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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_BoliviaThe Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (MNR) emerged from the ashes of the Chaco War in 1942 as a broad-based political coalition. It served in office as part of the military-civilain regime of Gualberto Villarroel (1943-46) but was deposed in 1946 by the mining oligarchy and the Partido Izquierda Revolucionario (PIR). Its members fled into exile and spent the next six years orginizing. The MNR emerged victorious in the 1951 elections, but the results were called fraudulent by the opposition, and its right to the presidency was denied. Denied its victory in the 1951 presidential elections, on 9 April 1952, the MNR led a successful revolt and set into motion the Bolivian National Revolution. Under President Víctor Paz Estenssoro and later, Hernan Siles, the MNR introduced universal adult suffrage, carried out a sweeping land reform, promoted rural education, and, in 1952, nationalized the country's largest tin mines.
Twelve tumultuous years of national reform left the country bitterly divided and in 1964, a military junta overthrew President Paz Estenssoro at the outset of his third term--an event that many assert brought an end to the National Revolution and marked the beginning of nearly 20 years of military rule in Bolivia. The 1969 death of President René Barrientos, a former member of the junta elected President in 1966, led to a succession of weak governments. A coup was led by the military, only to see a countercoup led by leftist Juan José Torres. The Gulf Oil was nationalized in 1969. Alarmed by public disorder, the military, the MNR, and others installed Col. (later General) Hugo Banzer Suárez as President in 1971. Banzer ruled with MNR support from 1971 to 1974. Then, impatient with schisms in the coalition, he replaced civilians with members of the armed forces and suspended political activities. The economy grew impressively during Banzer's presidency, but demands for greater political freedom undercut his support. His call for elections in 1978 plunged Bolivia into turmoil once again.
Elections in 1978, 1979, and 1980 were inconclusive and marked by fraud. There were coups, counter-coups, and caretaker governments. In 1980, Gen. Luis García Meza carried out a ruthless and violent coup. His government was notorious for human rights abuses, narcotics trafficking, and economic mismanagement. This led to a breakdown in relations with the U.S., which under both the Carter and Ronald Reagan administrations refused to recognize García's government due to its drug ties. <1> Later convicted in absentia for crimes, including murder, García Meza was extradited from Brazil and began serving a 30-year sentence in 1995.
After a military rebellion forced out García Meza in 1981, three other military governments in 14 months struggled with Bolivia's growing problems. Unrest forced the military to convoke the Congress elected in 1980 and allow it to choose a new chief executive. In October 1982--22 years after the end of his first term of office (1956-60)--Hernán Siles Zuazo again became President. Severe social tension, exacerbated by economic mismanagement and weak leadership, forced him to call early elections and relinquish power a year before the end of his constitutional term.
In the 1985 elections, the Nationalist Democratic Action Party (ADN) of Gen. Banzer won a plurality of the popular vote, followed by former President Paz Estenssoro's MNR and former Vice President Jaime Paz Zamora's Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR). But in the congressional run-off, the MIR sided with MNR, and Paz Estenssoro was chosen for a fourth term as President. When he took office in 1985, he faced a staggering economic crisis. Economic output and exports had been declining for several years.
Hyperinflation had reached an annual rate of 24,000%. Social unrest, chronic strikes, and unchecked drug trafficking were widespread.
In 4 years, Paz Estenssoro's administration achieved economic and social stability. The military stayed out of politics, and all major political parties publicly and institutionally committed themselves to democracy. Human rights violations, which badly tainted some governments earlier in the decade, were not a problem. However, his remarkable accomplishments were not won without sacrifice. The collapse of tin prices in October 1985, coming just as the government was moving to reassert its control of the mismanaged state mining enterprise, forced the government to lay off over 20,000 miners. The highly successful shock treatment that restored Bolivia's financial system also led to some unrest and temporary social dislocation.
Although the MNR list headed by Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada finished first in the 1989 elections, no candidate received a majority of popular votes and so in accordance with the constitution, a congressional vote determined who would be president. The Patriotic Accord (AP) coalition between Gen. Banzer's ADN and Jaime Paz Zamora's MIR, the second- and third-place finishers, respectively, won out. Paz Zamora assumed the presidency, and the MIR took half the ministries. Banzer's center-right ADN took control of the National Political Council (CONAP) and the other ministries.
Paz Zamora was a moderate, center-left President whose political pragmatism in office outweighed his Marxist origins. Having seen the destructive hyperinflation of the Siles Zuazo administration, he continued the neoliberal economic reforms begun by Paz Estenssoro, codifying some of them. Paz Zamora took a fairly hard line against domestic terrorism, personally ordering the December 1990 attack on terrorists of the Néstor Paz Zamora Committee (CNPZ--named after his brother who died in the 1970 Teoponte insurgency) and authorizing the early 1992 crackdown against the Tupac Katari Guerrilla Army (EGTK).
Paz Zamora's regime was less decisive against narcotics trafficking. The government broke up a number of trafficking networks but issued a 1991 surrender decree giving lenient sentences to the biggest narcotics kingpins. Also, his administration was extremely reluctant to pursue coca eradication, a whose leaves are consumed in vast quantities by much of the country's highland indigenous population. It did not agree to an updated extradition treaty with the US, although two traffickers have been extradited to the U.S. since 1992. Beginning in early 1994, the Bolivian Congress investigated Paz Zamora's personal ties to accused major trafficker Isaac Chavarria, who subsequently died in prison while awaiting trial. MIR deputy chief Oscar Eidwas was jailed in connection with similar ties in 1994; he was found guilty and sentenced to 4 years in prison in November 1996. Technically still under investigation, Paz Zamora became an active presidential candidate in 1996.
