Bolivia, officially the Plurinational State of Bolivia, is a landlocked country located in western-central South America. It is bordered by Brazil to the north and east, Paraguay to the southeast, Argentina to the south, Chile to the southwest, and Peru to the west. The seat of government and administrative capital is La Paz, which contains the executive, legislative, and electoral branches of government, while the constitutional capital is Sucre, the seat of the judiciary. The largest city and principal industrial center is Santa Cruz de la Sierra, located on the Llanos Orientales, a mostly flat region in the east of the country.
Gonzalo Daniel Sánchez de Lozada Sánchez Bustamante, often referred to as Goni, is a Bolivian businessman and politician who served as the 61st president of Bolivia from 1993 to 1997 and from 2002 to 2003. A member of the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (MNR), he previously served as minister of planning and coordination under Víctor Paz Estenssoro and succeeded him as the MNR's national chief in 1990.
Juan Evo Morales Ayma is a Bolivian politician, trade union organizer, and former cocalero activist who served as the 65th president of Bolivia from 2006 to 2019. Widely regarded as the country's first president to come from its indigenous population, his administration worked towards the implementation of left-wing policies, focusing on the legal protections and socioeconomic conditions of Bolivia's previously marginalized indigenous population and combating the political influence of the United States and resource-extracting multinational corporations. Ideologically a socialist, he has led the Movement for Socialism (MAS) party since 1998.
Education in Bolivia, as in many other areas of Bolivian life, has a divide between Bolivia's rural and urban areas. Rural illiteracy levels remain high, even as the rest of the country becomes increasingly literate. Bolivia devotes 23% of its annual budget to educational expenditures, a higher percentage than in most other South American countries, albeit from a smaller national budget. A comprehensive, education reform has made some significant changes. Initiated in 1994, the reform decentralized educational funding in order to meet diverse local needs, improved teacher training and curricula, formalized and expanded intercultural bilingual education and changed the school grade system. Resistance from teachers’ unions, however, has slowed implementation of some of the intended reforms.
The administration of former Bolivian president Evo Morales maintained a strained relationship with the Bolivian hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. This relationship posed a problem for Morales, as polls taken in the early 2000 indicated that about seven million of the nine million Bolivians adhered to the Roman Catholic faith.
Bolivia–United States relations were established in 1837 with the first ambassadorial visit from the United States to Peru–Bolivian Confederation. The Confederation dissolved in 1839, and bilateral relations did not occur until 1848 when the United States recognized Bolivia as a sovereign state and appointed John Appleton as the Chargé d'Affaires.
In terms of key indicators, health in Bolivia ranks nearly last among the Western Hemisphere countries. Only Haiti scores consistently lower. Bolivia's child mortality rate of 69 per 1,000 live births is the worst in South America. Proper nourishment is a constant struggle for many Bolivians. Experts estimate that 7 percent of Bolivian children under the age of five and 23 percent of the entire population suffer from malnutrition. Another health factor in Bolivia is sanitation.
Televisión Boliviana is the first television channel of Bolivia and serves the only means of television communication from the government. The channel was established in August 1969 under the government of Luis Adolfo Siles after years of planning by the government of then-recently deceased René Barrientos. It is a state-owned broadcasting network.
The foreign policy of the Evo Morales administration concerns the policy initiatives made towards other states by the former President of Bolivia, in difference to past, or future, Bolivian foreign policy. Morales' foreign policy can be roughly divided between that of the Americas and the rest of the world.
The domestic policy of the Evo Morales administration refers to the domestic policy initiatives of the former President of Bolivia, including past pre-presidential advocacies by Morales.
Cliza is a small town in the Cochabamba Department, Bolivia. It is the capital of the Germán Jordán Province and the Cliza Municipality. Along with Punata, Cliza is the major city in the valle alto of the Cochabamba Department.
The history of Bolivia since 1982 begins with the restorations of democracy after the rule of the military junta of 1982. Evo Morales held the presidency from 2006 to 2019. A new constitution was enacted in 2009. Bolivia's population has roughly doubled over this period, from 5 million in 1980 to 10 million as of 2012.
The Ministry of Cultures, Decolonization, and Depatriarchalization is the ministry of the government of Bolivia that provides for the preservation and protection of the cultures and artistic expressions of the indigenous peoples of Bolivia as well as promotes the country's tourism sector and process of decolonization and depatriarchalization.
Esther Morales Ayma de Willacarani was a Bolivian grocer, small businessperson and public figure. In 2006, she was designated to the role of First Lady of Bolivia by her younger brother, then-President of Bolivia Evo Morales, who was unmarried.
The Bolivian Space Agency is the national space agency of Bolivia. Established in 2010, the agency is responsible for developing and implementing communications satellite programs and other space projects. On 20 December 2013, the ABE oversaw the launch of the nation's first artificial satellite, Túpac Katari 1. The satellite began operating the following year, providing telecommunication services to rural Bolivia.
A political crisis occurred in Bolivia on 10 November 2019, after 21 days of civil protests following the disputed 2019 Bolivian general election in which incumbent President Evo Morales was initially declared the winner. The elections took place after a referendum to amend the Bolivian constitution, which limits the number of terms to two, was rejected in 2016. In 2017 under political pressure and a legal demand from the Morales government, the Constitutional Tribunal (TCP) ruled that all public offices would have no term limits despite what was established in the constitution and allowing Evo Morales to run for a fourth term.
The Chapare Drug Cartel is a Bolivian criminal organization dedicated to drug trafficking and human trafficking that operates in the Chapare region. For this, several journalists have baptized this organization simply as the Chapare Cartel
Andrónico Rodríguez Ledezma is a Bolivian cocalero activist, political scientist, politician, and trade unionist serving as president of the Senate since 2020. A member of the Movement for Socialism, he serves as senator for Cochabamba. Rodríguez's lengthy career in the cocalero union hierarchy saw him serve as general secretary of the 21 September Workers' Center from 2015 to 2016 and as executive of the Mamoré Bulo Bulo Federation from 2016 to 2018, in addition to a multitude of other minor positions. He has served as vice president of the Coordination Committee of the Six Federations of the Tropic of Cochabamba since 2018 and held office as president of the organization from 2019 to 2020 in the absence of the body's longtime leader, Evo Morales.
Bolivia-Venezuela Relations are the existing bilateral relations between the Plurinational State of Bolivia and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Both nations established their diplomatic relations on 14 September 1883, during the government of the President of Bolivia Narciso Campero Leyes and the government of the President of Venezuela Antonio Guzmán Blanco.
María Magdalena Cajías de la Vega is a Bolivian academic, historian, and politician who served as minister of education from 2007 to 2008. Cajías spent most of her professional career teaching history at the Higher University of San Andrés, in addition to holding a number of consultancy posts for intergovernmental organizations and government bodies. She authored multiple published historical titles, focusing on the fields of women's and labor history. In 2006, Cajías was brought on as a consultant for the Ministry of the Presidency before being appointed to head the Ministry of Education the following year. After a brief return to academia following the conclusion of her ministerial term, Cajías returned to public administration as consul general in Santiago, where she served from 2014 to 2019. In 2021, she was named as a member of the editorial board of the Bolivian Bicentennial Library.
