From progressive decomposition to “capitalism for all” in Bolivia
Digital illustration in hand drawing style for Ojalá by Karen con K.
Opinion • Huascar Salazar Lohman • October 24, 2025 • Leer en castellano
On October 20, Rodrigo Paz won the first runoff election in Bolivian history by promising economic stability. The Christian Democratic Party (PDC) candidate won the presidency with 54.9 percent of the vote, defeating Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga of the far-right Libre political alliance.
Although small groups of right-wing voters dissatisfied with the results staged some skirmishes, Paz's victory was confirmed over the following days. The overwhelming nature of his victory, Quiroga's acknowledgment of his loss, the support of organized business sectors for Paz, and congratulatory calls from several presidents in the region settled the matter.
A right-wing government—center-right, according to those who compared it to Tuto—won the election, burying the government of Luis Arce Catacora.
On November 8, after 20 years in power—with the exception of a single year following the failed 2019 elections—the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) will give up the presidency. It leaves Bolivia in a critical situation.
A vote against, not for
The victory of Paz and his Vice President, Edman Lara, is not the outcome of a transformation of the Bolivian state that was driven by society.
Three months ago, no one—not even Paz and Lara—could have imagined this outcome. Their victory is the result of building discontent, and a national panorama traversed by a great deal of uncertainty—and a few harsh certainties.
Let's start with the Bolivian economy, which has been in the red for over a year.
Fuel shortages, dollar shortages, and inflation on basic goods are the most visible manifestations of economic collapse. Bolivia’s Gross Domestic Product contracted during the first half of 2025 for the first time in 39 years. The crisis is the result of the exhaustion of an economic model based on natural gas exports, which began in the neoliberal period and continued throughout the period the MAS was in power, and has hit popular sectors disproportionately hard.
Adding to the economic debacle is the decomposition of the MAS, which generated widespread discontent as it grinded on.
The authoritarian drift of the party became increasingly evident after 2016. The power-hungry nature of its leaders, the accusations of pedophilia against Evo Morales, and multiple corruption scandals hollowed out the promises of progressive, leftist discourse. That discourse obscured a capitalist state project that, while it managed to redistribute unprecedented gas surpluses during the commodity boom, failed to change the structure of economic power.
These factors explain why right-wing candidates crushed all of the political proposals linked to the MAS—from the candidacies of Andrónico Rodríguez and Eduardo del Castillo, to Morales’ call to spoil ballots—in the first round.
Paz's victory over Quiroga in the second round was, above all, a veto against the recalcitrant right, which is heir to military governments and the bearer of the most classist and racist imaginaries in Bolivian society.
It was in this context that Paz and Lara came forward with an unfinished and ambiguous project.
They represent a right wing that set out to understand the most immediate concerns of the popular sectors and middle classes, in order to recycle them into an entrepreneurial discourse that promised “capitalism for all.” Their proposals made sense only because concepts like the left, socialism and revolution were emptied of meaning during the last decade of Bolivian progressivism.
Paz's so-called populist capitalism also drew on conservative discourses from other parts of Latin America. Lara, a former police officer, has not hidden his admiration for El Salvador’s Nayyib Bukele and his authoritarianism. In addition, Lara and Paz wrapped their candidacies in a cloak of Christian religiosity.
Elections, fatigue, and more capitalism
There were three crucial elements to this electoral process.
First, there was general weariness in regard to the fractured MAS. Second, there was rejection of Bolivia's historical right wing and its racist and classist tendencies. And third, there was the emergence of a right wing that is still not well understood, but which attempts to combine rapprochement with popular sectors together with contemporary conservative politics.
In parallel to these dynamics at the state level, we must also consider the precarious situation of social organizations. Their inability to impose their own agendas on the national political scene was made patent during this electoral process.
Since the beginning of campaigning in the first round, electoral debates revolved around the economic crisis and its most urgent manifestations, including the lack of dollars, inflation, and fuel shortages.
But little or nothing was said about the underlying causes.
The differences among the proposals made by the parties were tactical: at issue is the speed of the adjustment (shock or gradualism), whether or not to resort to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) immediately or to wait a little longer, when (not if) to privatize or close public companies, and what country should exploit Bolivia’s lithium.
All of these proposals converge along the strategic axis of attracting foreign investment by guaranteeing so-called legal certainty, reducing public spending, and deepening extractivism as the key method of accessing foreign currency.
