InvestigationOn the eve of the presidential election scheduled for October 18 in Bolivia, return to the itinerary of Evo Morales, forced to resign after having applied for a fourth term in November 2019, and exiled in Argentina.
The resignation of President Evo Morales on November 10, 2019, triggered a shock wave that would spread beyond Bolivia, throughout the South American subcontinent. Who could have predicted that this charismatic figure, the first Amerindian head of state, reelected several times hands down, a symbol of emancipation for the lefts around the world, would fall from so high, so quickly? In La Paz and other cities beset by contestation, the opposition was taken aback. Even within the presidential cabinet, it was a surprise: “It was not in his personality to give up, but he was facing an unprecedented situation”, confides a relative of the fallen icon. This latest election, with disputed results, plunged the country to the brink of civil war.
In his final televised address, Mr. Morales declares to withdraw “To preserve the peace”. “We leave a dignified Bolivia, with an identity and many universal social achievements. ” Thus ends the Morales era – nearly fourteen years in power – which had nevertheless raised Bolivia to the rank of the most stable states of the subcontinent politically and economically. His shattering fall dealt an additional blow to the Latin American lefts after the departures of Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner (2007-2015) in Argentina, of Dilma Rousseff (2011-2016) in Brazil, of Rafael Correa (2007-2017) in Ecuador. or Michelle Bachelet (2014-2018) in Chile.
Billiards game
The ex-president’s journey to Mexico, which granted him asylum, is then akin, in the words of Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, to “A journey into Latin American politics”, or even a game of billiards, during which the last leaders of the left – the Mexican Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (known as “AMLO”), supported by the Argentinian Alberto Fernandez – negotiate with a vengeance, in particular with the Brazilian diplomats and with Lima, to root out the former hero, whose life would be threatened, from his native land.
Between hopes and disillusions, power struggles and attempts at destabilization, an interweaving of elements led to this outcome that no one had envisaged. Morales’s party, the Movement for Socialism (MAS), which looks like a hegemonic fortress, lost the reins of the country in a few days. While he is forced to flee, Evo Morales may have in mind the words that spoke, before being executed for having risen against the Spanish occupation in the XVIIIe century, the Aymara rebel leader Tupac Katari: “I will come back and we will be millions. “ This formula, Morales had made it his own as one announces the realization of a prophecy, at the time of his first electoral victory, fourteen years earlier.
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