Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (Bolivia)

Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR) (Eng .: Movement of the Revolutionary Left ) is a party in Bolivia .

The MIR was founded in 1971 by exiled Bolivians in Chile, including Jaime Paz Zamora , who has significantly influenced the fate of the party to this day. In its early days, the party exerted a great attraction on some of the Marxist-influenced intellectuals , especially among the student body.

After Paz Zamora returned from exile, the MIR entered into an alliance with the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario de Izquierda (MNRI) of the former President Hernán Siles Zuazo , a spin-off from the once dominant Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR), with which the MIR joined forces Unidad Democrática y Popular (UDP). This pact of the two parties offered considerable advantages for both parties: the MNRI under Siles had enjoyed great support among the working class since the revolution of 1952 and had government experience, while the MIR brought in the support of university students and young intellectuals.

Since the late 1980s , the party has changed course from a more socialist to a bourgeois force, from a left-Catholic to a Catholic-liberal party. This became clear in 1997 when MIR joined the coalition with Hugo Banzer , who led Bolivia into a bloody dictatorship between 1971 and 1978, in which MIR party leader Paz Zamora was also incarcerated.

At the beginning of the third millennium, the MIR largely lost its following to other party groups. In the elections of December 2005, the MIR no longer ran nationwide as a separate party, but only as part of the party alliance Poder Democrático Social (PODEMOS). Jaime Paz Zamora even lost the runoff election for the prefecture of La Paz to the MNR candidate Mario Cossío .