That alignment means that what lies ahead for Bolivia is relatively straightforward.
The fiscal adjustment promised by Paz will involve cuts to already deteriorated public services, a freeze on state hiring in a country where public sector employment is one of the few sources of stable income, and the “rationalization” of unprofitable public enterprises, a euphemism that historically precedes privatization.
We can also expect the elimination of fuel subsidies, which will make transportation more expensive and, in a domino effect, increase the cost of the basic necessities for Bolivians.
The proposal for “tax harmonization below 10 percent” seeks to simplify the current Bolivian tax system to a single reduced rate, which will mainly benefit large companies and consolidated capital.
Although Paz promised not to resort to the IMF initially, he left the door open to do so when the pressures of the crisis increase, at which time multilateral financial organizations can be presented as the only way to obtain foreign currency.
In this context, extractivism is once again being presented as the only possible alternative.
Lithium is replacing natural gas in the developmentalist imagination. Paz promised to promote its industrialization in an attempt to attract foreign investment. This repeats the logic of the gas cycle: selling natural resources to insert them into global accumulation circuits and ensuring transnational corporations and local elites capture most of the surplus.
During Bolivia’s gas boom, 83 percent of production remained in the hands of foreign companies Petrobras and Repsol, and four foreign mining companies controlled more than 90 percent of the exported value.
Devastate territories, generate a temporary bonanza, and face a new collapse. The script repeats, again.
The agro-industrial sector—which quickly congratulated the Paz government—is often presented as an engine of development. But what is left out is that this productive model, which is linked to financial capital and drains the surplus created by the working population, is responsible for the devastation of millions of hectares of forest in eastern Bolivia.
The electoral process revealed an unspoken but deeply rooted consensus. All of the political proposals—from Quiroga's neoliberal orthodoxy to Paz's “capitalism for all,” as well as the proposals made by the MAS variants—converged on the idea that getting out of the crisis requires attracting foreign investment, reducing public spending, and deepening extractivism.
This program is presented as synonymous with what is called economic stability: balanced macroeconomic indicators, investor confidence, and foreign currency inflows. Meanwhile, the precariousness of the majority of the population and the devastation of territories are normalized as inevitable costs of adjustment.
If, in the process, there are crumbs left over to redistribute among the popular sectors, so much the better. But that is considered a welcome, albeit unnecessary, side effect.
What the incoming government intends to do is rebuild the capacity for capital accumulation, not to care for the life and well-being of Bolivian society.
Ending the crisis, but for who?
Bolivia’s national debate has long been focused on a single question: what can replace the revenues generated by gas exports?
The answers are limited: lithium, gold, wood, soybean. The accompanying adjustment plan is predictable: cut social spending now, or go into debt and cut social spending later.
The way we’re thinking about this problem, in itself, the problem.
Feminist economist Amaia Pérez Orozco explains it such: when we can only talk about human needs in terms of the market, it becomes impossible to make visible the fundamental contradiction between capital and life.
The current crisis is not taking place because the MAS changed the economic model, but rather from the fact that it changed too little. When the gas ran out, so did the accumulation that sustained the system.
Seeking another commodity to prop up the economy under the same rules of inequality and exploitation will only perpetuate the cycle of temporary bonanza and inevitable collapse.
We need to rethink the questions being asked from the ground up. Why is the Bolivian economy organized in such a way that one percent of the population concentrates 30 percent of the profits? Wouldn’t it make more sense to fight for control of the surplus that already exists, rather than seek new sources of extraction?
That surplus could be better distributed through progressive taxation, the elimination of regressive subsidies to capital, and establishing control over speculative financial flows, among other measures that would allow for the recovery of a surplus that continues to be hoarded by a few. Doing so would help build and strengthen public and communal systems that guarantee basic rights to health, education, food, and more.
Unfortunately, none of this was on the agenda of Bolivian progressivism in recent years. Instead, MAS leaders were more focussed on staying in power, and engaging in internal fights about who would lead the party. Nor is it part of the economic program Paz will implement in coming months and years.
This fight must be clearly enunciated in the present, creating a point of convergence for the dissident and rebellious movements and efforts which are today scattered, weakened, and disorganized, with little capacity to interpolate and intervene politically.
In Bolivia’s new political scenario, our proposal for how to deal with the crisis cannot be one that puts capital at the center. Instead, it must be one for life.
