Democratic Popular Unity

The Democratic Popular Unity was founded on 13 April 1978 as a "popular, nationalist, anti-imperialist and revolutionary" opposition political front. It grouped the Nationalist Revolutionary Movement of the Left (Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario de la Izquierda—MNRI), the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (Movimiento de la Izquierda Revolucionaria—MIR), the Bolivian Communist Party (Partido Comunista Boliviano—PCB), and other, minor parties under a single banner.

The UDP participated in the 1978, 1979, and 1980 elections but was unable to achieve a majority until 1982, when the Congress voted the UDP into office. Under the leadership of Hernán Siles Zuazo, the party governed the country between 1982 and 1985. Faced with the most severe economic crisis in Bolivian history and plagued by debilitating internal divisions stemming from the conflicting agendas of the coalition's parties, the UDP was forced to call early elections in 1985. By 1986, the MIR, the PCB, and the Christian Democrats had abandoned the UDP, which then ceased to exist as a party.

See alsoBolivia, Political Parties: Overview; Siles Zuazo, Hernán.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Additional Bibliography

Ibáñez Rojo, Enrique. "The UDP Government and the Crisis of the Bolivian Left, 1982–1985." Journal of Latin American Studies. 32, no. 1 (February 2000): 175-205.

Lavaud, Jean-Pierre. El embrollo boliviano: Turbulencias sociales y desplazamientos políticos, 1952–1982. Lima: IEFA, 1998.

                                       Annabelle Conroy