The 1993 elections continued the tradition of open, honest elections and peaceful democratic transitions of power. The MNR defeated the ADN/MIR coalition by a 34% to 20% margin, and the MNR's Sánchez de Lozada was selected as president by an MNR/MBL/UCS coalition in the Congress.
Sánchez de Lozada pursued an aggressive neoliberal economic and social reform agenda. He relied on a corrupt chain of entrepreneurs-turned-politicians like himself and on fellow veterans of the Paz Estenssoro administration (during which Sanchez de Lozada was planning minister). The most dramatic change undertaken by the Sanchez de Lozada government was the capitalization program, under which investors acquired 50% ownership and management control of public enterprises, such as the Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB) oil-corporation, telecommunications system, electric utilities, and others. The reforms and economic restructuring were strongly opposed by certain segments of society, which instigated frequent social disturbances, particularly in La Paz and the Chapare coca-growing region, from 1994 through 1996.
In the 1997 elections, Gen. Hugo Banzer, leader of the ADN, won 22% of the vote, while the MNR candidate won 18%. Gen. Banzer formed a coalition of the ADN, MIR, UCS, and CONDEPA parties which hold a majority of seats in the Bolivian Congress. The Congress elected him as president and he was inaugurated on August 6, 1997.
Between January and April 2000, a series of anti-privatization protests took place in Cochabamba, because of the privatization of the municipal water supply that activists charge was forced by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The Bolivian government declared martial law, killing several people, arresting protest leaders and shutting down radio stations, but after continued disturbances and civic pressure, the government finally rolled back the privatization on April 10 <1>. "Water nowadays is available only four hours a day and no new households have been connected to the supply network."<2>
President Hugo Banzer resigned in August 2001, due to lung cancer. He was succeeded by his vice-president, Jorge Quiroga.
In the 2002 elections, Sánchez de Lozada ran again, and narrowly beat NFR's Manfred Reyes Villa and the cocalero and indigenous leader Evo Morales of the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party, on an election tainted by clear signs of electoral fraud. During the vote count the power supply was shut down mysteriously to the CNE (National Electoral Court), when power supply was restored Sanchez de Lozada appeared as the winner of this mysterious election.
Several days before Bolivians went to the voting booths, the U.S. ambassador, Manuel Rocha, warned the Bolivian electorate that if they voted for Morales the US would cut off foreign aid and close its markets to the country. Morales nonetheless received nearly 21% of the vote, putting him only a couple points behind Sánchez de Lozada.
A 4-year economic recession, tight fiscal situation, and longstanding ethnic tensions created in February 2003 a police revolt that nearly toppled the government of President Sanchez de Lozada; several days of unrest left more than 30 persons dead. The government stayed in power but remained unpopular. Standard & Poors downgraded the debt of Bolivia.
An increasingly divisive conflict has been the Bolivian Gas War, a dispute over the exploitation of Bolivia's large natural gas reserves in the south of the country.
Strikes and blockades erupted in September and October of 2003, with several deaths and dozens of injuries in confrontations with the armed forces. Sánchez de Lozada resigned under pressure from protesters fleeing the country to the United States where he hides from several trials against him including genocide; and his vice-president, Carlos Mesa, took over in 2003 with a promise to address the demands of the protesting majority. However, he resigned on 7 March 2005 in face of mounting protests, claiming he was unable to continue governing the country. This was not the end of the Mesa government, as a number of resignation threats were still to come.
Finally, as a consequence to very deep social unrest in May-June 2005 and in a series of political manoeuvres, Mesa tendered again his resignation. In a hastily convened session of the Parliament in Sucre, amidst violence leading to one death in unclear circumstances, and after the President of the Senate and the President of the Deputies waived their succession rights, Mr. Eduardo Rodríguez Veltzé - the President of the Supreme Court - became president on the night of June 9, 2005. According to some, a coup led by Mesa himself was narrowly averted that night
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Political agreements were reached to modify the Constitution, and allow the full renewal of Parliament, simultaneously with the mandated Presidential Election, through elections on December 4, 2005. These elections will also include, as a first, the election of Prefects who are the top authority of the 9 Departments.
The deterioration of the political system is leading to the death of traditional political forces, including the parties ADN (of former President Hugo Banzer), MIR (of former President Jaime Paz Zamora), and MNR (of former Presidents Victor Paz Estenssoro and Gonzalo Sánchez de Losada). This death lead to the surge of a loose confederation of indigenous social movements (MAS) with Evo Morales as leader. In the elections of December 2005 Evo Morales and MAS obtained a crushing win reaching 54% of the electorate's votes, becoming the first Native Bolivian president in history.
In March 2006, president Evo Morales announced in Santa Cruz the increase of the minimum wage by 50%. As it is currently fixed at 440 bolivianos (45 euros), it would then increase to 660 bolivianos (67 euros). However, Evo said it should be increased 100% <2>. However, six Bolivians workers in every ten are part of the informal economy, thus limiting the extent of such a legally mandated increase in wages <3>.
On May 1, 2006, Evo Morales announced that he had signed a decree nationalizing most of Bolivia's natural gas fields, which many indigenous Bolivians had demanded for years. Federal troops were sent in to occupy the gas fields and take back control from foreign companies that same day. Many were operated by Petrobras, Brazil's largest energy company, and this political development was expected to strain relations between Morales and Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
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