◼ POLITICS Bloomberg Businessweek November 2, 202032
It looked like regime change. In November 2019,
after the armed forces’ chief called on him to step
down,EvoMorales,Bolivia’sfirstindigenouspres-
ident,boardeda planeandfledtoMexico,ending
14 years of socialist rule. He called it a coup.
Days later, Jeanine Añez, an opposition sena-
tor, seized control of the presidency, brandishing
a giant Bible to symbolize that Christianity rather
than indigenous rituals would guide Bolivia’s
new rulers. Doctors from communist Cuba were
expelled, and the country switched overnight from
being a friend of Venezuela to an ally of the U.S.
One year later, the events of 2019 look like a
temporary blip. The government of Añez became
so unpopular that she withdrew her candidacy
in the presidential election, and Morales’s social-
ist party, MAS, now under the leadership of Luis
Arce, regained power. Arce got more votes on Oct.
18 than all his rivals combined, while his party won
a majority in both houses of congress.
MAS owes its dramatic resurrection in part● Socialists are back in power, but the Morales-era commodities boom has fizzled outBolivia Tacks Left,
Into Headwinds
“Those factors
that gave such
extraordinary
benefit to Evo
Morales don’t
exist anymore”toArce,whoappealedtovoterswho’dtiredof
Moralesafterheignoredareferendum defeat on
term limits to try to stay in power. Arce has a very
different style from Morales: more academic and
less confrontational. Corruption scandals that
roiled the transitional government also gave MAS
a boost. And even though Morales had resigned
amid violent protests, the timing was in one way
lucky. It meant the party dodged responsibility for
managing the coronavirus pandemic, which sent
the Andean nation into its deepest economic slump
since the Great Depression.
The transition government blundered by trying
to cling to power rather than simply organize elec-
tions, says Eduardo Rodriguez, who was president
in 2005. The vote was postponed twice because of
the pandemic. The more people lost their jobs or
got sick with Covid-19, the more they missed the
relative prosperity of the Morales era.
Arce, an economist who studied at the U.K.’s
University of Warwick, has pledged to reviveTHE BOTTOM LINE Indian-Americans tend to favor Democrats. But
the president’s ties to Modi have swayed some to the GOP. A recent
survey shows that 28% may vote for Trump this year vs. 16% in 2016.Muslim-American PAC, declined to endorse
Democratic congressional candidate Sri Kulkarni
because it claimed he was close to Hindu nation-
alist organizations. And the head of Biden’s Asian-
American outreach came under heat for his
support for Modi and his father’s links to the BJP.
Milan Vaishnav, director of the South Asia pro-
gram at the Carnegie Endowment, predicts that
U.S.-born Indian-Americans will soon outnumber
new immigrants from India, changing the dynam-
ics. But for now, many families tread carefully
around political fault lines.
“It’s not a coincidence Biden used the word
‘inshallah’ ” in the first presidential debate, says
Ravi Kaw, a Hindu from Kashmir who came to the
U.S. in 1970 and now lives in California. (“Inshallah”
is an Arabic word meaning “God willing.”) Kaw sees
it as a sign of favoring Muslims. Although he doesn’tlike Trump’s divisive rhetoric, “it’s only for four
more years,” Kaw says. Whereas “in societies like
India, history is ingrained forever and ever, unless
something is done to fix the situation,” he says,
alluding to Modi’s policies.
Kaw’s son, Sidharth, agrees with his father
that “progressive Democrats have a very narrow
view of Indian politics.” But to him, he says, “ulti-
mately, those positions don’t matter as much as
their domestic stances. For my parents, who are
more attached to their homeland, this tension is
forcing them to decide between the two.”
His father says he’s waiting until the last moment
to decide how to vote: “I may end up flipping a
coin.” �Karishma Mehrotra▼Partisanidentity of
Indian-Americans
◼◼Bornin U.S.
◼◼Naturalized
DemocratIndependentRepublican64%
4819
2512
17DATA: CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE