In late June, in Bolivia’s capital city of La Paz, chaos ensued when rogue military commander Juan Jose Zúñiga breached the entrance of the presidential palace with an entourage of armored vehicles and armed soldiers promising to “restore democracy.” This led to a showdown in the palace’s foyer, where Zúñiga and current president Luis Arce, a member of the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) party, or Movement for Socialism, faced off in a shouting match that ended with Zúñiga abruptly retreating. Arce then declared to his supporters from the presidential balcony, “No one can take democracy away from us.”
Western leaders and media voices quickly chimed in to praise Bolivia for putting down the coup attempt and defending democracy. “The European Union stands by democracies,” said EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen. “We express our strong support for the constitutional order and rule of law in Bolivia.”
But is Bolivia a democracy? Since the events of June 26, many have accused Arce of orchestrating the coup to boost his public standing and to exploit the country’s judicial system to persecute political opponents. Before his arrest, Zúñiga himself stated, “The president told me: ‘The situation is very screwed up, very critical. It is necessary to prepare something to raise my popularity.’” The former military commander then said that the president had asked him to bring out the armored vehicles, implying that he wanted theatrics.
The people of Bolivia and Arce’s opponents aren’t buying the coup narrative. “The only people saying this was a coup are doing so for political favor, nobody here believes this was real,” observed Benjamin Reydet, a political commentator on the region. Evo Morales, leader of the ruling MAS party and former president, who has announced his intention to run against Arce in the 2025 presidential elections—causing infighting within MAS—declared that Arce had “lied and deceived the Bolivian people and the entire world with this kind of coup or self coup.” Yet, the only Western leader to label the coup a “fraud” publicly and to condemn Arce’s actions as a ploy was Argentine president Javier Milei. Western political leaders continue to tout Bolivian democracy, even as the regime has regularly shown itself to be more authoritarian than democratic.
Consider, for example, the fallout after Morales was forced to resign in the wake of the 2019 presidential election, in which he ran for an unconstitutional fourth term. (The legislature later ratified a ruling from the courts, heavily stacked in Morales’s favor, allowing the former president to run for a fourth term.) An investigation by the Organization of American States, which found massive evidence of irregularities, had prompted Morales’s resignation. In reference to the OAS report, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proclaimed, “What’s happening right now in Bolivia isn’t democracy, it’s a coup.” Bernie Sanders relayed a similar message, alleging that the military “intervened to remove President Evo Morales” and demanding that “The U.S. must call for an end to violence and support Bolivia’s democratic institutions.” The New York Times went so far as to cite researchers who claimed, that the OAS investigation was flawed; their report was selective, however, leaving out substantial evidence that the OAS had documented.
Bolivia has seen an increase in political arrests since the MAS party took control of the government in 2006. The most notable cases are those of Jeanine Añez, interim president after the 2019 election fiasco, and Luis Fernando Camacho, governor of Santa Cruz, the most populous administrative region in Bolivia. After Arce’s victory in the 2020 election, Añez and Camacho were imprisoned on charges of terrorism, which Human Rights Watch reported lacked any foundation. Many, including former president Carlos Mesa, described Camacho’s arrest as a “kidnapping.”
As of 2023, the country was detaining over 300 estimated political prisoners—more than were held in either Venezuela or Nicaragua. As Jaime Aparicio, Bolivia’s ambassador to the OAS and a legal expert on human rights, explains, “Bolivia, other than their electoral process, is not a democracy. None of the requirements in the democratic charter are fulfilled in Bolivia. There is no independence of the judiciary, no independence of the legislative power, no freedom of expression, and there is no justice, at all.” Aparicio describes the country’s governing ideology as “authoritarian populism,” with a lack of democratic institutions and a tendency for leaders to seize power for personal gain.
Rather than describe Bolivia’s current regime as a democracy, Western journalists and leaders should denounce its authoritarian practices. It is not enough for the West to lead by example. Its leaders must also preach what they practice and condemn autocratic behavior wherever it occurs—regardless of political and ideological leanings.
Photo by Mateo Romay Salinas/Anadolu via Getty Images