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Unfrozen Loans Give Arce Hope of Easing Crippling Bolivia Crisis June 18, 2025, 4:41 PM ET (Bloomberg)
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Sánchez de Lozada won the 2002 presidential elections; however, his term was plagued by a recession and peasant protests. Violence escalated between armed peasants and police in February 2003, resulting in the deaths of 30 people and leading to the temporary toppling of Sánchez de Lozada’s government. More protests later that year demanding nationalization of the country’s natural gas resources reignited social unrest and brought about even more deaths. Sánchez de Lozada was finally forced to resign in October 2003 and was replaced by Vice Pres. Carlos Mesa Gisbert. Mesa’s decision to revise the hydrocarbon law for natural gas deposits did not forestall violent demonstrations, and he, too, resigned.

On Dec. 18, 2005, amid continuing protests, Juan Evo Morales Ayma was elected as Bolivia’s first Indian president. A founder of the left-wing political party Movement Toward Socialism (Movimiento al Socialismo; MAS) and a former coca-growers’ union leader, Morales fought for more rights for indigenous communities, for less-harsh restrictions on coca farmers, and for more taxes on the wealthy. In 2006 he nationalized Bolivia’s gas fields and oil industry, and in 2007 he announced plans to nationalize the country’s railroads and mines. In response to Morales’s reforms and his attempts to redistribute wealth in the country, four of Bolivia’s wealthier provinces overwhelmingly approved regional autonomy statutes in referenda, though these were not recognized by the central government. There were political demonstrations, some of which turned violent, by those who opposed Morales’s reforms and by his supporters. A recall referendum on Morales’s leadership was held in August 2008, and two-thirds of those who went to the polls voted for him to continue in office. In another referendum held in January 2009, voters approved a new constitution that would allow Morales to seek a second consecutive five-year term (previously the constitution limited the president to a single term) and give him the power to dissolve Congress. Other changes to the constitution furthered indigenous rights, strengthened state control over the country’s natural resources, and enforced a limit on the size of private landholdings. Most Bolivians in the wealthier eastern provinces of the country opposed ratification of the new constitution.

Under Morales the country remained politically divided between the wealthy provinces and the impoverished indigenous communities. On the other hand, inflation had been brought under control, the economy was growing faster than the regional average, and the Bolivian peso, renamed the boliviano, was stabilized. In April 2009 Morales signed a law authorizing early presidential and legislative elections, set to take place that December. Morales, with the continued support of the indigenous majority, easily won a second term in the country’s presidential election. In the concurrent legislative elections, the MAS gained the majority of seats in both houses of Congress. In his second term Morales presided over an economy buoyed by a surging natural gas market, and he initiated a broad range of infrastructure projects. In 2013 the Bolivian constitutional court ruled that Morales could run for a third presidential term, and the following year he claimed victory in the first round of elections.

Bolivia went to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague in May 2015 to claim sovereignty over Chilean land that would provide Bolivia with access to the ocean. (Bolivian cargo was given preferential treatment by Chile.) Chile argued that the land, lost by Bolivia during the War of the Pacific, was permanently Chilean by virtue of the terms of a 1904 treaty signed by both countries. Bolivia averred that its claim to the land was subject to adjudication by the ICJ, because Chile, a signatory of the 1948 Pact of Bogotá, had pledged to honor the jurisdiction of the international court.

By 2015 the plummeting price of natural gas in the international market had begun to take a toll on the Bolivian economy. As the situation worsened, some critics of Morales were quick to blame him for failing to oversee a diversification of Bolivia’s natural-gas-dependent economy. The struggling economy and a corruption scandal took some of the polish off Morales’s presidency, and in a referendum in February 2016 some 51 percent of those Bolivians who voted chose not to amend the constitution to allow Morales to run for reelection in 2019. In November 2017, however, the constitutional court, responding to a petition from the MAS, removed term limits on the presidency. That ruling was upheld by the Supreme Electoral Court in December 2018, setting the stage for Morales to seek the presidency, yet again, in 2019.

From July to early October 2019, wildfires destroyed huge tracts of forests and grasslands in Bolivia’s Santa Cruz province. Many Bolivians criticized the Morales administration for not responding quickly or forcefully enough to the disaster. There was widespread belief that a decree by Morales in July, allowing farmers to undertake “controlled burning” to increase the size of their agricultural plots, was responsible for the outbreak of the fires.

