This result produced few clear insights into the country’s political future, neither identifying a frontrunner for 2021’s presidential elections nor providing the incumbent, President Martín Vizcarra, with a straightforward majority coalition.
The increasing polarisation of Bolivian politics in recent months has shone a light on deeper-lying social divisions in the country, as critics of Jeanine Áñez’s interim government have argued that there is a broadly racialised divide between supporters of Áñez, and of the deposed Movimiento al Socialismo.
Fresh large-scale protests were staged on 16 December, as the government led by President Iván Duque pressed ahead with its unpopular tax reform package.
A meeting in Brasília on 29 July between Brazil’s Foreign Minister Ernesto Araújo and his French counterpart, Jean-Yves Le Drian, was an opportunity for both to highlight the economic benefits that the European Union (EU)-Southern Common Market (Mercosur) trade deal will bring their countries.
