If betrayal comes from above, resistance will be born from below
On November 8, 2025, Bolivia witnessed the most contradictory change of presidential command in its recent history. Rodrigo Paz Pereira assumed power in the midst of a climate of polarization, economic crisis and social uncertainty. His acceptance speech, centered on the promise of a “capitalism for all,” sought to project an image of renewal and moderation, however, what is really inaugurated is a new stage of offensive against the oppressed majorities, under the tutelage of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the organisations of international financial capital.
Added to this fact is the recent annulment of the ten-year prison sentence against Jeanine Áñez, a symbol of the 2019 coup, which marks an unequivocal sign of the conservative restoration and the recomposition of the judiciary at the service of the ruling class. Both events express the depth of the turn to the right in Bolivia, the exhaustion of the progressive cycle and the closure of a stage of the so-called “process of change”.
The Collapse of Reformism and the Electoral Defeat of the MAS
The 2025 elections were a reflection of the collapse of a project that, for almost two decades, sought to reconcile the irreconcilable – capitalism with social justice. The Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), which was born as the political expression of the workers, peasants and indigenous uprisings at the beginning of the century, arrived at these elections divided, worn out and without a political horizon.
The fracture between Evo Morales and Luis Arce ended up decomposing the party, generating separate candidacies, legal battles for the party name and, finally, a punishment vote of historic dimensions. Neither of the two factions managed to exceed 3%, while the ‘null vote’ – spoiled ballots – called by Evo Morales as a form of political resistance, reached almost 20%, showing the level of distrust towards all the options in dispute.
However, it would be a mistake to reduce this defeat to a simple personal conflict. What is collapsing is a model, that of Andean-Amazonian capitalism, a project that never sought to destroy the foundations of the capitalist system, but to administer it under partial state control. The “nationalisation” of hydrocarbons in 2006 was in reality a renegotiation of contracts, the latifundia remained protected in the 2009 Constitution, and the economic policy, dependent on gas rent, worked while international prices were high.
When that economic bonanza was exhausted, reformism was also exhausted. Inflation, which reached 25% in 2025, fuel shortages and falling international reserves led to a rapid deterioration in living conditions. The MAS, instead of radicalising the process, administered it, maintained subsidies without productive planning, repressed mobilisations such as that of the TIPNIS indigenous territory (2011) and applied neoliberal measures such as the “gasolinazo”. The distance between the anti-imperialist discourse and practice of the government became untenable.
The historical mistake of the MAS was not to have abandoned capitalism. It is not that Morales has betrayed Marxist principles, he never had them as an axis. Since its foundation, its leadership, particularly through Álvaro García Linera, has replaced the class struggle with a discourse of “national reconstruction” and “harmony between the productive sectors”. Under the thesis of “Andean-Amazonian capitalism”, it was argued that Bolivia should first strengthen a regulated capitalism with indigenous participation, before considering socialism. In other words, the revolution was renounced and management was chosen.
The New Government, Populist Mask, Agenda of Capital
The triumph of Rodrigo Paz, and Edman Lara the vice-president, is the most recent expression of the political recycling of the Latin American right. Paz, son of former President Jaime Paz Zamora, presents himself as a “modern” populist, contrary to the classic neoliberalism of Tuto Quiroga, but a defender of “private initiative.” During the campaign, he promised to maintain the subsidies that guarantee stability in the cost of living, aware that any attempt to eliminate them would provoke an immediate reaction from the Bolivian people. But that promise clashes head-on with reality.
A few days before assuming power, Paz travelled to Washington to meet with representatives of the IMF, who announced their “willingness to help” the new government. Latin American history is clear, every time the IMF “helps”, it imposes conditions that destroy social conquests and sovereignty. Bolivia will not be the exception.
The measures being prepared are the same as always:
- Progressive elimination of fuel and food subsidies, which will increase the cost of living.
- Cuts in public spending, affecting health, education and social programs such as the Dignity Income pension program, or the Juancito Pinto Bonus paid to parents for use towards their children’s education.
- Privatisation of state-owned companies and opening up to foreign capital, especially in energy and lithium.
- Labor flexibility, attacking stability and real wages.
The Paz government, like all those that subordinated themselves to financial capital, will act as a manager of the IMF, in charge of guaranteeing the payment of the foreign debt at the expense of the working people.
The Annulment of Jeanine Áñez’s Conviction, A Sign of Impunity and Conservative Restoration
The ruling of the Constitutional Court that annulled the ten-year prison sentence against Jeanine Áñez, politically responsible for the 2019 coup and the massacres of Sacaba and Senkata, is a direct blow to the memory of the Bolivian people. This is not a legal error, but a political decision that expresses the new balance of power after the victory of the right.
This fact consecrates impunity and reopens the door to the legitimization of the coup, under the narrative of “national reconciliation”. It is the same script that we saw in Chile after the dictatorship and in Argentina after Menem’s pardons, the ruling class needs to close the judicial processes that compromise it to consolidate its political restoration.
That Áñez regains her freedom while dozens of social activists are still imprisoned is a symptom of the times, the bourgeois state is reaccommodating, cleaning up its “democratic” façade while preparing a new cycle of repression against those who resist the austerity.
Crisis of Representativeness and Parliamentary Reconfiguration
The new Plurinational Congress, the Plurinational Legislative Assembly (ALP), clearly reflects the crisis of representativeness. No political force has its own majority. The MAS, once hegemonic, was reduced to a testimonial bench, right-wing alliances are divided between conservative populism and orthodox neoliberalism and “independent” sectors emerged that represent nothing more than regional business interests.
