Sunday’s election will see Bolivia’s president Evo Morales compete for a fourth consecutive term together with his vice president Álvaro García Linera. First taking power in 2006, after years of intense social struggles, their Movement for Socialism (MAS) has racked up notable achievements, from the renationalization of key natural resources to impressive poverty reduction rates and the region’s most consistently high levels of economic growth. Bolivia has also asserted itself as an important actor at the Latin American level, both championing environmental protection and opposing US interference in the region.

Led by the country’s first indigenous president, the “change process” has also promoted a wider opening up of Bolivian public life, no longer the exclusive preserve of figures from the whitest and wealthiest backgrounds. Since 2006 the “plurinational state” and its institutions have integrated figures from labor unions, social movements, and indigenous communities. In this same vein, young leaders from within MAS are playing increasingly important roles in government. Chief among these is Adriana Salvatierra, the youngest president of the Senate in the country’s history, having assumed that position at the age of twenty-nine in January 2019.

A leader within the Columna Sur militant youth movement, Adriana has become a leading voice in the fight for gender equality and the eradication of murderous violence against women (so-called femicides). She has also strongly promoted socialist planning as a model of economic growth, and ahead of Sunday’s presidential election she has fiercely criticized neoliberal challengers to Morales, such as the former president Carlos Mesa and the emerging right-wing candidate from Santa Cruz, Óscar Ortiz.