According to Alicia Bárcena, executive secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, “Bolivia is one of the few countries that has reduced inequality … the gap between rich and poor has been hugely narrowed.” These economic and social successes have been attained following an alternative route to neoliberalism. Evo Morales’s government did the opposite of what the Washington Consensus recommends: it nationalised hydrocarbons, electricity, telecommunications and mining; renegotiated the presence of direct foreign investment in the country; implemented an expansive fiscal policy and closed borders to the free importation of economically strategic products. The state took 34% of the economy under its control.
