The last time Evo Morales led a cross-country march, it was to defend the government of Luis Arce, his old ally from the Movimiento al Socialismo (Mas). Three years later, Bolivia’s former president is leading another such protest – but this time his aim is to “save” the country from the same man, who has become his bitter rival.
Thousands of Morales’s supporters have been making the 190km (120-mile) march from the town of Caracollo to La Paz, the political capital, where they are due to arrive on Monday. Clashes broke out earlier this week as counterprotesters tried to stop them with rocks and tear gas. Roughly 40 people have been injured.
The march reflects an existential split in the heart of one of Latin America’s most successful leftwing parties, as the two men fight to be its candidate in the 2025 presidential election.
The rift goes back to the 2019 election, when Morales ran for an unconstitutional third consecutive term. He won the election, but allegations of fraud triggered massive protests. Under pressure from the army, Morales resigned and fled the country.
When fresh elections were held in 2020, Morales picked Arce, his former finance minister, as the Mas candidate. The party swept back into power, and Morales returned to Bolivia.
But it soon became clear that both Arce and Morales wanted to be the candidate of Mas, the country’s dominant political party, in 2025.
Arce accused Morales of putting people at risk for his personal ambitions. “I’m here, Evo, and I won’t run away,” he said, alluding to Morales’s flight to Mexico in 2019. “If you want to solve a problem you have with me because I was not willing to be your puppet, then come. I’m waiting.”
Morales’s followers have presented the government with a list of demands that includes their rejection of any measure that seeks to disqualify Morales from the 2025 election.
In December 2023, the constitutional court put out a ruling that Arce’s supporters insist rules Morales out of contention, though many experts disagree. Arce is now seeking a referendum on the issue.
Morales has tried to expel Arce from Mas. However, as Arce controls the official leaderships of the social organisations that form the backbone of Mas, the party has been paralysed, unable to take such decisions.
Though Morales has a hard core of support among the working class, particularly in the coca-growing tropics of Cochabamba where he lives, he also has seen high levels of rejection among broad swathes of society put off by his desire to hold on to power.
By contrast, Arce has never had a popular base of his own – and his reputation for sound economic management has taken a battering in recent months, causing his popularity to slump.
Dollars have become scarce, widening the gap between the official and black market rates. This has complicated imports, causing increasingly severe fuel shortages. Inflation is rising despite subsidies.
Arce’s economic model is essentially a continuation of the one from Morales’s governments, but Morales is criticising Arce’s management and billing himself as a return to the good times.
“People think: ‘With this government there are no dollars, no gasoline, no diesel. With Evo there was money, and perhaps it would be better with him again,’” said Wilmer Machaca, a political analyst in El Alto. “People aren’t looking for structural explanations. They want practical solutions.”
Roughly $1bn of loans from development banks that would provide temporary relief are snarled up in the legislative assembly, where both the opposition and Mas legislators loyal to Morales are refusing to vote them through.
A longer-term fix may involve a bigger loan from the International Monetary Fund, but that would be politically poisonous for Mas, which is still officially ruling such a move out.
The rising sense of crisis created space for an inept coup attempt by a disgruntled general in June, when Arce and Morales downed weapons for a few hours until the danger had passed. Morales then claimed the coup had been set up by Arce to boost his popularity.
It’s too soon to say who will come out on top. “Evo is a political animal,” said Machaca. “But Arce has the state.”
“Bolivians have been through so many crises,” he added. “Now people are thinking about how it will happen this time – and preparing for it.”