The fires were among the issues on the minds of voters when the presidential election was held in October. Arguably the most prominent issue was Morales’s refusal to honor his earlier promise to abide by the results of the referendum on term limits, which enraged many Bolivians. Morales was part of a field of candidates that included former president Carlos Mesa Gisbert, businessman-turned-senator Óscar Ortiz, and evangelical minister Chi Hyun Chung.

Early election returns, reported after about four-fifths of the votes had been counted, showed that Morales was the likely winner but that his lead over his principal rival for power, Mesa, had not reached the necessary threshold to prevent a runoff election. A roughly 24-delay followed the release of those results, after which it was announced that Morales had since rallied to achieve a victory margin just over the 10 percent required to eliminate the need for a runoff. Allegations of fraud were widespread and escalated in the coming weeks, during which sometimes violent protest and strikes paralyzed the country.

In the face this tumult, Morales remained intransigent. On November 10, however, the Organization of American States (OAS) reported that it had concluded that irregularities had taken place in the election and called for the results to be annulled. Later that day, Morales resigned, responding to a request from Gen. Williams Kaliman, the commander in chief of the Bolivian armed forces, that he do so. As he left office, Morales continued to maintain that there had been no wrongdoing, and he claimed that he had been the victim of a coup. Soon after, he fled to exile in Mexico. Sen. Jeanine Áñez, the deputy leader of the Chamber of Senators, became interim president in the wake of the resignations of the vice president and the leaders of the Chamber of Senators and Chamber of Deputies, allies of Morales.

Áñez promised to hold new elections within 90 days, but they were not scheduled to take place until May 3. In the meantime, her right-wing administration was accused of brutally suppressing pro-Morales demonstrations, which resulted in the deaths of a number of protesters. When the coronavirus pandemic that was sweeping the globe at the beginning of 2020 hit Bolivia especially hard—overwhelming Bolivian hospitals and generating one of the world’s highest per capita death rates—the election was delayed until September 6. Áñez herself contracted COVID-19 (the disease caused by the coronavirus). Critics accused her of mishandling the health crisis and exploiting it to cling to power and, further, of trying to stymie her political opponents rather than facilitating the fairness of the upcoming election, which was rescheduled again for October 18. At the same time, some international organizations began to question the accuracy of the OAS’s assessment of the November 2019 election.

From his exile in Argentina, Morales played an active role in MAS’s campaign for the 2020 election, handpicking his former finance minister, Luis Arce, as the party’s presidential candidate. When preference polling indicated that Arce was leading the crowded field, Áñez ended her own candidacy, and Mesa, running again, became the most formidable candidate from the right or center. When all the votes were counted, Arce had garnered more than 55 percent of the vote, compared with only about 29 percent for Mesa, thus precluding a runoff. Arce took pains to stress his independence from Morales, but, with the left ready to retake power, Morales’s return from exile seemed likely.

The day after Arce’s inauguration in November 2020 Morales returned to Bolivia. A rift soon emerged between the two former allies, as each vied for control of Bolivia’s left. Political strife was amplified by an economic downturn, as the export-fueled growth of the Morales years was sharply curtailed in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. In March 2021 Áñez was arrested and charged with a variety of crimes, including terrorism and sedition, for her actions as interim president. She was found guilty and sentenced to 10 years in prison, but her defense team argued that the prosecution was politically motivated. The feud within MAS remained the dominant story in Bolivian politics when on June 26, 2024, Gen. Juan José Zúñiga launched an uprising against Arce’s government. Armored vehicles breached the doors of the government palace in La Paz, and journalists captured a dramatic scene of Arce confronting the coup leaders. The plot had little traction, and even Arce’s political rivals were quick to condemn it: Morales rallied to support his former ally, and Áñez rejected Zúñiga’s attempt “to destroy constitutional order.” Within hours, the immediate crisis had passed; the troops were withdrawn, and Zúñiga was placed under arrest. Bolivia’s underlying political and economic uncertainty remained, however, and Morales had already declared that he would challenge Arce for the presidency in 2025.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Lake Titicaca

lake, South America
Also known as: Lago Titicaca

Lake Titicaca, the world’s highest lake navigable to large vessels, lying at 12,500 feet (3,810 metres) above sea level in the Andes Mountains of South America, astride the border between Peru to the west and Bolivia to the east. Titicaca is the second largest lake of South America (after Maracaibo). It covers some 3,200 square miles (8,300 square km) and extends in a northwest-to-southeast direction for a distance of 120 miles (190 km). It is 50 miles (80 km) across at its widest point. A narrow strait, Tiquina, separates the lake into two bodies of water. The smaller, in the southeast, is called Lake Huiñaymarca in Bolivia and Lake Pequeño in Peru; the larger, in the northwest, is called Lake Chucuito in Bolivia and Lake Grande in Peru.

