Jaime Paz Zamora - The Paz Zamora Presidency (1989-93)

The Paz Zamora Presidency (1989-93)

The administration of Jaime Paz was rather successful. Limited by his alliance with Banzer (and perhaps by his own new convictions), the President "refrained" from attempting major transformations. He opposed the complete eradication of the coca leaf, as proposed by the U.S. administration of George H. W. Bush while cooperating with the main thrust of the so-called War on Drugs. He advocated the potential medicinal and industrial use of coca, but achieved very little in the way of concrete results. His repeated pre-electoral statements about "rolling back" the neoliberal policies of his predecessor, Dr. Paz Estenssoro, came to nothing too, as the bulk of the privatization and de-statization reforms remained in place. All in all, Paz "muddled through," Perhaps the high point of the Paz Zamora years on the domestic front had a lot to do with the president itself; it "centered" on the final qualification of Bolivia for the Soccer World Cup in 1993. The education, medical and general services were improved. On the other hand, corruption allegations disrupted his term; these would eventually lead to the jailing of his chief aide and MIR co-founder, Oscar Eid, for drug trafficking connections. He served his full four-year prison sentence. In foreign policy, Paz did successfully negotiate the cession of a sovereign port on the Peruvian coast, although without territorial continuity from Bolivian territory its benefits proved rather limited.