Jaime Paz Zamora
Jaime Paz Zamora (Cochabamba, Bolivia, April 15, 1939) is a Bolivian politician, sixtieth President of Bolivia from August 6, 1989 to August 6, 1993. He was also one of the founders of the MIR and Vice President of Bolivia from October 10, 1982 until his resignation on December 14, 1984.
He was the only survivor of a catastrophic plane crash that occurred on June 2, 1980; attack planned against him by the dictatorial government of Luis García Meza. However, despite having survived the attack, the fatal accident left him with severe burns on his body and face.
Biography
Jaime Paz Zamora was born in Cochabamba on April 15, 1939, the son of Navy General Néstor Paz Galarza, a cousin of President Víctor Paz Estenssoro, and Edith Zamora Pantoja, from Tarija.
He graduated from the Jesuit College of the Sacred Heart College in Sucre and moved to the city of Córdoba Argentina where he entered the religious order of the Redemptorists and studied philosophy and theology. Before receiving priestly orders he withdrew from religious life. Years later he graduated with a degree in Social and Political Sciences with a major in International Relations from the Catholic University of Leuven.
He was a founder on September 7, 1971 and leader of the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria "MIR" party registered in the Socialist International, also organized the clandestine resistance against the military regime of General Hugo Banzer Suárez.
Vice President of Bolivia
He was elected Vice President by Congress in 1982. His relations with President Hernán Siles Zuazo were tense and confrontational due to the break between the MIR and the coalition. Finally, he resigned from office on December 14, 1984 to qualify as a presidential candidate.
Bolivian Presidency
On August 5, 1989, he was proclaimed President by Congress despite having come in third place during the general elections of May 7 of that year, thanks to the political support he received from the second most voted candidate, the right-wing and former ideological rival Hugo Banzer Suárez. By helping Paz Zamora, Banzer prevented the proclamation of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, who had won the elections but not with the 50% required to assume the presidency. Putting an end to the popular phrase given by Paz Zamora during the 1980 elections of the Insalvable Rivers of Blood, referring to the political persecution suffered by MIR militants during the Banzer dictatorship.
Government
During his government, he signed the “Andrés de Santa Cruz” Integration Agreement, which establishes that Peru grants Bolivia, for 50 renewable years, a tourist free zone along 5 km² of the coast of Ilo, named by the presidents like “Bolivia-Mar”.
Enacted Law 1178 on Government Administration and Control.
He advocated the potential medicinal and industrial use of coca, but achieved little in the way of concrete results. On the other hand, accusations of corruption appeared during his tenure, which would ultimately lead to the imprisonment of his main aide and co-founder of the MIR, Oscar Eid, for alleged connections with drug trafficking; The latter served his full four-year prison term, but in the long run this brought completely negative repercussions for Paz Zamora and the MIR. In foreign policy, Paz Zamora managed to successfully negotiate the cession of a maritime port on the Peruvian coast, although without territorial continuity from Bolivian territory, for which reason his benefit was quite limited.
His government was marred by accusations of corruption and alleged links to drug trafficking. Despite this, it has been one of the governments that most tried to implement free market policies in Bolivia (in 1992 Paz Zamora had the privatization law approved, the predecessor of the capitalization law that Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada would implement). Finally, the alleged corruption scandals and drug ties were not verified.
Departure from power
In 1993 his term ended and the defeat that year of Hugo Banzer's pro-government candidacy weakened the MIR and Paz Zamora himself. The leader of the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement, Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, won the elections. Paz Zamora ran for the presidency four times: 1985, 1989, 1997 and 2002. She ranked third in preferences in the first three elections and fourth in the last one. In the general elections of December 18, 2005, she presented his candidacy for prefect of the department on the front "Regional Convergence" (CR), made up of the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR) and citizen groups such as "Dignidad, MAR" (from the town of Bermejo) and "Citizen Power" (from Yacuiba). The results gave him second place with 33.93% behind the candidate Mario Cossio, from the front Regional Meeting: Road to Change, which was based on the MNR, which he won with a percentage of 45, 64%, which led him to be the prefect of the department of Tarija.