This scenario reproduces, under new names, the old “Pact Democracy” of the 1990s, a bourgeois parliament that negotiates quotas of power and reproduces the rules of capital, while the people are excluded from fundamental decisions.
Perspectives, Tradition of Struggle and Tasks of the Moment
Bolivia is not a defeated country. Its people have one of the richest traditions of struggle in Latin America. From the 1952 insurrection to the Gas War that began in 2003, the Bolivian people have shown that, when the working class and peasantry mobilise, they can overthrow entire governments.
The new scenario opens a period of instability. The right-wing will govern in the midst of an economic crisis, without a parliamentary majority, facing a people that will not passively accept the loss of past conquests. Workers and peasants will defend the bonuses, subsidies, and social rights won during the previous cycle. The objective conditions for a new rise of popular uprisings is maturing.
But historical experience teaches that without revolutionary leadership, mobilisations can be diverted toward reformism or defeated by repression. For this reason, the central task is not to rebuild the MAS, but to build a party which raises a program of rupture with capitalism and expresses the historical interests of workers and peasants.
Revolutionary Rupture Program
- Expropriation and Workers’ Control. Immediate nationalisation without compensation of all strategic resources (hydrocarbons, mining, large industries, banking) under workers’ and peasants’ control. This implies that the management of production and distribution must be in the hands of the workers themselves, through their democratic organisations (unions, federations, committees).
- Non-Payment of the External Debt. Categorical rejection of the IMF’s impositions and declaration of a unilateral moratorium on foreign debt. These resources should be used to finance a social emergency plan and a sovereign industrialisation program.
- Radical Agrarian Reform. Expropriation of the latifundia and delivery of the land to the peasant and indigenous communities, putting an end to the colonial legacy and the concession made by the MAS to the landowning right.
- Workers’ Economic Plan. Implementation of a plan for sovereign industrialisation and economic diversification, which puts technology at the service of social needs and the care of nature, and not of capitalist profit. This plan must be drawn up and supervised by workers’ and peasants’ organisations.
- Workers’ Government. Replacement of the capitalist state with a government of the workers and peasants, based on organs of popular power (assemblies, committees) that guarantee the broadest workers’ and people’s democracy over the owners of capital.
The new government of Rodrigo Paz does not represent a renewal, but the continuity of capitalist power with a new face. Although the MAS cycle never broke with capitalism, it achieved partial social conquests and a limited redistribution of national income that are now threatened. The essential difference is that the new government in practice will not maintain these improvements, its program is that of the full return of austerity, privatisation and the open restoration of capitalist power. The annulment of Áñez’s conviction, the imminent intervention of the IMF and the return of the old parliamentary practices confirm the end of a historical cycle, that of reformist progressivism that tried to humanise capitalism.
But Bolivia has not said its last word. The insurrectional memory of the people, forged in the streets of El Alto, Cochabamba and Potosí, will be expressed again when the austerity hits the pockets of the workers.
The immediate task of those of us who struggle for social emancipation is to transform resistance into power, indignation into organisation, and struggle into a class perspective. Only a Workers’ and Peasants’ Government, supported by the self-organisation of the oppressed majorities, will be able to break with capitalist domination and open the road to socialism.
The Tasks of the Peoples of Latin America
The shift to the right that Bolivia is going through is not taking place in isolation, it is part of a regional offensive of capital and imperialism that is regaining momentum in Latin America. But this restoration is neither stable nor passive. On the contrary, it is being confronted by a concrete and military threat from the United States off the Venezuelan coast, which shows that the peoples of the region face not only economic adjustments, but also direct geopolitical pressure.
The escalation of US ships, submarines, destroyers and troops in the Caribbean, very close to the Venezuelan coast, is not merely an act of deterrence, it represents a show of force that enables international capital and local oligarchies to reorder Latin America under new terms. This military threat reinforces the adjustment agenda, while in Bolivia a government of “capitalism for all” enters, there is a larger-scale operation to impose more disciplined free market capitalism and repression from the bottom up.
But this conjuncture also opens up a scenario of continental resistance. The oppressed majorities, workers, peasants, indigenous people, youth, although momentarily contained, are preparing to retake the initiative. Because the combination of internal adjustment, capital’s offensive and imperialist threat requires a class political response on a continental scale. It is not enough to resist locally, the enemy acts globally, and the struggle of the Latin American peoples must be articulated as such.
The emancipation of the peoples of Latin America will not come from new administrators of capitalism but from the conscious unity of the working and peasant class of the continent, confronting both the local bourgeoisies and the US intervention. Bolivia is a strategic node in this battle, if the restoration triumphs here, the adjustment is strengthened, if the autonomous resistance grows here, a new revolutionary cycle opens.
The threat of the United States in Venezuela reminds us that the ruling class does not respect borders and that the mechanisms of subordination are perfected with fiscal adjustment, militarization and repression. But on the other side is the insurrectionary tradition of Latin America, lived in Bolivia, in Ecuador, in Chile, in Colombia. That tradition must be transformed today into organised power, into worker-peasant-indigenous bloc forces, in a revolutionary direction, capable of consolidating transformations without turning back.
Ultimately, the task is continental, the perspective is socialist, and there is no room to lose. Because when capital attacks, when imperialism deploys its ships, when debt and subsidies falter, only the organisation of the popular classes and their continental unity can break the chain of adjustment and open the way to a Socialist Federation of Republics of Latin America.