In Latin America, Autocracy Rises Again

LA PAZ, Bolivia — When he was 46, Rene Paucara voted for Evo Morales, helping elect him as Bolivia’s first indigenous president in 2005.

At 56, Mr. Paucara, a doorman in El Alto, Bolivia’s second-largest city, voted with the majority again, but that time to reject a 2016 referendum to let Mr. Morales seek a fourth term.

Now nearing 60, Mr. Paucara says he is fuming: Mr. Morales has said he will run again anyway. The president has been helped by the courts, which threw out the country’s term limits, describing them as unfair to politicians like Mr. Morales, 58, a leftist who has reshaped Bolivia in his dozen years in power.

Mr. Paucara now fears that if the president wins again next year, he may be well on track to keep the job for life. “He said he’d govern listening to the people, but that’s not the case now,” Mr. Paucara said.

Mr. Morales’s determination to continue governing has echoes elsewhere in the region, where a stable grid of democracies suddenly looks a lot less solid. Corruption scandals have rocked Ecuador, impeachment brought down a president in Brazil and an attempt to remove Peru’s president from office failed by only a slim margin.

In Venezuela, President Nicolás Maduro’s leftist government recently banned the three biggest opposition parties from running in a presidential election this year, following a deadly crackdown against protesters. In Honduras, judges overturned a constitutional ban against re- elections, allowing the right-wing incumbent, President Juan Orlando Hernández, to run again. After widespread protests of the results and calls by the Organization of American States for a new election after allegations of vote- rigging, Mr. Hernández declared victory in December, with the support of the United States.

“It’s undeniable that you’re starting to see authoritarian tendencies in parts of Latin America, leaders that are struggling to let go,” said Oliver Stuenkel, an international rela-