The meaning of the name Titicaca is uncertain, but it has been variously translated as Rock of the Puma or Crag of Lead. Titicaca lies between Andean ranges in a vast basin (about 22,400 square miles [58,000 square km] in area) that comprises most of the Altiplano (High Plateau) of the central Andes. In the snow-covered Cordillera Real on the northeastern (Bolivian) shore of the lake, some of the highest peaks in the Andes rise to heights of more than 21,000 feet (6,400 metres).

The lake averages between 460 and 600 feet (140 and 180 metres) in depth, but the bottom tilts sharply toward the Bolivian shore, reaching its greatest recorded depth of 920 feet (280 metres) off Isla Soto in the lake’s northeast corner.

water glass on white background. (drink; clear; clean water; liquid)
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Water and its Varying Forms

More than 25 rivers empty their waters into Titicaca; the largest, the Ramis, draining about two-fifths of the entire Titicaca Basin, enters the northwestern corner of the lake. One small river, the Desaguadero, drains the lake at its southern end. This single outlet empties only 5 percent of the lake’s excess water; the rest is lost by evaporation under the fierce sun and strong winds of the dry Altiplano.

Titicaca’s level fluctuates seasonally and over a cycle of years. During the rainy season (summer, from December to March) the level of the lake rises, normally to recede during the dry winter months. It was formerly believed that Titicaca was slowly drying up, but modern studies have seemed to refute this, indicating a more or less regular cycle of rise and fall.

Titicaca’s waters are limpid and only slightly brackish, with salinity ranging from 5.2 to 5.5 parts per 1,000. Surface temperatures average 56 °F (14 °C); from a thermocline at 66 feet (20 m) temperatures drop to 52 °F (11 °C) at the bottom. Analyses show measurable quantities of sodium chloride, sodium sulfate, calcium sulfate, and magnesium sulfate in the water.

Lake Titicaca’s fish life consists principally of two species of killifish (Orestias)—a small fish, usually striped or barred with black—and a catfish (Trichomycterus). In 1939, and subsequently, trout were introduced into Titicaca. A large frog (Telmatobius), which may reach a length of nearly a foot, inhabits the shallower regions of the lake.

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Forty-one islands, some of them densely populated, rise from Titicaca’s waters. The largest, Titicaca Island (Spanish: Isla de Titicaca, also called Isla del Sol), lies just off the tip of the Copacabana Peninsula in Bolivia.

Ruins on the lake’s bottom (where the remains of a temple were discovered in 2000), on its shore, and on the islands attest to the previous existence of one of the oldest civilizations known in the Americas. The chief site is at Tiwanaku, Bolivia, at the southern end of the lake. On Titicaca Island ruins of a temple mark the spot where, according to the tradition of the Incas (a Quechuan people of Peru who established an empire about 1100 ce), the legendary founders of the Inca dynasty, Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo, were sent down to Earth by the Sun.

The Aymara people living in the Titicaca Basin still practice their ancient methods of agriculture on stepped terraces that predate Inca times. They grow barley, quinoa (a type of pigweed that produces a small grain), and the potato, which originated on the Altiplano. The highest cultivated plot in the world was found near Titicaca—a field of barley growing at a height of 15,420 feet (4,700 metres) above sea level. At this elevation the grain never ripens, but the stalks furnish forage for llamas and alpacas, the American relatives of the camel that serve the Indians as beasts of burden and provide meat and wool. The lake plain is covered with vast numbers of pre-Columbian raised platform fields and ditches, now abandoned, which were constructed to improve drainage and enhance the region’s agricultural potential. This ancient system of reclamation has been revived in some areas in both Peru and Bolivia.

The remnants of an ancient people, the Uru, still live on floating mats of dried totora (a reedlike papyrus that grows in dense brakes in the marshy shallows). From the totora, the Uru and other lake dwellers make their famed balsas—boats fashioned of bundles of dried reeds lashed together that resemble the crescent-shaped papyrus craft pictured on ancient Egyptian monuments.

In 1862 the first steamer to ply the lake was prefabricated in England and carried in pieces on muleback up to the lake. Today vessels make regular crossings from Puno, on the Peruvian shore, to the small Bolivian port of Guaqui. A narrow-gauge railway connects Guaqui with La Paz, capital of Bolivia. One of the world’s highest railways runs from Puno down to Arequipa and the Pacific, completing for land-bound Bolivia, an important link with the sea, and also to Cuzco.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica This article was most recently revised and updated by Adam Augustyn.