The sub-provincial elections in Bolivia, held on March 7, can be read as a radicalization of the conflict scenarios, with the MAS being the most hegemonic party at the national level, but with a right with a strong and radicalized presence in the department of Santa Cruz and in important cities such as Cochabamba and La Paz.

It should also be noted that conflicts in the selection of candidates have led to the appearance of dissident candidates who have come forward with other forces, achieving significant victories.

Predominance of MAS and rural vote weight

Of the 336 mayors competing in the elections, MAS will win 240, while in 6 of the 9 departments nominations for governorates have been imposed and in the other three they have remained in second position. Although the majority vote, as usual, has less force than in the presidential elections to govern and be mayor, it sets a great distance from the other political subjects, especially in rural areas, and is also the only political party that has a presence throughout the country, the only one with strength and organic life and militancy. Consequently, the political discourse is articulated around the position in favor or against what MAS proposes, that is, with a clear hegemony.

However, despite having achieved successes in most departments, only three (Oruro, Cochabamba and Potosí) have achieved victory in the first round. Panda, Tarija, Chuquisaca and La Paz had to make a second round on 11 April, in which the vote focused on the anti-government party candidates, who became winners.

In the big cities, the 9 capitals of the departments and the city of El Alto, Mas has only been done successfully in Oruro and Sucre. Although these are not good results, it should be borne in mind that the results of the last sub-institutional elections are very similar to those of yesterday. Surely it can be disappointing for MAS. In fact, after Arce’s great victory in October and the dispersion and weakening of the opposition, better results were expected. The weakness of the HAF in the cities is the historical Achilles heel of the government party, spaces of political culture much more individualistic, when the community and union structures do not exert their influence on the rural environment.

It is also clear that the imposition of candidatures by the party leadership, in many cases without knowing the postulates of the social organizations, has come up against MAS, since its origin and raison d'être is to be a political instrument of the institutions and popular sectors.

There is opposition to MAS, left and citizen

Former President of the Senate, Eva Copá, has won the victory in El Alto, the strength of the struggle against the government of Jeanine Áñez, with 68.7% of the votes. Damián Condori, leader of the Union Confederacy Unico de Trabajadores de Campo de Chuquisaca, was in the second round of the government, achieving victory. To these must be added the triumph of Ana Lucía Reis in the city of Cobija and that achieved by the new governor of Beni, Alejandro Unzueta. All of them were proposed by the social organizations for their candidature, but they were rejected by the party leaders, which has opened a large gap at the local level. At the same time, we are faced with a classic debate on the Bolivian left. On the one hand there are the sectors closest to the Leninist orthodoxy, who, understanding the party as the vanguard of the struggle, have imposed their candidates on social organizations. And, on the other hand, the organization of popular movements and peoples of origin, based on assemblies and with a great presence among the peoples of origin (especially Aymara and Quechua). This structure understands that the basic institutions must decide and that the party's positions "are to govern with obedience", paraphrasing the Zapatistas and Evo himself.

Therefore, where he has decided not to listen to these organizations, MAS has been defeated even in his fighting strengths, such as El Alto, where defeat has been tremendous. Special attention must be paid to the victories of Eva Copa and Damian Condori, as well as to the victory of Santos Quispe in La Paz in the second round. The latter is the son of Ayma leader Felipe Quispe, recently deceased. Philip, until the end of his life, maintained very critical indianist positions with the traditional mestizo left.

We have to see if the Copa is capable of good management in the difficult mayor of El Alto because of its dynamism, disorder, constant growth and critical spirit, which is more difficult than governing the same country. If the management is positive, if the capacity is developed to articulate with the dissident popular forces of the dissident majority of Quispe, Condori and Beni and Panda, from the left and from the popular sectors one can speak of the serious possibility of a majority opposition of the MAS, with a marked indigenous character.

This is an interesting situation, since these agents may force the party that has ruled Bolivia to overcome the contradictions, both in its relationship with basic institutions and in its relationship with other key issues such as the extremist economic model, the lack of depth in decolonizing processes or the tolerance in complicity with exploitation practices (metolonizers).

For this, it will be essential that both MAS and its dissidents – as Felipe Quispe understood in his day when Añez opposed the intention to postpone the elections forever – that, over and above the discrepancies and internal struggles, they are part of the same historical bloc as the indigenous and the working classes and continue to have a common enemy, that is, a mining and exporting oligarchy sustained by U.S. imperialism.

Radicalised Right

Despite the collapse of the moderate right represented by the Citizen Community and its leader, Carlos Mesa, and despite the fragmentation of the political framework of the right, it has not been possible to deny the success of some of its candidates and also represent actors with much more radical positions. For example, Manfred Reyes Villa, winner of the mayor of Cochabamba, a former military member of the military dictatorships in his youth, a member of the criminal government of Sánchez de Lozada and, therefore, an accomplice; or Iván Arias La Paz, who, after going left to increasingly reactionary positions, ended up being minister of the corrupt government of the Jeanez factory.

But, without a doubt, the leader of the right-wing opposition in Bolivia is Luis Fernando Camacho, who was the principal author of the 2019 coup d'état at the Civic Committee of Santa Cruz. In fact, it achieved the absolute majority of the Governorate of Santa Cruz, the richest and most populous region of Bolivia. Camacho's discourses and political practices are based on clearly racist identity attitudes, as well as a rarefied conservative religious discourse, as well as being closely related to the elite of the eastern agricultural industry. Therefore, Camacho will probably resort to the government to confront the government of Arce and to tighten the relations between the two.

In fact, the arrest of Jeanine Áñez to judge by the coup, after being defeated as a candidate for Beni governor, has reinforced the discourse war on what happened in 2019. The vision of the right, supported by large sectors of the middle class, is that what happened was a mere constitutional succession because Evo Morales refused to mobilize against an alleged electoral fraud. However, the conviction of the popular sectors is that it was a planned and brutal coup d’état, which can be seen with the massacres of Senkata and Sacaba, with some thirty deaths, and with the political persecution against the coup and against those who opposed the corrupt government of Añez. Finally, the victory of MAS (with 55% of the votes) makes it clear that Añez and Camacho are responsible for the facts and that they must be judged and condemned.

In short, before a right that will continue to conspire to overthrow the government and that tends to radicalize, we must reflect from the popular and from the left, correct errors, sewing wounds that have caused fractures and deepen the process among all. To deepen a true process of rupture with the capitalist, colonial and patriarchal structures that prevent the development of an egalitarian and just future for the Bolivian people, articulated with the struggles of the peoples of the continent and of the world in general.

[*The author is Bolivian, Askapena's militant and resident in the Basque Country]