🇧🇴 Bolivia

The capital city of Tiwanaku in western Bolivia dates back as early as 1500 BC, when it was a small agriculturally-based village. It grew into the centre of the polity with which present-day Aymara associate themselves.

Around AD 400 Tiwanaku shifted from a locally dominant force to an aggressively expanding state, extending into the Yungas and spreading its culture to peoples in Peru, Bolivia and Chile. It expanded through political astuteness, colonies, trade agreements and state cults rather than violence.

Between AD 600 and AD 800 the Aymara community around La Paz grew to urban scale, becoming an important regional power in the southern Andes. Estimates put the city at some 6.5 square kilometres with 15,000 to 30,000 inhabitants, though later satellite mapping of raised fields suggested a far larger carrying capacity.

Declining rainfall reduced food stores and eroded elite power, and Tiwanaku disappeared around AD 1000. The area remained uninhabited for centuries thereafter, ending the first great state formation in the Bolivian highlands.

Between 1438 and 1527 the Inca Empire gained control of much of what is now the Bolivian Andes and extended into the fringes of the Amazon basin. This incorporated the region into a continental imperial system immediately before the Spanish arrival.

The Colla–Inca War of the 1440s marked the beginning of Inca rule over western Bolivia. It brought the region under the control of the Cusco-based empire.

The Spanish conquest of the Inca empire began in 1524 and was mostly complete by 1533, placing the territory then called Charcas under Spanish authority. Local government was exercised by the Audiencia de Charcas at Chuquisaca, modern Sucre.

Potosí was founded in 1545 and soon produced fabulous silver wealth, becoming the largest city in the New World with over 150,000 inhabitants. By the late sixteenth century Bolivian silver was a critical revenue source for the Spanish Empire, extracted through the coercive mita draft labour system.

In 1776 Charcas was moved from Peru to the newly created Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata. People in Buenos Aires coined the term 'Upper Peru' for the Royal Audiencia of Charcas, reorienting the region's administrative ties.

Túpac Katari led an indigenous uprising that laid siege to La Paz in March 1781, during which 20,000 people died. It was the largest challenge to Spanish authority in Upper Peru before independence.

An increase in the world price of silver in the late nineteenth century brought Bolivia relative prosperity and political stability. It sustained the mining-based oligarchy that governed the country.

The struggle for independence began in Sucre on 25 May 1809, establishing a local junta in the name of the deposed Spanish king. Though quickly defeated, it is celebrated as the first cry of freedom in Latin America.

The La Paz revolution of 16 July 1809 followed the Chuquisaca rising and marked a full break with Spanish rule rather than a loyalist junta. It too was suppressed by royalist authorities in the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata.

Much of Bolivia's history after independence consisted of a series of nearly 200 coups and countercoups, reflecting chronic political instability.

After sixteen years of war in which Bolivia was captured and recaptured by royalists and patriots, Sucre's campaign from the north, in support of Bolívar, ended Spanish control. Three military campaigns sent by Buenos Aires had all been defeated.

On 6 August 1825 a congress led by Antonio José de Sucre proclaimed the Republic of Bolivia, with Sucre opting to create a brand new state named in honour of Simón Bolívar, whose campaigns had helped secure independence across the region. The name was formally approved on 3 October 1825, establishing Bolivia as a sovereign nation, and Sucre became the country's first functioning president the following year.

On 1 July 1826 La Plata, now Sucre, was proclaimed the provisional capital of the newly independent state. The arrangement was confirmed in 1839 when the city was formally named capital and renamed after Antonio José de Sucre.

Slavery was abolished in Bolivia in 1831, six years after independence. It marked an early legal reform of the young republic's social order.

In 1836 Bolivia under Santa Cruz invaded Peru to reinstall President Orbegoso, creating the Peru-Bolivian Confederation with Santa Cruz as Supreme Protector. The union provoked Chilean and Argentine declarations of war and collapsed within three years.

Chile declared war on the Confederation on 28 December 1836 and Argentina followed on 9 May 1837. Confederate victories at Paucarpata produced a treaty Chile then repudiated; a second Chilean campaign won the Battle of Yungay, after which Santa Cruz resigned into exile and the Confederation was dissolved.

