Bolivia’s political panorama has modified dramatically since August 2025, when a normal election ended the Motion for Socialism (Mas) birthday party’s rule after just about 20 years. Its presence in Congress has all however vanished, with rightwing events now commanding an vast majority.
The brand new president, Rodrigo Paz Pereira, campaigned with the rightwing populist slogan: fé, familia y patria (religion, circle of relatives and place of origin). He swept to victory largely because of the popular acclaim for his working mate and now vice-president, Edmand Lara.
Because the son of former Bolivian president Jaime Paz Zamora, who led Bolivia from 1989 to 1993, Paz Pereira represents a brand new technology of the rustic’s conventional political elite. However Lara, a former police captain who has turn into distinguished on social media since 2023, comes from the preferred categories.
The not going pair benefited from a powerful need a number of the Bolivian other folks for trade amid a critical financial disaster marked via a scarcity of US greenbacks and annual inflation of just about 20%. In addition they took good thing about popular mistrust of reticence against politicians from earlier governments.
In his November inaugural deal with, Paz Pereira denounced that Mas had left what he referred to as an estado tranca (obstructing state). He pledged to exchange it with a smaller, technocratic state able to attracting international funding. This style of state reform is a part of his broader neoliberal undertaking of “capitalism for all”, an ill-defined entrepreneurial imaginative and prescient that celebrates informality.
Rodrigo Paz Pereira at his swearing-in rite in Los angeles Paz, Bolivia, in November 2025.
Gabriel Marquez / EPA
Paz Pereira’s executive quickly printed the contours of its financial and political schedule in Decree 5503. The decree incorporated over 100 articles overlaying a large number of problems equivalent to gas subsidies, taxes, emergency powers, useful resource governance and financial and fiscal coverage.
The federal government offered the decree nearly solely as a measure to finish longstanding fossil gas subsidies. Those subsidies, which have been presented in 1997, had turn into in large part unsustainable with the decline of Bolivia’s fuel exports since 2017. The decree ended the subsidies, changing them with modest increments to the minimal wage and state pensions.
Different, extra problematic parts of the decree that overpassed established procedures and the prerequisites of Bolivia’s charter had been quickly uncovered. Those incorporated measures to grant the federal government emergency powers with out the desired justification, in addition to primary adjustments to the national tax regime with out legislative approval.
The decree additionally presented atypical powers for the central financial institution to procure countless exterior debt with out mechanisms of democratic keep watch over. And it established a “fast track” mechanism for the approval of contracts for the extraction of strategic herbal sources. Contracts can be awarded with out legislative oversight or the desired processes of environmental have an effect on overview and knowledgeable consent of Indigenous other folks.
The sort of “fast track” mechanism overtly revived what used to be referred to as the entreguista personality of the Bolivian state, which had traditionally been prevalent beneath elite rule. It is a time period used during Latin The usa to criticise governments or insurance policies perceived as giving for free a rustic’s nationwide pursuits via, as an example, surrendering keep watch over of herbal sources.
Bolivia is house to the arena’s greatest recognized lithium deposit within the division of Potosí, estimated at 23 million tonnes. Lithium is a essential part within the batteries that energy electrical cars and smartphones, in addition to in high-tech guns methods. Bolivia may be well-endowed with different essential minerals equivalent to tin, silver and antimony.
A truck drives within the Coipasa salt flat within the Oruro division of Bolivia.
Stringer / EPA
Nationalist actions have fiercely antagonistic entreguista insurance policies in Bolivia prior to. Those actions have impressed primary political occasions, together with a revolution in 1952 that overthrew the ruling oligarchy.
In addition they resulted in the so-called water and fuel wars in 2000 and 2003. Those had been sessions of social unrest coming up over executive plans to privatise the water provide within the central town of Cochabamba and export herbal fuel via Chile, respectively.
As famous in 2006 via Tom Perreault, a researcher at Syracuse College in New York, Bolivian other folks see tin or fuel “not only as natural resources, but as national resources as well, that is, resources that properly belong to the nation and its people”.
This sentiment used to be captured lately via Bolivian researcher Gustavo Calle. In a piece of writing revealed on January 13, he stated that via suggesting strategic sources might be exploited via international corporations with out significant keep watch over, Decree 5503 touched “the most sensitive vein of the popular nationalism”.
Repealing the decree
Two days after the federal government revealed the decree on December 17, Bolivia’s major employees’ organisation, the Bolivian Employees’ Centre, declared a normal strike. It requested its participants to mobilise, difficult the abrogation of the decree.
Then, on January 5, the biggest Indigenous organisations joined the protests. They paralysed the rustic with greater than 50 street blockades. And a march named “Bolivia is not for sale” later entered the capital town of Los angeles Paz, bringing in combination a large number of sectors of society.
Paz Pereira portrayed the leaders of the mobilisation as reckless people protecting their very own privileges. He additionally pledged to not backtrack towards “criminals”. However after just about 28 days of protests, the federal government in the end conceded and abrogated the decree on January 11.
Bolivian police conflict with protesters all through an illustration in Los angeles Paz in early January.
Luis Gandarillas / EPA
The federal government’s symbol has taken successful. On the other hand, not like the federal government all through the fuel struggle, its legitimacy has no longer been challenged. That length of unrest in the end resulted within the resignation of President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada.
Paz Pereira’s defeat may be most effective partial. The removal of the fossil gas subsidies has now been consolidated. And the federal government is these days getting ready a brand new authoritarian regulation to sanction street blockages as felony offences.
In a contemporary interview with the Monetary Occasions, Paz Pereira additionally sought to painting the preferred opposition to his entreguista insurance policies as being performed via an insignificant minority of former Mas chief Evo Morales’ fans.
Within the absence of another political undertaking, the brand new executive seems to be in a powerful place to impose its schedule. But the power and explosive possible of useful resource nationalist sentiments within the nation will have to no longer be discounted.
