Movimiento al Socialismo
The Movement for Socialism – Political Instrument for the Sovereignty of the Peoples is a socialist political party in Bolivia. Its followers are known as Masistas.
In the December 2005 election, MAS-IPSP won the first majority victory ever won by a single Bolivian party since Bolivia's return to democracy, electing Evo Morales as president. The party went on to win the next four general elections by a majority, ruling until 2025, when their support collapsed during that year's election. MAS–IPSP also dominated the municipal elections during this period.
MAS-IPSP evolved out of the movement to defend the interests of coca growers and is rooted in indigenous mobilization. Morales has articulated the goals of his party and popular organizations as the need to achieve plurinational unity, and to develop a new hydrocarbon law which guarantees 50% of revenue to Bolivia, although political leaders of MAS-IPSP in later years showed interest in complete nationalization of the fossil fuel industries, as well as the country's lithium deposits.
During Arce's government, the party was divided into two internal factions: the "Arcistas", which defends Luis Arce's management and seeks the renovation of the party leadership, which is chaired by Grover García, and the "Evistas", which defends Morales's leadership and seeks his re-election in the 2025 Bolivian general election. On 4 October 2023, President Luis Arce and Vice President David Choquehuanca were expelled from the party by a decision of the board chaired by Evo Morales. However, the Arcista faction did not recognize the expulsion.
By February 2025, Morales left MAS due to the party prohibiting him from running for president in the 2025 general election; initially joining the party, he and his supporters later went on to found a new party, EVO Pueblo.
History
Origins
The roots of MAS-IPSP can be traced to the closures of the Bolivian Mining Corporation and shut-down of various mines during the 1980s. Thousands of former miners became coca farmers as their means of survival, but also encountered new hardships in their new profession. The growth of the coca farmer community resulted in a sharp numerical growth of organizations such as Unified Syndical Confederation of Peasant Workers of Bolivia and Syndicalist Confederation of Intercultural Communities of Bolivia. The movement built alliances with the Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of Eastern Bolivia and mobilized joint protests in a 1992 campaign titled "500 years of resistance of the indigenous peoples", culminating in a march to La Paz where a protest was held on 12 October 1992. The 1992 campaign marked the emergence of a 'peasant-Indigenous' movement.However, CSUTCB was wary of building a political party to contest state power. The experiences of the 1980s, when the CSUTCB leadership had been divided over electoral candidatures had been negative. Rather the organization began discussing the possibility of launching a 'political instrument', a structure in which the trade unions would enter as collective members. The idea would be to combine social and political struggles, to have one branch in the social movements and one political branch. According to Lino Villca there were also discussions about forming an armed wing of the movement.
Carlos Burgoa Maya traces the initiative for a political instrument to the Third Congress of the CSUTCB in which several proposals were merged into a document proposing an "Assembly of Nationalities" including traditional authorities to forge "political instruments of the nationalities." In the COB's 9th Congress, a thesis for worker-indigenous unity in "constructing a political instrument" was approved. Numerous prominent future leaders of the MAS, including Evo Morales, Félix Patzi, and David Choquehuanca met on 7 November 1992 in a gathering organized by CSUTCB, CSCB, CIDOB, FNMCB, and the COB, which decided to call for withdrawal from existing parties and to consolidate as an independent political force. The August–September 1994 cocalero march also endorsed the creation of a political instrument.
The creation of a political instrument received the backing of the sixth CSUTCB congress in 1994, and in March 1995 CSUTCB convened a congress titled 'Land, Territory and Political Instrument' in Santa Cruz de la Sierra. Present at the congress were CSUTCB, CSCB, the Bartolina Sisa National Federation of Peasant Women of Bolivia and CIDOB. The congress resulted in the foundation of the Assembly for the Sovereignty of the Peoples, under the leadership of the Cochabamba peasant leader Alejo Véliz as the main leader and Evo Morales in second position. From 1996 onwards, Evo Morales was a rising star in the ASP leadership. Soon he became a competitor of Veliz. Internal conflict emerged between the followers of Morales and Veliz — evistas and alejistas. ASP wanted to contest the 1997 national elections, but never obtained the registration of a political party at the CNE. Instead, the group contested the election of the lists of the United Left. Veliz was candidate for the presidency and for parliament. However, many trade unions decided not to support Veliz's candidature, accusing him of having manipulated the candidate lists of the United Left. Four ASP members of the Chamber of Deputies were elected from the Chapare Province : Evo Morales, Román Loayza Caero, Félix Sanchéz Veizaga and Néstor Guzmán Villarroel.
Foundation and local elections
After the 1997 elections a split occurred in ASP and Evo Morales was expelled from the organization. In 1998 the supporters of Evo Morales founded the Political Instrument for the Sovereignty of the Peoples. Notably, the majority of the grassroots supporters of ASP sided with Morales in the split. One of the prominent ASP leaders who sided with Morales was Román Loayza Caero, leader of CSUTCB.At the time of its foundation, an IPSP flag was adopted. It was brown and green, with a sun in the middle.
