Bolivia: Exile or Return
What will the future hold for Bolivia and its former president, Evo Morales?
In late 2019, mass protests triggered by a fiercely disputed election forced Bolivia’s first Indigenous president into exile after 14 years in power.
As Evo Morales took stock in Argentina – and weighed up the prospects of a possible return – an interim government led by a former opposition senator, Jeanine Anez, announced plans for fresh elections, delayed until October 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic.
In Morales’s absence, supporters of his Movement for Socialism (MAS) rallied behind two new leaders, former Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca and Luis Arce, previously finance minister under Morales. Arce would soon be nominated as the party’s presidential candidate in the poll, with Choquehuanca standing as his deputy.
But as the election drew near, amid rising social unrest and against the backdrop of the pandemic, no one knew whether the MAS campaign would be able to reignite the passion that had first swept Morales to power in 2006.
People & Power sent filmmaker Rodrigo Vasquez behind the scenes to see if Bolivia’s Indigenous movement could pull off a remarkable comeback.