The bespectacled, 57-year-old Arce swept to power in Bolivia on 18 October 2020 as the presidential candidate of the leftist Movement for Socialism (MAS). His total vote share – over 55 per cent – surprised even the most ardent of MAS partisans. His closest competitor, the old political warhorse of the centre-right Carlos Mesa, failed to top 30 per cent. All this proved to be much to the chagrin of Latin America’s neoliberal Lima Group (led ironically by Canada) and the Luis Almagro-led Organization of American States, which had helped orchestrate the 2019 coup that led to the removal of former president Evo Morales on suspect electoral fraud charges. It is hard to overestimate the importance of Acre’s victory at a time when conservative forces from Bogotá to Brasília have been organizing a full court press to turn back the continent’s pink tide with some success.
Arce, who studied at the University of Warwick in Britain, was the economy minister under the government of Evo Morales for the entirety of its 14-year existence and made sure the boom in Bolivian commodities benefited the poorest, mostly indigenous, citizens. Under his watch extreme poverty dropped from 38 to 15 per cent of the population. He also oversaw Bolivia’s nationalization of hydrocarbon, telecommunications and mining companies, as well as the creation of the Bancosur (Bank of the South).
