The Presidential Inauguration: Images and Impressions

Bolivia Today © 

Here is a slideshow about the Bolivian presidential inauguration day, on Sunday, November 8, 2020. The images are screenshots taken from the Cadena A live broadcast of the event. They are a chronological visual documentation of the swearing in ceremony of the President and Vice-president.

It was a nice sunny spring day in La Paz. It was an event filled with ceremonial protocol, all too many clumsy moments, some military presence, with what is already typical for Bolivia, heavy ethno-cultural touches, and a somewhat thin presence on the international heavy weights class, such as presidents.

Here are some of my impressions:

The ceremony seemed to strictly follow protocol. It took place in the soon to be the old congressional building known as legislative palace (Palacio Legislativo). The possession was held in the largest assembly hall where the newly elected Congress came together to witness the ceremonial act.

What is now typical for Bolivia, the room was filled with a majority of people with indigenous origin, which reflects the fact that the majority of Bolivians have an indigenous background. At the same time, it was also clear that the same people reflected the mixed nature of that background, judging by the large diversity in complexions, especially of those coming from the cities. 

The ceremony began with the inauguration of the 2020-2021 congressional session. It followed then with the investiture of the President and Vice-president. 

I noticed many awkward moments during the ceremony. Many of the protagonists did not seem to know what to do. For example, VP Choquehuanca had to be stopped at some point before entering the building because he was not paying attention. He was supposed to bow before a flag, but he did not seem to know this. Someone had to stop him and tell him what to do. During the ceremony, the presiding senator did not seem to know when exactly to start speaking, and some of the procedures were clearly new to him. At one moment, Arce did not know whether to sit or stand. These were just very brief moments, but because they were so many, they stand out in my memory.

Concerning the main actors, VP Choquehuanca seemed to me to have given a very long speech with presidential character. After Arce was sworn in, he sat besides Choquehuanca. The VP, who is the Congress' president, spoke mainly of the indigenous culture. He basically said the indigenous people finally had arrived at what is a new beginning. They will leave behind the colonial state to establish a new state based on what he called the "millenarian" wisdom of the indigenous people. That means, according to him, that life will be brought back to "balance" by living in harmony with nature, other countries, and Bolivians themselves. He mentioned many Aymaran principles (he is an Aymara man), which, according to him, have to this day guided the lives of Aymaran people.

The speech President Arce gave, was a bit strange. He spend almost half of his time almost chronicling everything that went wrong since October 2019 placing the blamed squarely on the Anez government. He did not mention though the electoral fraud nor did he mention any part the MAS might had played in the crisis. What he did say, in one part of the speech, was that his government was going to amend the mistakes made and continue with the work being done up to now.