Recently, new protests promoted as part of the struggle in Bolivia for the control inside the ruling party, the “Movement to Socialism” (MAS) between Evo Morales, president between 2006 to 2019, and his successor, Luis Arce, supported by Morales after that one was forbidden to present himself again to the elections in 2020, and president of Bolivia since then. At the moment, the country is paralyzed because of the blockages on the roads of those who support Morales, mainly coca-growers managed by caciques and big landlords of some areas of the country. These blockages are causing lack of supplies and fuels, which was already a expensive product in the country after the end of the fuel aid. At the beginning of this year, we published an article about the internal conflicts:

Bolivia has been in a deep political crisis, accelerating since 2019, of which it has no way out. This current deepening began with the fourth re-election of Evo Morales as President of the State. After only three weeks he had to resign and leave the country because of several reasons: the instability of the country, which had exploded in protests to demand his resignation, the cataloging of the elections as full of “irregularities” by the organization of the American States (an organization more at the service of Yankee imperialism to politically control America) and even the threat of the armed forces “suggesting” Morales their resignation. However, the real reason is that Morales no longer served the interests of imperialism and therefore in one way or another, he could not continue in office.

Since then the faction of the comprador bourgeoisie has taken over the State of Bolivia. First with Jeanine Áñez, who usurped power without even calling for elections after the departure of Morales, from 2019 to 2020, when the situation could not be held any more due to the large amount of popular protests that demanded the immediate departure of Áñez. It was there when elections were called and the new president of the country, Luis Arce, also entered, also from MAS.

Now, with the 2025 elections approaching, the contradiction within the party for its control is deepening. Although both factions are trying to show a scenario in which this situation is due to “driving the party to the right”, as Morales states, or to “protecting girls” as Arce states, both follow the interests of the faction of the bureaucratic bourgeoisie they represent. On the one hand is Evo Morales, who represents the bureaucratic faction of the country, and on the other to Luis Arce, who still belongs to the same party, represents more the interests of the comprador faction.

Any other statement they make is part of the electoral game to be able to discredit, opportunistically to your opponent. For example, the accusations against Evo Morales, who has now been called in front of the Prosecutor’s Office, were facts that happened for a period of long time, but specifically, the most severe occurred in 2016, when he was still in charge. It is not until 2019, when he was forced to leave the country, when he faced a threat of possible coup d’etat by the military because this case saw the light for the first time. But everything quickly became silent because he no longer supposed a threat since he went away. Now, after having organized marches to put pressure on the current government, trying to expel Arce from MAS (which was not achieved because the Supreme Justice Court repealed that MAS Congress, and there has not been another one) and stating in that same Congress that wants to run for the presidency in the next elections, now is when the case explodes. Therefore, neither Arce nor any of the other politicians, prosecutors or lawyers “care about girls.” Or at least not until they can use them opportunistically.

On the other hand, Evo Morales insists on staying as a leader because he accuses the rest of having “driving the party to the right”. “The only thing that destabilizes government is mismanagement, corruption and betrayal of true militants, revolutionaries,” said the former president last month. Morales tries to get the support of Bolivian masses again through his past speech, proclaiming the “revolution” and that he is the “change”, although there was no real change in the 13 years in which he was president. Didn’t one of the biggest corruption cases, the ‘Fondo Indígena’, occur when he was in power? On the other hand, as usual in the representatives of the bourgeoisie, he ignored multiple times the Constitution itself or 2016 referendum, where his proposal to be re-elected again was defeated. Therefore it is not true that MAS has been “driven to right”, because it was never revolutionary, it never revealed itself against the servitude of the country to imperialism, mainly Yankee, and therefore there was never any revolution more than in word.

The role that Evo Morales has fulfilled has been to protect this great national bourgeoisie (native big bourgeoisie, editorial note from AND Nuevo_Perú) to allow growth. We remember the words by Nuevo Peru in an article of this year: “As it can be remembered, Evo Morales won the presidential elections at the end of 2005. Until then there was a situation of instability in all orders with continuous changes of government. In this situation, on behalf of the bureaucratic faction of the great bourgeoisie, he assumes in government and implements a program based on the state company and investment to maintain the old semi-colonial, semi-feudal society, on whose basis a bureaucratic capitalism develops at the service of imperialism, mainly Yankee. Bourgeois economists say that the “primary-export” model continued, that is, bureaucratic capitalism and economic policy of economic growth based on exports to the world market, whose result has been the usual, boost growth without economic development and after the cycle of price increase of comodities, coming back to the starting point.”

For example, let’s see the case of mining: mining is one of Bolivia’s main economic activities, being more than 9% of the country’s GDP. Bolivia is among the countries with the most metal reserves such as silver, zinc, tin, lead or lithium, all of them very demanded by the industry to make different electronic components, such as the batteries of electric cars, among others. Another metal that stands out in the country is gold. For several years now, gold has more and more market value and is a more requested resource for the industry as a payment method. That is why the Central Bank of Bolivia is increasing the amount of gold in its reserves.

With Morales’ bureaucratic capitalism policies, this big bourgeoisie, always following the demands of imperialism, mainly Yankee, has grown throughout the years of the mandate of Morales and has increased its economic and political power. In 2010, after several years of Morales government, only in the department of La Paz there were already 459 cooperatives dedicated to the extraction of gold. In 2019 the number had almost tripled, reaching 1,230 only in this department. The profits also increased in such way. In 2019 the amount of gold extracted and its sales multiplied, reaching 2.6 billion dollars.

Thus, Morales fulfilled his role as a defender of bureaucratic capitalism. According to the International Monetary Fund itself, in 2018 public spending, due to this great investment in state companies, accounted for 37.1% of the country’s GDP. This far exceeds other countries such as Peru, where this number is 20%. With his role fulfilled, Morales was no longer useful to imperialism, mainly Yankee.

On the other hand, it is worth mentioning that during the years of Morales government, there were also protests against him by the masses. For example with the construction of the TIPNIS road, which crossed Cochabamba (center) and Beni (northeast) and affected indigenous peasant families in the area. After 60 days of protests, the government had to stop the works when they were about to start.

On the other hand, with the arrival of one of the continuous crises of capitalism, the solution of imperialism has been to tend towards the comprador bourgeoisie. Previously with Jeanine Áñez and now with Arce, the trend is to enhance foreign investments. For example, recently Arce has announced the investment in the production of raw materials, and the construction of a company for that, Bolivian Chemical Industry (IBQ) where components such as sulfuric acid or sodium hydroxide will be manufactured, among many others. However, this project is already being sold to imperialism, having already started with the tender and hiring of “international companies” to carry out the project.

However, the most explicit case is Arce’s strategy to try to join the BRICS. That Bolivia joins this block, formed by imperialist countries (China and Russia) and semi-colonial and semi-feudal (Brazil, South Africa or India), is a goal for the comprador bourgeoisie, especially the one which is involved in the exploitation of resources such as lithium or natural gas that see a great opportunity to enrich themselves even more by carrying out anti-popular projects. Also, Arce insists on the “strengthening” of the BRICS Development Bank, which allows the imperialist companies to finance their projects at a low cost. Companies of Chinese Imperialism such as Catl, Xinjiang TBEA Group, Fusion Enertech, Brunp or CITIC Guoan Group, among others.

Therefore, it is clear that despite the games of the electoral parties, where they do not hesitate to use children sexual abuse, only in the moment which politically benefits them, or trying to keep using the illusion of the deepest and broadest masses for a change that will never come, the truth is that this dispute is a one more struggle of the different factions of the bureaucratic bourgeoisie to control the State apparatus based on their particular interests.

In,