{"id":28563,"date":"2020-11-15T01:55:49","date_gmt":"2020-11-15T07:55:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/?p=28563"},"modified":"2020-11-20T09:26:10","modified_gmt":"2020-11-20T15:26:10","slug":"mas-returns-to-bolivia-after-last-years-coup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/2020\/11\/15\/mas-returns-to-bolivia-after-last-years-coup\/","title":{"rendered":"MAS Returns to Bolivia After Last Year’s Coup"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently, Luis Arce won a landslide victory in the 2020 Bolivian general election after a coup d\u2019etat removed his party, Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS), from power eleven months ago. MAS also won a majority in the country\u2019s senate. However, the party faces significant challenges to bring peace back to Bolivia. <\/span>In 2006, Evo Morales was elected president of Bolivia. Under Morales, the country made great progress<\/a> in economic development, women\u2019s rights, indigenous rights, environmental protection, healthcare reform, and education, and increased the living standards of Bolivians. The number of people living in poverty fell from 59.9% in 2006 to 34.6% in 2017<\/a>, with the number of Bolivians in extreme poverty falling from 38.3% to 15.2%<\/a>. As the country\u2019s first Indigenous president, he promised to bring power to marginalized groups by redistributing 134 million acres of land<\/a> from private and state ownership to Indigenous families. Morales nationalized Bolivia\u2019s oil and gas industries<\/a>, taking away negotiating power from foreign energy companies and returning it to Bolivia<\/span>. <\/span><\/p>\n

However, after a disputed election in 2019, conservative senator Jeanine \u00c1\u00f1ez, backed by the United States and the Organization of American States<\/a>, declared herself president and forced Morales to flee the country. Under \u00c1\u00f1ez, dozens of Indigenous protestors were killed by the Bolivian military<\/a>, natural resource extraction was intensified and reopened<\/a> to international companies<\/span> and social welfare and public investment programs were rolled back<\/a><\/span>. The economic model created by Morales was displaced, and the economy shrank by 5.6% while the GDP\u2019s growth slowed<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite government repression, protests continued against \u00c1\u00f1ez, demanding free and fair elections. Finally, in 2020, elections were held and the former finance minister of Morales\u2019 government, Luis Arce, won a decisive victory. His success has been credited to Bolivia\u2019s strong social movements<\/a> and the reaction of the Bolivian people to the authoritarian government of \u00c1\u00f1ez. This indicates that the Bolivian people want a return to the policies of Morales and MAS. <\/span><\/p>\n

However, the new government faces many challenges. Bolivia has the fifth-highest<\/a><\/span> COVID-19 mortality rate per capita, and much of its economy has been shut down. Unemployment and poverty increased under \u00c1\u00f1ez<\/a> even before the pandemic compounded these issues<\/span>. Opponents of MAS claim that Morales centralized power and co-opted social movements, and as a result, many Bolivians still have concerns about MAS. Arce and MAS are now faced with the challenge of successfully navigating these issues to bring prosperity back to Bolivia.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently, Luis Arce won a landslide victory in the 2020 Bolivian general election after a coup d\u2019etat removed his party, Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS), from…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":560,"featured_media":28583,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2724,1],"tags":[3471,1980,1234],"coauthors":[3339],"class_list":["post-28563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-worldnews","tag-bolivia","tag-elections","tag-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/560"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28563"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28626,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28563\/revisions\/28626"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28563"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=28563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}