Five Myths About the Crisis of the Left in Bolivia

This article was originally published by NODAL – Noticias de América Latina y el Caribe on August 19, 2025. It has been translated and reprinted with permission from the publisher by BreakThrough News.

I have read with great attention the words of many comrades, people I love and respect greatly, who have simplified the situation of the crisis of the left in Bolivia. I know that these criticisms come from honest people, born of genuine concerns and solidarity with the Bolivian people.

However, a series of common points emerge that deserve an explanation given the unique characteristics of Bolivia, its social organizations, and its left.

1. The fracturing of the left arose from a struggle of personal ambitions.

It was not egos, a lack of generosity, or pettiness that marked the rupture between social organizations and the government of Luis Arce. This reductive explanation reveals a lack of understanding of the significance of the Political Instrument (MAS-IPSP) of the social organizations that came to seize political power in Bolivia in December 2005.

This instrument is the sum of the largest Indigenous and peasant organizations in the country—a country that, it goes without saying, is predominantly Indigenous.

These organizations are structured into union locals, union sub-centrals, provincial centrals, departmental federations, and national confederations. It is these structures that debate and decide the course of the instrument. These are not personal decisions or whims; they are organizational decisions arising from across Bolivian territory.

These organizations were systematically attacked by the government of Luis Arce, who even stripped them of their party affiliation through judicial manipulation. 

Thus, the break with Arce, among many other reasons, stems from his decision to ban the entire movement organized around MAS-IPSP, from his catastrophic economic management, and the serious allegations of corruption against his administration.

Furthermore, these organizations determined that their candidate should be Evo Morales. The mobilizations and protests against the ban were met with repression, an attempt on Evo’s life, and the violent takeover of several union headquarters. As of this writing, dozens of indigenous leaders are still in prison or in hiding.

2. No one sought unity

Although Luis Arce’s government used the full repertoire of Lenin Moreno when he banned Rafael Correa, Evo Morales and the social organizations of MAS-IPSP proposed several alternatives to prevent the implosion of the left. 

First, they proposed holding closed internal primaries with the participation of the instrument’s membership, which exceeded one million registered members. 

Then, after this rejection, they proposed holding open primaries, Argentine-style. This proposal was also rejected. 

Finally, Evo Morales proposed conducting Mexican-style polls to designate the candidate, with the commitment to fully support whoever won. That proposal was also rejected because the intention, always, was the political annulment of Evo Morales and, therefore, of the organizational decisions supporting his candidacy. Andrónico Rodríguez also did not want primaries to be held.

3. Andrónico Rodríguez was the popular bloc candidate.

Rodriguez was the young politician who could best represent the interests of the Bolivian popular bloc. An Indigenous person, a union leader, a political scientist, and president of the Senate, he was seen by all as the natural heir to Evo Morales’ political legacy.

However, he committed a serious political crime by launching his candidacy behind the backs of the social organizations that make up MAS-IPSP. It was through a press conference that the Indigenous and peasant leaders learned that Rodriguez had made the individual decision to launch his candidacy, without it having been the result of a decision by the structures of those organizations.

Rodriguez’s personal appointment to the candidacy dealt one of the harshest blows to MAS-IPSP, because it usurped the power to confer representation, legitimized the ban against the popular movement, and broke with the logic of collective decision-making. Rodríguez was expelled from his union and his peasant federation. His extremely low percentage in the elections is proof that his candidacy lacked popular support. To make matters worse, his candidate lists included clearly right-wing people.

4. The null vote is useless

The decision to campaign for the null vote was not an individual or capricious decision by Evo Morales. It was a collective decision that took time to come to, and was based on the logic that these elections were illegitimate because they were carried out by banning the country’s largest political movement. Despite the brevity of the campaign, the null vote reached nearly 20 percent of the vote, when the average for all previous elections was close to 3.5 percent. It was a protest vote, a disciplined vote, a vote that demonstrates that social organizations continue to be the soul and essence of the Bolivian left.

5. The results mark the decline of Evo Morales and the Bolivian left 

The election results demonstrate that the Bolivian left is based in the Indigenous and peasant social organizations, that the undisputed leader continues to be Evo Morales, and that therein lies the true opposition to the right-wing parties that will assume political power in November.

Just as after the 2019 coup d’état, when these organizations and their leadership managed to restore democracy, so the popular and revolutionary movement in Bolivia must follow the Indigenous and peasant organizations as they chart a new course following the series of blows that this time came from the Arce government and from Rodriguez.

A final note on equivalances

A call to the Latin American left: there can be no equivalence between those who betray and those betrayed, between those who try to destroy our political organizations and those who defend them, between those who outlaw and those who are outlawed, between those who try to murder our comrades and those who are the victims, between those who imprison Indigenous leaders and those who are imprisoned. Our equivocation in the face of injustice is a weapon of our enemies.

As José Martí famously said: “Men cannot be more perfect than the sun. The sun burns with the same light with which it shines. The sun has spots. The grateful see the light. The ungrateful see the spots.”