Bolivia’s election of the center-right Rodrigo Paz Pereira marks the end of the MAS’s nearly 20-year rule. As MAS self-destructed, Paz appealed to an urban middle class that expanded as the Left achieved historic reductions in poverty and social inequality.

Bolivia’s October 19 runoff vote not only elected the center-right Rodrigo Paz Pereira as the next president but put the final nail in the coffin of the nearly twenty-year rule of an indigenous left-wing coalition. The Christian Democrat Paz, propelled into prominence by his popular running mate, former policeman Edman Lara, beat far-right candidate Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga by a resounding 9 points.

Paz’s promotion of “capitalism for all” resonated in a country dominated by the world’s largest informal economy. Even during the indigenous

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