vacuum of “neutrality” without acknowledging their history. This includes their roles in the Banzer dictatorship , their role in selling Bolivia’s energy and commercial sectors to foreign interests in the 1990s and early 2000s (leading to the Cochabamba Water War and the rise of the MAS), and their track record with IMF-backed austerity programs that brought very mixed results despite the costs.

A right-wing government today would mean more poverty, more austerity, more militarism (and a likely return to heavy US influence), and less representation for Indigenous peoples and women.

Inside Bolivia, the corporate media ecosystem has spent years boosting conservative candidates. Most outlets in the country are private, running cover, and buying skewed polls for their preferred right-wing hopefuls . These include Red Uno, Bolivia TV, Unitel, ERBOL, El Deber, the two Catholic Fides networks, and La Brújula Digital. Página Siete, Bolivia’s only independent media outlet, was closed through government pressure , and has left a wide hole in the country’s press freedom.

Affiliated TikTok, X, and Facebook accounts have also been busy spreading misinformation in their favor, publishing manipulated or outright false polls bought by candidates and running disproportionate favorable coverage of conservatives. Negative coverage of MAS and the left, with overwhelmingly positive or neutral coverage of the right, dominates their reporting .

Even Evo Morales has been running fake polls to claim the election is rigged against him.

There is now a coordinated, well-funded network, backed by big capital, big business, and international financial institutions, working to bring in a new conservative government in Bolivia. That would mean dismantling much of the progress achieved by the MAS and the left over the past 20 years.

The MAS, though highly imperfect (we can talk about crisis mismanagement , corruption , embracing of dictators , and centralization of power forever), has made significant progress on various and significant fronts. That includes drastically reducing poverty and extreme poverty by more than half; cutting child hunger; expanding access to public education; creating new public universities; defending water rights; more than quadrupling gross domestic product per capita after decades of stagnation; getting Bolivia to a low and stable unemployment rate; successfully nationalizing key industries; expanding public healthcare through SUS; and giving Indigenous peoples, women, and other marginalized groups meaningful political representation under a Plurinational government .

If the polls are right, that legacy could soon be gone, making way for austerity and widespread suffering amid historic crises.

A giant cruise ship dominates the skyline in the city of El Alto in landlocked Bolivia, a symbol of the transformation of an Indigenous bastion keenly fought over in Sunday’s presidential election.

The “Titanic,” as the tallest building in the city is known, serves as the latest in a collection of uber-flamboyant neo-Andean “cholets” — a mix of chalet and “chola” or Indigenous woman — built by Bolivia’s Aymara bourgeoisie over the past two decades.

Victor Choque Flores, a self-made 46-year-old businessman, forked out millions of dollars for his “ship in a sea of bricks,” as he calls his futuristic 12-story palace which looms large over El Alto’s red-brick homes.

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“It’s a bit like us,” he said, adding that while rooted in the past, Indigenous Bolivians are “looking towards the future.”

For many Aymara, that future no longer includes the ruling socialists, who emancipated the Indigenous majority over the past two decades.

For the first time since 2005, the political right is expected to triumph in presidential elections as Bolivians ditch the left over a deep economic crisis.

– Gratitude, frustration –

Nearly 20 years after one of South America’s longest-serving presidents, Evo Morales, was elected on a promise of socialist revolution, the Andean country is running on empty.

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Widespread shortages of dollars, fuel and basic foodstuffs have left some Bolivians worse off than before he took over.

Choque Flores still feels grateful to Morales, Bolivia’s first Indigenous president, for throwing open the doors of power to the country’s brown-skinned majority.

But El Alto, a flourishing merchant city, is also increasingly defined by its residents’ desire to simply get ahead.

Accusing the socialists of multiple “failures,” Choque Flores said he was ready to vote for “another political direction,” without revealing which candidate.

– Gas War cauldron –

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The fate of Bolivia’s left is inextricably linked with El Alto.

Morales came to power in the wake of a bloody crackdown on a revolt in the city over gas exports, which led to over 60 deaths and the fall of a US-backed president in 2003.

In the years since, Morales repeatedly dispatched his supporters down the mountain from El Alto to the seat of government in La Paz to defend his causes.

But the winds of change are blowing on the streets of the Andean metropolis, where women in traditional bowler hats, flouncy “pollera” skirts and shawls hawk goods as gleaming cable cars ferry commuters overhead.

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Across the million-strong city, walls are covered with leading center-right presidential candidate Samuel Doria Medina’s promise to restore supplies of fuel and dollars in “100 dias carajo” (100 days goddammit).

In a sign of the importance of the Indigenous vote, Doria Medina, who is running neck-and-neck with right-wing ex-president Jorge Quiroga, staged his final campaign rally in El Alto on Wednesday.

Jonathan Vega, a 25-year-old chef who attended the gathering, said he was counting on Doria Medina to “restore stability.”

A 72-year-old farmer invited to discuss the election at the local “San Gabriel” Aymara-language TV and radio station also backed change.

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Arcenio Julio Tancara lambasted Morales’s call for voters to spoil their ballot over the refusal by authorities to allow him to run for a fourth term.

“He has always called for unrest and for strikes and blockades.

“At first, we understood that it might be necessary, but since we’ve seen that it wasn’t for a cause, but simply so that he’d be named leader.”

– ‘They disinfect themselves’ –

Morales, who is wanted on charges of trafficking a minor, has sought to galvanize his base by warning that hard-won Indigenous rights are under threat if light-skinned politicians of European heritage take over.

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It’s a tactic that plays well with rural Aymara particularly.

“We don’t want to go back to the 20th century,” said Matilde Choque Apaza, the leader of an Indigenous and rural women’s association, who wore a colorful “aguayo” hold-all knotted around her neck.

Opposition candidates, she said, “clasp (Indigenous) hands tightly” when on the campaign trail, but when they get into their cars or go home, “they disinfect themselves.”

She backed the appeal made by Morales for a mass campaign of spoiled ballots to sap the election of legitimacy.

Polls show around 14 percent of voters are set to answer his call — a far cry from the three outright majorities Morales secured during his 2006-2019 rule.

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Santos Colque Quelca, a 38-year-old presenter at San Gabriel radio, said that growing numbers of listeners were swearing “never again with Evo or (current President Luis) Arce” and were switching their support to the “least bad” opposition candidate.

Pablo Mamani Ramirez, a sociologist at UMSA university in La Paz, said Morales’ bid for “eternal” rule ran counter to Indigenous traditions.

“The logic of the Andean world is that power is rotated.”

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