On 18 November 1841 Bolivian forces defeated the invading Peruvian troops of General Agustín Gamarra, who was killed in the battle. The victory preserved Bolivian independence against Peruvian annexation, though a subsequent Bolivian counter-invasion of Peru failed.

After Bolivian troops withdrew from Tacna, Arica and Tarapacá in February 1842, the Treaty of Puno of 7 June 1842 ended the conflict. Tension between Lima and La Paz continued until a Peace and Trade Treaty took effect in 1847.

During the War of the Pacific Chile defeated Bolivia and Peru and occupied vast mineral-rich territories in south-western Bolivia, including the coast, the Chuquicamata area, the saltpetre fields and the port of Antofagasta. A 1904 treaty formalised the new border, leaving Bolivia permanently landlocked, and restoring sea access has remained state policy and a recurring theme in Bolivian politics and diplomacy ever since.

On 4 April 1884 a truce with Chile gave Bolivian products access through Antofagasta and freed export duties at the port of Arica. It was the first arrangement mitigating Bolivia's new landlocked status.

After brief fighting between Bolivian forces and peasants and the prospect of total war with Brazil, Bolivia signed the Treaty of Petrópolis in 1903 and ceded the rubber-rich Acre region. It was one of the largest of Bolivia's territorial losses to neighbours.

At the start of the twentieth century the seat of government shifted to La Paz, following Sucre's remoteness from economic activity after the decline of Potosí silver and the Liberal Party's victory in the War of 1899. Sucre retained the title of national capital, a division reaffirmed in the 2009 Constitution.

During the early twentieth century tin became the country's most important export commodity. A succession of elite-controlled governments pursued laissez-faire policies through the first thirty years of the century while indigenous living conditions remained deplorable.

The 1904 treaty settled the post-war relationship with Chile, which agreed to build a railway between Arica and La Paz to improve access for Bolivian goods to the ports. It formalised the territorial losses of the War of the Pacific.

Through diplomatic channels in 1909 Bolivia yielded 250,000 square kilometres of Amazonian territory, the Madre de Dios river basin and the Purús, to Peru. Since independence Bolivia has lost over half of its territory to neighbours.

Bolivia fought and lost the Chaco War against Paraguay, surrendering a great part of the disputed Gran Chaco region, then believed to hold oil reserves. Tens of thousands of Bolivian soldiers died, with estimates varying widely, and a 1938 peace treaty awarded most of the territory to Paraguay; the defeat discredited the ruling oligarchy and paved the way for revolutionary nationalism.

Denied victory in the 1951 presidential elections, the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario led a successful revolution in April 1952 that brought Víctor Paz Estenssoro to the presidency. His government introduced universal suffrage, carried out sweeping agrarian reform, promoted rural education and nationalised the largest tin mines, reshaping Bolivian society and extending political rights to the indigenous majority for the first time.

In 1964 a military junta deposed Paz Estenssoro at the outset of his third term, ending twelve years of MNR rule. The coup opened a long period of military government backed by CIA financing and training.

On 9 October 1967 the revolutionary leader Che Guevara was killed in Bolivia by a team of CIA officers and Bolivian soldiers. CIA officer Félix Rodríguez said he relayed a Bolivian presidential execution order rather than deliver Guevara to Panama.

The 1969 death of President René Barrientos, a former junta member elected in 1966, left a series of unstable administrations. The instability culminated in the military's installation of Hugo Banzer.

Alarmed by the rising Popular Assembly and the popularity of President Juan José Torres, the military, the MNR and others installed Hugo Banzer in 1971. Banzer ruled as dictator until 1978 and returned as elected president from 1997 to 2001.

Former president Torres, who had fled Bolivia, was kidnapped and killed in 1976 as part of Operation Condor, the US-supported campaign of repression by South American right-wing dictatorships. It illustrated Bolivia's integration into the region's transnational repression network.

In 1979 the OAS resolved that the Bolivian maritime problem was a hemispheric issue. It internationalised Bolivia's long-standing claim to sovereign access to the Pacific.

