Last Sunday, eleven months after the right-wing coup against Bolivian president Evo Morales, his MAS (Movimiento al Socialismo) party won a landslide victory with 55 percent of the vote. MAS presidential candidate Luis Arce needed at least 40 percent of the vote and a ten-point lead over his nearest rival to win outright. He cleared that bar in a crowded field, surpassing Carlos Mesa — a right-leaning historian who served as president from 2003 to 2005 after Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada resigned following the massacre of indigenous protesters — by more than twenty points.

The credit for MAS’s resounding victory must go to Bolivia’s social movements, historically some of the strongest in Latin America. They faced down the coup-makers and voted MAS back into office. As Arce proclaimed in his first speech following the election, “We have recovered democracy.” This is no small accomplishment.

And while MAS will confront serious challenges once in office, they’ll have some room to maneuver: not only did Arce win the presidency, but his party also appears to have netted a majority in the Senate. Their task will be to return to the roots of MAS as a political party of social movements, advancing future policies and politics by building sustainable power alongside indigenous peoples, trade unionists, leaders of federations, and neighborhood associations.