In order to contest the 1999 municipal election, IPSP borrowed the registration of an inactive spliter faction of the falangist Bolivian Socialist Falange, Movimiento al Socialismo – Unzaguista. The decision to go for elections as MAS was taken in Cochabamba in 1998. IPSP decided to adopt the name, banner and colours of MAS. In January 1999, the organization adopted the name MAS-IPSP. This move provoked a split between IPSP and the new CSUTCB leader, Felipe Quispe. Quispe stated that he was unable to accept to contest the elections under a name tainted by a fascist past and that the falangist profile meant a negation of indigenous identity. In the 1999 elections Quispe aligned himself with Veliz's group, which had decided to contest elections through the Communist Party of Bolivia. In the Cochabamba region the verbal confrontations between the two sides were often tense, and the Veliz group launched the slogan "MAS is Unzaguist, falangist, heil heil Hitler". MAS-IPSP itself however stressed that the adaptation of the name MAS was a mere formality, and the membership cards issued by the organization carried the slogan "legally MAS, legitimately IPSP".
MAS-IPSP got 65,425 votes and won 81 local council seats in 1999. According to a study by Xavier Albó and Victor Quispe, the vast majority of the MAS-IPSP councilors elected in the 1999 municipal election were indigenous. In the Cochabamba Department MAS-IPSP obtained 39% of the votes winning seven mayoral posts. The MAS vote in Cochabamba was almost completely confined to the Chapare, Carrasco and Ayopaya provinces. In the capital of the Department the MAS mayoral candidate only got 0.88%. The mayoral post of Cochabamba was won by Manfred Reyes Villa of the New Republican Force, who got 51.2% of the votes in the city.
Years of struggle
During the years of 1998–2002, the grassroot base of MAS-IPSP was consolidated, as a result of increasing repression against the coca growers' movement. MAS-IPSP represented, along with the smaller Pachakuti Indigenous Movement, the anti-system opposition in the country. Whilst Bolivian politics had seen several political parties contesting on populist platforms during the past decades, MAS-IPSP and MIP differed from these parties through its strong connections to the peasant organizations. However, the fact that MIP had been accorded registration as a political party by the National Electoral Court angered MAS-IPSP followers. Both within MAS-IPSP and amongst political analysts the smooth registration of MIP was described as a move by the political establishment to divide the indigenous vote and to spoil the chances of a possible MAS-IPSP/MIP alliance. By this time IPSP had been denied registration by the National Electoral Court four times, citing minor details.The period of 2000–2002 was characterized by a series of social struggles that contributed to the radicalization of the Bolivian polity; the Cochabamba Water War, Aymara uprisings in 2000 and 2001 and the coca growers' struggle in Chapare. While social movements are by no means new in Bolivia, a country with a long history of revolution due to political and class struggle, this protest cycle marked a renewal of militancy and growing successful organizational planning which had not been witnessed before.
In January 2002, Morales was expelled from the parliament after being accused of masterminding violent confrontations between police and coca growers in Sacaba. The expulsion of Morales from the parliament contributed to the political popularity of MAS-IPSP.
Ahead of the 2002 national elections, MAS-IPSP sought to expand its influence outside its peasant base. Evo Morales stood as presidential candidate and Antonio Peredo as vice-presidential candidate. By launching Peredo for the vice-presidency, MAS-IPSP attempted to gain influence amongst the urban middle classes. MAS-IPSP also made an appeal for the supporters of the Marxist left groups to join the campaign and present themselves as MAS-IPSP candidates. Prominent MAS-IPSP leaders recruited for the 2002 election campaign included Gustavo Torrico, and Jorge Alvaro.
In their election campaign, MAS-IPSP championed 'national sovereignty', denouncing U.S. interventions in Bolivian affairs. The political elite and proponents of neoliberal policies were denounced as 'traitors' supported by the United States. The appeal of MAS-IPSP was also aided by the intervention of US ambassador Manuel Rocha, who threatened Bolivians that US economic aid to Bolivia would be cut if Morales won. Morales has credited ambassador Rocha for the success of MAS, stating that "very statement made against us helped us to grow and awaken the conscience of the people." Anti-US sentiment was further exacerbated when the new ambassador, David Greenlee, made it clear that he would not approve of any president other than Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada.
The electoral advance of MAS-IPSP was aided by the implosion of the political party Conscience of Fatherland. CONDEPA was a populist party which was based in the urban poor, often Aymaras who had migrated to the urban centres of Bolivia. The party had lost much of its popular legitimacy as it was coopted by Hugo Banzer's government, and the party had suffered the death of its main leader just before the 2002 elections. In the polls CONDEPA lost all of their 22 parliamentary seats.
Whilst Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada was re-elected as President of Bolivia by Congress, Evo Morales came in second place with just 1.5% fewer votes than Sánchez de Lozada. MAS-IPSP got 14.6% of the valid uninominal vote, which gave the movement 27 out of 130 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and eight out of 27 seats in the Senate. The election result shocked both political analysts as well as MAS-IPSP itself. Out of the elected MAS-IPSP legislators, ten identified themselves as indigenous or peasants, twelve as leftwing intellectuals or labour leaders.
The fifth national congress of MAS-IPSP was held in Oruro 13–14 December 2003.