Following the 1980 election General Luis García Meza seized power in a violent coup on 17 July, and paramilitary squads killed opposition figures including socialist leader Marcelo Quiroga Santa Cruz on the day of the takeover. His regime violently repressed the Bolivian Workers' Center, with more than a thousand people killed in less than a year; a cousin of a major narco-trafficker, he favoured cocaine production, and a military rebellion forced him out in 1981, after which he was convicted and imprisoned for human rights abuses.

After three short-lived military governments, unrest forced the military to convoke the Congress elected in 1980, which chose Siles Zuazo as president in October 1982, twenty-two years after his first term. Bolivia has been governed by democratically elected governments ever since, with Siles Zuazo and Paz Estenssoro establishing a tradition of peaceful transfers of power.

Decree 21060, issued in August, freed prices and the exchange rate and slashed public spending, rapidly halting inflation that had reached one of the highest rates ever recorded. The stabilisation reshaped Bolivia's economy for decades afterwards, though at a heavy social cost.

Forest cover fell from 57,804,720 hectares in 1990 to 50,833,760 hectares in 2020, about 47% of total land area. Meanwhile Andean temperatures rose 0.1 °C per decade from 1939 to 1998 and 0.33 °C per decade from 1980 to 2005, causing glacial retreat and water shortages.

The Special Economic Zone for Bolivia in Ilo grants Bolivia administration of 358 hectares with five kilometres of Peruvian coast for 99 years from 1992. Bolivia has also held its own port facilities at Rosario, Argentina since 1964.

Elected in 1993 in alliance with the Tupac Katari Revolutionary Liberation Movement, Sánchez de Lozada pursued aggressive reform, with investors acquiring 50% ownership and management control of public enterprises. His Plan de Todos decentralised government, introduced intercultural bilingual education and privatised most state-owned firms, producing a neoliberal restructuring.

Revisions to the constitution in 1994 and subsequent laws initiated far-reaching judicial reform and devolved powers to departments, municipalities and indigenous territories. They reshaped the architecture of Bolivian government ahead of later constitutional change.

Reforms and economic restructuring provoked frequent and sometimes violent protests, particularly in La Paz and the Chapare coca-growing region, between 1994 and 1996. The Central Obrera Boliviana proved increasingly unable to channel this opposition, as shown by the defeated teachers' strike of 1995.

Banzer's ADN took 22% against the MNR's 18% in the 1997 elections, returning the former dictator to power by ballot. His government used special police units to physically eradicate illegal coca in the Chapare and continued free-market and privatisation policies.

Paz invoked the emergency on 20 June to clear road blockades erected by protesters, weeks after signing a law easing the government's power to declare such measures. The unrest reflected mounting opposition to his economic policies less than a year into his term.

The 13 May reversal followed clashes in which miners set off dynamite and police used tear gas against demonstrators opposed to the measure. The dispute reflected wider tension over Paz's early economic reforms.

Marset, a Uruguayan cartel leader wanted by several countries and subject to a US$2 million reward, was detained on 13 March along with four other people. He was later handed over to face prosecution in the United States.

The Hercules transport aircraft, carrying cash, collided with several vehicles after overrunning the runway near La Paz on 27 February, injuring a further 29 people. It was one of the deadliest aviation accidents in Bolivia's recent history.

Aramayo, described as one of the president's most trusted advisers, was killed in Tarija on 9 January. The killing occurred weeks into Paz's presidency, and no motive was immediately confirmed.

Ties with Israel, severed in 2023 over the war in Gaza, were re-established on 9 December, days after Bolivia eased visa rules for citizens of the United States, Israel, South Korea and South Africa. The moves marked a shift in foreign policy under the new government.

Arce, who left office in November, was detained on 10 December over allegations linked to his earlier tenure as economy minister under Evo Morales. The arrest came weeks after the transfer of power to Rodrigo Paz.

The 23 December decree reversed limits imposed under the Arce government, aiming to widen internet connectivity in remote areas. It formed part of a broader early push to open Bolivia's economy after his November inauguration.

