It’s been delayed three times already, but it seems like Bolivia’s repeat presidential election may finally go ahead next month. After the latest postponement sparked mass protests by trade unions and social movements, Jeanine Añez’s post-coup government was forced to sign a law guaranteeing that the contest will go ahead on October 18. But the mass rallies and blockades that paralyzed nearly all of Bolivia’s nine regions in August were also a symptom of a much larger problem — the collapse of what was until recently Latin America’s fastest-growing economy.

Under Añez’s “interim government,” Bolivia has effectively retreated into the neoliberal wilderness that preceded Evo Morales’s presidency. Unemployment skyrocketed to 11.8 percent in July (from 3.9 percent in 2019), poverty is expected to increase by at least 7 percent this year, while extreme poverty is projected to rise by 4.5 percent, as economic growth plummets by 5.9 percent. While this partly owes to the effects of COVID-19, the government’s response to the crisis in fact epitomizes its agenda. It has failed to initiate social programs to financially assist the population, even as it presses on with privatizing key sectors taken back into public hands by Morales’s government, including the communications company ENTEL and the hydrocarbon producer YPFB.

Most shocking has been the “Ventilators Case” (Caso Respiradores), concerning the Añez government’s purchase of hundreds of ventilators from Spain, China, and other countries at prices far above their manufacturing cost. This did, however, bring in millions of dollars of kickbacks for the members of the government itself. The case is but one example of a mass web of corruption and nepotism that has sprawled since the November 2019 coup against Morales.