The Liberal Party (

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: ** Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Ca ...

: ''Partido Liberal'', PL) was one of two major political parties in

Bolivia , image_flag = Bandera de Bolivia (Estado).svg , flag_alt = Horizontal tricolor (red, yellow, and green from top to bottom) with the coat of arms of Bolivia in the center , flag_alt2 = 7 × 7 square p ...

in the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. The other was the Conservative Party. The Liberal Party was formally founded in 1883 by

Eliodoro Camacho Eliodoro Camacho (1831–1899) was a noted Bolivian politician, party leader, and presidential candidate. The Eliodoro Camacho Province is named after him. Camacho was born in Inquisivi, Department of La Paz, but grew up in Cochabamba. He founded ...

. The party espoused freedom of religion, a strict separation between church and state, legal acceptance of civil marriages and divorce, and strict adherence to democratic procedures. When the party took power in 1899, it moved the base of the presidency and the

Congress A congress is a formal meeting of the representatives of different countries, constituent states, organizations, trade unions, political parties, or other groups. The term originated in Late Middle English to denote an encounter (meeting of ...

La Paz La Paz (), officially known as Nuestra Señora de La Paz (Spanish pronunciation: ), is the seat of government of the Plurinational State of Bolivia. With an estimated 816,044 residents as of 2020, La Paz is the third-most populous city in Bo ...

, which became the ''de facto'' capital city. The

Supreme Court A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts in most legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, apex court, and high (or final) court of appeal. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...

remained in

Sucre Sucre () is the capital of Bolivia, the capital of the Chuquisaca Department and the 6th most populated city in Bolivia. Located in the south-central part of the country, Sucre lies at an elevation of . This relatively high altitude gives the ...

. To this day, Sucre is the ''de jure'' capital of Bolivia while La Paz acts as the ''de facto'' seat of government. Between 1899 and 1920, all of the Presidents of Bolivia were members of the Liberal Party, supported by the tin-mining oligarchy until the Republican Party took power in a coup in 1920. The last Liberal president was

José Luis Tejada Sorzano José Luis Tejada Sorzano (12 January 1882 – 4 October 1938) was a Bolivian lawyer, economist, and politician who served as the 34th president of Bolivia from 1934 to 1936. The last president to be a member of the Liberal Party, Tejada So ...

, who served between 1934 and 1936. By 1940, however, the party had formed a Concordance with their erstwhile Republican opponents to counter the rising tide of radical or revolutionary parties. A Concordance supported the candidate Enrique Peñaranda. In 1947, the Liberal Party's

Luis Femando Guachalla Luis is a given name. It is the Spanish form of the originally Germanic name or . Other Iberian Romance languages have comparable forms: (with an accent mark on the i) in Portuguese and Galician, in Aragonese and Catalan, while is archa ...

narrowly lost to Enrique Hertzog of the PURS. In the 1951 elections,

Tomás Manuel Elío Tomás may refer to: * Tomás (given name) * Tomás (surname) Tomás is a Spanish and Portuguese surname, equivalent of ''Thomas''. It may refer to: * Antonio Tomás (born 1985), professional Spanish footballer * Belarmino Tomás (1892–1950), ...

ran for the Liberal Party but received far fewer votes than the winner. For the 1966 elections, the Liberal Party was a component of the

Democratic Institutionalist Alliance The Democratic Institutionalist Alliance (Spanish: ''Alianza Institucionalista Democrática'', AID) was an electoral political alliance of the Liberal Party (PL) and the Republican Socialist Unity Party The Republican Socialist Unity Party ( Spanis ...

, with the PURS's Enrique Hertzog as the coalition's presidential candidate. He polled 11,400 votes (01.13%) and came sixth. In 1978 Liberal Party allied with the Nationalist Union of the People and its candidate Juan Pereda. Elections in the Americas : a data handbook / ed. by Dieter Nohlen, Vol. 2. xford .a. Oxford Univ. Press, 2005. P.139. The Liberal Party has had no political power in decades, and its current status is unknown; it is presumed defunct.

Notes

1883 establishments in Bolivia Defunct political parties in Bolivia Liberal parties in Bolivia Political parties established in 1883 {{Bolivia-party-stub

See also

Notes