Bolivia: its tumultuous history as “the country with the most coup attempts” since 1950 (and why its current crisis surprises experts)

Bolivia has just added a peculiar chapter to its long history of political turbulence, which includes everything from military coups to shadowy conspiracies.

The Bolivian president, Luis Arce, denounced on Wednesday “an attempted coup d’état” after a group of soldiers advanced through the center of La Paz until forcibly breaking into the Quemada Palace, the former seat of government.

The tension was resolved after Arce changed the country’s military leadership, the mobilized soldiers returned to the barracks and their leader, General Juan José Zúñiga, was arrested.

As this was happening, voices of support for democracy emerged across the entire political spectrum, which, by the way, contrast with the country’s past as a place conducive to government overthrows.

“Bolivia is the country with the most coup attempts in the world between 1950 and the present,” says Jonathan Powell, an expert on political instability at the University of Kentucky.

However, different analysts express surprise at what happened in the South American country on Wednesday.

In the two centuries since it declared independence in 1825, Bolivia has had a new government on average every 26 and a half months.

A global study by Powell and Clayton Thyne, professor of political science at the University of Kentucky, indicates that from 1950 until last Tuesday the country had 23 cases of coups d’état.

That includes 11 successful hits, defined as those that allowed their drivers to control the power for at least a week, and 12 failed attempts.

The decade in which Bolivia recorded the most coups was 1970: eight completed or attempted, in some years with two cases in a row.

The Bolivian historian Manuel Contreras, member of the Bolivian Academy of History, attributes this past fundamentally to internal factors of the countryfrom the absence of solid institutions to “an unprofessional Army that lends itself to this type of adventure.”

“At least in the 1970s, the Army was seen as a development entity,” Contreras told BBC Mundo. “They thought they had a role to play in the development of the country; that has changed.”

Among the dictators of the time was General Hugo Banzer (1971-1978), who overthrew a military man who governed de facto, harshly repressed social movements, sharply increased foreign debt and He in turn fell in a coup organized by another general.

Several military and civilian governments followed with new episodes of violence and human rights abuses, including the assassination of socialist leader Marcelo Quiroga during the coup that placed General Luis García Meza in power in 1980.

Specialist districts highlight, however, that the series of coups d’état in Bolivia was cut off after the beginning of the constitutional government of Hernán Siles Suazo in 1982, which opened a long democratic period, although the country continued to experience internal conflicts and political crises.

One of those critical moments was in 2019, when then-socialist president Evo Morales sought re-election after almost 14 years in power and denounced a coup against him, a claim that some share and others reject.

Morales announced his resignation after the military suggested he do so amid street protests and allegations of irregularities in his electoral victory by the Organization of American States (OAS).

The new complaint of a coup attempt in Bolivia launched on Wednesday by President Luis Arce caught the attention of different observers.

“This surprised me quite a bit,” says Thyne, one of the co-authors of the global study on coups d’état in the world.

“The OAS and a more anti-coup norm in general have taken hold in Latin America, making any coup in the region quite shocking. “Bolivia has been a democracy since 1982 and seemed to have passed the most recent electoral turmoil of 2019-20,” the expert tells BBC Mundo.

Zúñiga, who was removed from his post as head of the Bolivian Army on Tuesday for threatening remarks he made against Morales, declared during the coup that “the Armed Forces intend to restructure democracy, to make it a true democracy.”

But your movement lacked support from other military sectors and later the general himself accused President Arce of having told him to take the armored vehicles onto the streets to increase his popularity in the midst of the economic and political crisis that the country is going through.

Thyne calls that “one of the dumbest accusations” he has ever heard. “There are a million better ways to galvanize political support. This just showed the weakness of a president who already had a hard time showing strength,” he says.

On the other hand, historian Contreras considers it possible that the government attempted a self-coup.

“This government is so weak and the situation is so delicate that anything can happen,” he maintains.

In recent months, Bolivia has seen street protests and roadblocks amid a shortage of dollars, a drop in international reserves and growing difficulties in importing fuel.

Added to this is a dispute within the ruling Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) between Arce and Morales, who intends to return to the presidency in the 2025 elections despite the doubts that this generates from a legal point of view.

Jean Pierre Lavaud, a French sociologist who has researched Bolivia’s sociopolitical processes, believes that in the country “the main actors of instability of the past are not the same as they are now.”

“The big current problem,” Lavaud tells BBC Mundo, “is created by the internal struggle in the MAS.”

“We don’t know what will happen,” he concludes. “Bolivia is always surprising.”