EVISM v/s ARCISM is the cleavage massist that determines Bolivian politics these days (or at least one of the most relevant). It has a series of interconnected coverages that, as indicated Garcia Linerais nothing more than a deficit of a virtuous combination between the strategic v/s tactical perspective, framed within the process that began a few years ago when the FURTHER was installed in the first magistracy of the country (also, in its first articulations) and, today, I would be completing that cycle.
The simplicity stated, García Linera recognizes, has the risk of slowing down the process underway, even generating conditions for dismantling the Plurinational State, if MAS does not remain in power in 2025. And in that possible situation, both Evo Morales as Luis Arce Catacora (I fight) would have a capital responsibility, as long as they do not reach a strategic agreement via ‘agreement‘, or via ‘primaries‘, an instrument contemplated in the country’s electoral institutions.
This struggle between Evo and Arce (Lucho)… between political leader v/s the bureaucratic leader which implies a massist bloodshed and its political project (some analysts indicate that the referendum of February 21, 2016, which asked for the continuity of Evo Morales, is the beginning of the end of the cycle), also faces economic difficulties, not only because of the issues of growth because of economic growth (financial dynamics that, together with activating more or less inflationary processes, would discourage national and international investments in the management struggle between state and market), but by the management of its natural resources represented by hydrocarbons and, now by the management of Lithium.
For Bolivia, this issue is strategic, but not only because of the pure economic problem, but because is the support of the masista project.
From that perspective, Bolivia, along with facing the impossibility of Evo Morales becoming a Presidential Candidate within his community, by electoral institutional definitions (the possibility of being a candidate would be exhausted, having been president twice); faces, on the other hand the renewal of judicial mandateswaiting for a popular election that was not held and demanded by Evismwhere new judges could roll back the rule to give viability to their candidacy-eligibility (see more here I here).
Faced with the possibility of organizing a massist primary election, tensions arise as a candidate selection mechanism, in a context of a hegemonic – dominant party system (see here), introducing himself, eventually the president of the Bolivian Senatewhich, it seems, would represent profound evism, that is, the young Andronico Rodriguez (36 years old), prestigious, prudent and tolerant representative who seeks to expand his membership (as he is characterized), would add a factor of uncertainty due to the generational renewal of leaders.
However, in this context, Evo Morales also insists on challenging Luis Arce to the electoral exercise set to achieve the unity of the MAS. It should be noted that, in terms of party theory (the MAS is and is not a party, being designated as an instrument-movement), the organization of its internal groups in their conflicts would be experiencing one of its most intense moments, if not the most intense of his political life, risking a division-fragmentation and with it, giving a free opportunity to the opposition that is not yet capable of crystallizing as an option to assume the responsibilities of leading a country and associated political project.
Along these lines, Bolivia finds in the leadership of Carlos Mesa (former president and former presidential candidate) with his conglomerate Citizen Communitya challenging scenario, especially when the other Bolivian leadership such as Luis Fernando Camachoa native of Santa Cruz who, through Santa Cru Civic Committeezy WE BELIEVEwho managed to transform into Governor of Santa Cruz (from the civic committee) and presidential candidate in 2019, with both (today deprived of liberty as a result of the events characterized as an attempted coup d’état in the 2019 crisis).
Adds Manfred Reyes Villacurrent mayor of Cochabamaba who has been projecting a presidential electoral possibility (former presidential candidate), his career characterized, in part, by resistance to Evo Morales, when he was the highest authority of the Purinational Republic.
It is interesting to note that opposition fragmentation is explained, from one line, by the lack of a national project that, although it is represented by CREEMOS, as a platform of various civic committees achieved from Santa Cruz, or the Citizen Community, which proposes a more transversal view, They have not yet achieved the comprehensive-national idea, that it did achieve-achieves (with all its contradictions), the MAS.
Added to the above is the materialization of an instrument of ‘public-state policy’ such as the Census held on recent March 23, 2024, which, as an instrument of ‘public-state policy’ allowed the validity of the plurinational state on which the national MAS project is basedformalizing the existence of 36 ethnic groups, thanks to those carried out between the years 2001-2012 (See in Galindo, Mario (2013) Debate on self-recognition: analysis of the 2012 census // Political and economic perspectives of the results of the 2012 Census, in Analysis and Research Magazine ed. UMSA and foundation Hanns Seidel).
This has prospected political consequences with its results in terms of number and distribution of population (impact on internal political geography):
- a.- It would imply reassignments in political representation by departments within the legislative Assembly (Chamber of Deputies)
- b.- In the financing of subnational governments, Santa Cruz taking an additional percentage, with the understanding that this department has grown in population more than the Bolivian altiplano-coya expressions (see here ; here I here)
Is Chile interested in the internal situation of Bolivia? you should be very interested. From the perspective of binational approaches in terms of cooperation translated into immigration policies, drug trafficking (illegal in general), various economic exchanges, academic meetings and others, they are of obvious interest.
It is essential to bring positions closer together against the known conflict between both States, which has only prevented them from benefiting from the possibilities of more intense and good relations. This is consistent when Luis Arce Catacora, on the 133rd anniversary of the reopening of the Army school in La Paz, referred to a neighboring country that would breach the 1904 treaty regarding the exploitation of lithiumindicating that the same country would be strategically hindering the management of its natural resources:
“Without referring to the name of the neighboring nation, Arce said that he intends to “subordinate” the Bolivian State through strategic plans to remove Bolivia from the “Regional Master Plan for Integration and Development of the Capricorn Bioceanic Corridor“, where countries in the region such as Chile, Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay are committed” (see here).
Thus, Bolivia, in its internal contradictions and in its international projections, organized under its plurinational interest, obliges the Chilean State, from the sense of cooperation and good neighborliness, to comprehensively understand the Bolivian realityfunctional to their own interests.