Paz took office on 8 November after winning the 19 October run-off with 54.5 per cent of the vote, becoming Bolivia's first conservative president in two decades. The transition ended a long period of governments led or backed by the Movement for Socialism.

Paz of the centre-right Christian Democratic Party beat former president Jorge Quiroga in the October 2025 run-off, marking a clear political shift to the right. He was elected on 19 October and sworn in on 8 November 2025 during Bolivia's worst economic crisis in forty years.

Paz won the 19 October vote with 54.5 per cent, having advanced from an August first round alongside fellow right-wing candidate Quiroga. The result ended nearly two decades of governments aligned with the Movement for Socialism.

On 26 June 2024 a coup attempt led by Zúñiga collapsed after only five hours, and police arrested him that evening. The episode tested the resilience of civilian rule under President Arce.

The 2024 census counted 11.4 million people in 4,125,627 households, up from 8.27 million in 2001 and 10.06 million in 2012. Growth had run at about 2.05% annually between 1950 and 1992 and 2.74% between 1992 and 2001.

Arce took office on 8 November 2020 with Vice President David Choquehuanca, restoring MAS to power after the interim government. He served until 2025.

Repeatedly delayed by the pandemic and protests, the election of 18 October 2020 drew a record 88.4% turnout and gave MAS 55.1% against 28.8% for Carlos Mesa. Observers from the OAS, UNIORE and the UN reported no fraud, and both Mesa and Áñez conceded.

In April 2020 the Áñez administration borrowed more than $327 million from the IMF to meet needs during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Arce government repaid about $351 million including interest in February 2021, citing economic sovereignty and unacceptable conditions.

On 13 November 2019 opposition senator Áñez claimed constitutional succession and was confirmed by the constitutional court. Her government exempted police and military from criminal responsibility during operations to restore order, and violence against Morales supporters followed; observers remain divided over whether the events were a coup or a popular uprising.

After the interruption of the preliminary count in the October 2019 election, an OAS report alleging irregularities and weeks of protests over his contested claim of a fourth-term victory, Morales resigned on 10 November following the armed forces commander's call for him to go. All senior governmental positions were vacated on 11 November, opposition senator Jeanine Áñez assumed the interim presidency days later, and Morales left the country; the New York Times later reported that the OAS analysis was flawed.

Since 2018 the Single Health System has offered all Bolivians free medical care, funded by hydrocarbon revenues. The universal healthcare system created in 2019 was cited by the World Health Organization as a model.

Bolivia signed the nuclear weapons prohibition treaty in 2018. It aligned the country with the disarmament bloc in international forums.

In 2018 Bolivia brought its long-standing claim for sovereign access to the Pacific before the ICJ. The move continued a state policy pursued since the loss of the Litoral Department.

The ruling rejected a case Bolivia had brought seeking to compel talks on restoring the coastline it lost to Chile in the nineteenth century. Bolivia has remained landlocked since that war and continues to press the issue through diplomatic channels.

Morales narrowly lost the referendum asking voters to allow him to run for an additional term. In 2017 his party petitioned the Constitutional Court, which scrapped term limits altogether, allowing him to stand in 2019 despite the vote.

In 2015 Bolivia opened a 203-kilometre dual carriageway between La Paz and Oruro, the country's first. Researchers noted the road network remained underdeveloped, with under 2,000 kilometres of paved road in the lowlands as of 2014.

The 2013 law codified sixteen types of gender-based violence and set out measures for prevention, victim protection and punishment of aggressors. It built on a 1997 law requiring at least 30% of party candidates for public office to be women.

The 2013 law accords nature the same rights as humans. It was an internationally distinctive expression of the plurinational state's environmental doctrine.

The court held that Morales's first term under the previous constitution did not count towards his limit, over opposition objections. He duly ran in 2014 and was re-elected with 64.22% of the vote.

In October 2011 Bolivians elected judges for the country's four highest courts by popular vote for the first time, a reform introduced by Evo Morales. The poll was the inaugural exercise of the new Plurinational Electoral Organ.

In July 2010 the UN passed a resolution, proposed by Bolivia, recognising the right to safe and clean drinking water as fundamental. It marked a rare instance of Bolivian diplomatic leadership on a global norm.

