Public enemy number one”, as a journalist from La Paz called the Country Email List former president1– end up invoking the most terrifying specter for the upper part of society: Country Email List the «return of the mas ». The criticized parties intend to redeem themselves by assuring that each one of them is at the opposite end of the spectrum and that, thanks to their particular virtues, they will guarantee a definitive and sustainable victory over thistwo. At the same time, each one of them seeks Country Email List to show that their rivals are.
Not trustworthy because their performance brings water to the mas mill . Country Email List The expression used is: «to be functional to the most ». This was the tone, for example, of the reply from the ruling party (the Juntos group, which is running interim president Jeanine Añez) to the opposition candidates Carlos Mesa and Luis Fernando Camacho, when they criticized their handling of the health crisis caused by the covid-19 pandemic3. Conversely, the opposition parties have Country Email List accused the ruling Country Email List party of propitiating, with its mismanagement of this crisis, the return of the most4.
The media have also entered this game, as indicated by this headline from El Deber , Country Email List the main newspaper in Santa Cruz, about the former president and candidate for 2020: «Mesa shares a forum with the president of Argentina, Alberto Fernández, who gave shelter to Evo»5. Country Email List hate the most Hating the mas is the dominant passion of the country's traditional elites. At the roots of this passion are the memories of the grievances suffered (the loss of spaces of power due to the dissolution of the technocracy of the 1990s and the devaluation of "genealogical capital" for 14 years), the ideological differences (liberal- republicanism versus national-Country Email List caudillismo) and racism against the indigenous and commoner mestizos or “cholos”.