Since Rodrigo Paz was inaugurated as Bolivia’s president three weeks ago, the chakana, or Andean cross, has disappeared from the presidential seal. The Indigenous wiphala flag has vanished from the presidential sash, and the “Clock of the South”—which once ran counterclockwise to represent decolonization—has been reversed. Reminiscent of the country’s last conservative government, the Bible and crucifix have reappeared in the Chamber of Deputies, despite the country’s constitution defining the state as secular.
But the signs of what Bolivia’s first elected conservative government in two decades had in store were apparent months earlier. Just days after the first round of voting made a right-wing victory certain, conservative opposition leaders Luis Fernando Camacho and Marco Antonio Pumari—incarcerated for their role in the 2019 massacres in Senkata and Sacaba—were released from prison.
This trend continued two days before Rodrigo Paz’s inauguration on November 8, when former interim President Jeanine Áñez and 12 others accused in the massacre walked free as well. Bolivia’s Supreme Court, consistently compliant with the government in office, reversed previous rulings and determined that Áñez’s trial had violated her constitutional rights. Though pending legal processes should theoretically continue, Camacho, Pumari, and Áñez will remain out of jail.
The Paz administration’s swift moves to absolve these leaders of their responsibility for state-backed crimes have been devastating for those who fought to bring them to justice. But impunity is not the only distinguishing feature of the young administration. Tensions between Paz and his popular Vice President Edmand Lara—temporarily suppressed during the campaign—have now erupted into public view, casting doubt on the new government’s long-term viability.
Shifting to the Right
In his first two weeks in power, as part of his commitment to reduce the overall government footprint, Paz’s government introduced a 2026 austerity budget that slashes public spending by 30 percent. The plan has dissolved the Ministry of Environment and Water, folding its functions into another ministry, and placed agroindustry executive Fernando Romero at its head. Paz also moved quickly to cut taxes for corporations and the wealthy while removing subsidies for staples like bread. His administration then closed the Ministry of Justice, informing the press that “the Ministry of Persecution is over.”
Paz immediately embraced a closer relationship with the United States, which had been frosty since former President Evo Morales expelled the U.S. Ambassador and the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) in 2008.
Bolivia’s conservatives have long maintained that the previous left-wing Movement towards Socialism (MAS) government had used the justice ministry to persecute its opponents. Analysts note, however, that governments across the political spectrum have instrumentalized the Ministry for partisan ends. “The Ministry functions as a way for the government in power to gain a foothold in the judiciary,” says former interim President Eduardo Rodríguez Veltzé, who also served as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
Paz immediately embraced a closer relationship with the United States, which had been frosty since former President Evo Morales expelled the U.S. Ambassador and the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) in 2008, which he accused of fomenting unrest in the country. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau headed the U.S. delegation to Paz’s inauguration, promising that Washington would be a “close partner” and would soon appoint a new U.S. ambassador.
Paz and his “antidrug czar” have also signalled that the DEA is expected to return to Bolivia, especially to the Chapare coca growing region in eastern Cochabamba, where drug trafficking has boomed in recent years. Coca growers—largely peasant farmers of Indigenous origins, some of whom have become involved in the drug trade—and their leader, Morales, reject the idea of the DEA’s return to the lowland Chapare. They fear a repeat of the violence associated with the U.S.-led coca eradication policies in the region from the 1980s to 2006.
Brutal Infighting
In the short term, these major shifts to the right pale in comparison to the increasingly chaotic power struggle underway between Paz and Lara, a former police captain and viral TikToker who was added to the ticket at the last minute.
Lara was picked by Paz due to his anti-corruption stance and lower middle-class roots, which contrasted with Paz’s own white elite background. The move helped Paz make inroads with disheartened MAS voters who were reluctant to support anyone from Bolivia’s recycled old guard of right-wing politicians. Lara, many of his supporters, and other observers insist that Paz could not have won without him.
Central to Lara’s rise was his outsider appeal, rooted in his expulsion from the police force in 2023 after denouncing its widespread corruption. His self-presentation as an anti-corruption crusader, however, led him to openly challenge his running mate during the campaign: in August, he declared, “I am the guarantee that if Rodrigo Paz doesn’t do what he promised, I will arrest him.”
Tensions between Lara and Paz—exacerbated by the vice president’s authoritarian streak and Paz’s alleged efforts to exclude him from cabinet meetings—have exploded in recent weeks. On November 22, Lara denounced Paz as a “liar” and the puppet of Samuel Doria Medina, a businessman and former presidential frontrunner who lost decisively this year in his fourth attempt to lead the country. Lara accused Doria Medina of running the government “from the shadows” and resuscitating traditional elite power. There is some truth to the accusation: José Luis Lupo, Doria Medina’s former vice presidential candidate, now serves as Paz’s powerful minister of the presidency.
It looks like Lara could be positioning himself to replace Paz. He recently announced that he will run candidates in upcoming municipal and regional elections under his own unregistered political party, New Ideas with Liberty (NUIL). He claims that more than two dozen current members of the legislature are loyal to him—enough to tear the ruling coalition apart. Meanwhile, he has scarcely been seen in Bolivia, travelling first to COP30 in Belém and then to the South American soccer cup in Paraguay.
In response to Lara’s attacks, some have called for a constitutional reform that would allow the vice president to be removed. Others, including at least one senator, have called for a “divorce” between the two.