The Plurinational Electoral Organ replaced the National Electoral Court in 2010 as an independent branch of government, regulated by the Electoral Regime Law (Law 026) passed that year. It administered the country's first judicial elections and municipal special elections in 2011.

The new constitution triggered a general election in December 2009 in which Morales was comfortably re-elected with 61.36% of the vote, while MAS took two-thirds majorities in both houses of Congress. Control of the legislative branch gave the government unusually strong command of the legislative agenda and allowed Morales to continue his process of change.

The constitution drafted in 2006–07 and approved by referendum in 2009 renamed the country the Plurinational State of Bolivia to reflect its multi-ethnic character and recognised the autonomy, legal traditions and rights of its indigenous majority. It provided for balanced executive, legislative, judicial and electoral powers, several levels of autonomy, made access to water a fundamental right, assigned the role of capital to Sucre, expanded state control over natural resources and permitted presidential re-election.

In 2008 Bolivia was declared free of illiteracy following UNESCO standards, the fourth South American country to attain the status. It was a headline achievement of the Morales government's social programme.

In 2007 the government set up a bank through which small workers and agricultural producers could borrow easily, at low rates and with repayment terms suited to agricultural cycles. Improved banking supervision later cut borrowing rates threefold between 2014 and 2019 for small and medium agricultural producers.

On 6 August 2006 Morales convened a Constituent Assembly to write a new constitution giving more power to the indigenous majority. It fulfilled a central campaign promise and produced the 2009 charter.

On 1 May 2006, after protests demanding the move, Morales decreed the re-nationalisation of Bolivian hydrocarbon assets, giving the state energy company control of natural gas production and forcing foreign firms to renegotiate contracts on less favourable terms. It fulfilled a central campaign pledge and sharply increased state revenue, which funded the Renta Dignidad pension, the Juana Azurduy maternal voucher and the Juancito Pinto school payment; from 2007 to 2017 the government take on gas totalled about $22 billion.

Between 2006 and 2019 GDP grew from about $9 billion to over $40 billion, GDP per capita tripled, reserves rose, inflation was essentially eliminated and extreme poverty fell from 38% to 15%. Reserves peaked in 2014 at some US$15 billion, nearly two-thirds of annual GDP.

A Ministry of Environment and Water was established in 2006 after Morales's election, and the privatisation of water distribution by Sánchez de Lozada was reversed. Two foreign private concessions in Cochabamba and La Paz/El Alto were prematurely ended in 2000 and 2006.

Bolivians elected Movement Toward Socialism leader Evo Morales in December 2005, winning outright with 53.7% of the vote, the widest margin of any leader since the restoration of civilian rule. He had promised to change the traditional political class and empower the poor, indigenous majority, and became the country's first president drawn from the indigenous majority movement, beginning fourteen years of MAS government.

A binding referendum on the Hydrocarbon Law was held in 2005 amid the conflict over gas. It set the stage for the partial nationalisation of hydrocarbons the following year.

Mesa attempted to resign in January 2005 and again on 22 March amid street protests accusing him of bowing to US corporate interests; Congress accepted on 10 June. Supreme Court chief justice Eduardo Rodríguez was sworn in as interim president.

After martial law was imposed in El Alto on 12 October 2003 following the shooting of sixteen people by police, Sánchez de Lozada resigned and left for the United States. Vice President Carlos Mesa succeeded him, marking the first of three presidencies ended by popular pressure.

Sánchez de Lozada took 22.5% against 20.9% for coca advocate Evo Morales of MAS, and a July pact with the MIR secured his congressional run-off election. He was sworn in for a second time on 6 August 2002 on a platform of economic reactivation, anti-corruption and social inclusion.

Banzer resigned on 6 August 2001 after being diagnosed with cancer and died less than a year later. Vice President Jorge Quiroga completed the final year of the term.

Between January 1999 and April 2000 large-scale protests broke out in Cochabamba over the privatisation of water resources by foreign companies and a doubling of prices. The unrest presaged a decade of resource conflicts and the later constitutional recognition of water as a right.