Barely into the new government, the bitter infighting has prompted some supporters to question their choice of the Paz-Lara ticket. Zuleyka Pinto, a pharmaceutical chemist who campaigned for the pair and whose sister was elected to Congress under their party, the Christian Democratic Party (PDC), is one such voter.
Though she said on election day that she believed Lara’s fiery style complemented Paz’s years of experience as a councilman, mayor, and senator, she has since grown disillusioned. “I had imagined that Mr. Lara would start to behave better once he gained the status of a national and international authority,” she says. “He shouldn’t be acting childishly, as if he’s a TikToker.”
María Condori Nina, an Aymara woman from the working-class neighborhood of Senkata in El Alto, also voted for Paz and Lara because she believed Lara would fight for working-class and Indigenous people. But she has already begun to lose hope that this administration will advocate for people like her. “Imagine,” she says, “the vice president prioritizing going to a soccer game in Paraguay—what about the pueblo, the people he’s supposed to represent?”
Impunity Returns in Full Force
María Condori Nina’s frustration runs far deeper than government infighting. The release and impunity of the architects of the 2019 massacres has affected her directly: her son, Rudy Cristhian Vásquez Condori, was shot and killed by military and police in the clashes in Senkata that left 10 dead and 100 wounded. To her, the release of Áñez, Camacho, and Pumari was “deeply outrageous.”
The Senkata massacre came four days after 11 people were killed by state forces in Sacaba during protests against Áñez, a right-wing fundamentalist who illegally assumed the presidency in November 2019 after Morales stepped down amid widespread protests over the legitimacy of his electoral victory. Ever since, Condori Nina and other families have demanded reparations with limited success. “There are two Bolivias: one for the rich, and another for the poor,” she says.
Thomas Becker, a human rights lawyer who works with the families of the 2019 victims, notes that “unfortunately, often in Bolivia, decisions by the judiciary are made based less on the law and more on the political whims of those in power.”
While the release of Camacho, Pumari, and Áñez was executed by the judiciary, the Paz administration has made clear that it wants these histories of violence overlooked.
While the release of Camacho, Pumari, and Áñez was executed by the judiciary, the Paz administration has made clear that it wants these histories of violence overlooked: Áñez received an official invitation to the inauguration, and Camacho attended as well.
Human rights advocates fear that the recent court decisions could signal a return to the racist repression seen under previous right-wing governments. “Politicized court verdicts will inevitably pave the way for more violence like the massacres Áñez oversaw,” says Becker.
Although Ánez’s release is a profound affront to the victims of her crimes, some have argued that her trial was marred by irregularities. The cases against her were also beset by technical difficulties, jurisdictional squabbles, and—as is the case with most Bolivian detainees—excessive pretrial detention.
Victims’ families, including Condori Nina, have also argued that the left-wing administration of Luis Arce (2020-2025) failed to adequately repair the harm caused by the state. Although a government-funded trust was created to provide compensation and scholarships, representatives of Arce’s government were absent at the five-year memorial of the Senkata massacre last year.
It took until the final days of his administration for Arce to sign a law that would provide comprehensive reparations for 2019 victims, though its application under the new administration remains uncertain. “These governmental measures are important, but are still insufficient and fragmented,” said Jan Jarab of the United Nations at the November meeting of the OAS Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in Miami.
Condori Nina and other family members of the victims from Sacaba and Senkata attended the IACHR meetings, where they urged the OAS’s Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) to continue supporting them. “We demand that the Bolivian state immediately reopen the Senkata and Sacaba cases, without political interference,” said Gloria Quisbert, whose brother was killed in Senkata. “Our rights have once again been violated.”
The Paz government does not appear to be taking these concerns seriously. Representatives of the new administration were not present at the six-year commemoration of the Senkata killings in November. “It causes me great shame and frustration that the acts in Senkata and Sacaba still haven’t been judged,” says Rodríguez Veltzé, “and that in my country, where I’ve been a judge for a long time and even acting president, there is this level of impunity.”
What’s Next?
“I don’t think this government will last six months,” says Condori Nina. An alliance between a faction of the former MAS and Lara is not inconceivable, constructed around a shared rejection of the white neoliberal elite represented by Paz and a common commitment to defend the poor, albeit from different ends of the political spectrum.
Bolivia is more fragile than usual on nearly every front. Its economy sits on the brink of collapse, its leadership is tearing each other apart, its dreams of salvation through lithium are in tatters, and it is suffering one of the world’s highest rates of deforestation. Economic adjustments will undoubtedly fall most heavily on the poor, likely bringing Bolivia’s famously combative social movements back into the streets. How the country will stagger through the next year is anyone’s guess.
Even so, the significance of some degree of respect for democratic practice in Bolivia—a place that has experienced one of the world’s highest number of coup d’etats since 1945—should not be underestimated. “This is the longest democratic period in our 200-year history,” says Rodríguez Veltzé of the past four decades. “That’s very important.”
Linda Farthing is a journalist and independent scholar who has co-authored four books on Bolivia. She has written extensively on Latin America, including for the Guardian, the Nation, Al Jazeera, and Ms. Magazine.
Benjamin Swift is a journalist based in La Paz, Bolivia. His stories focus on climate change, the environment, and LGBTQIA+ themes. Find more of his work at www.bswiftcreative.com