Palenque, Carlos (1944–1997)

The Bolivian businessman and presidential candidate Carlos Palenque (June 28, 1944–March 9, 1997) challenged the political establishment through his party, Conciencia de la Patria (Conscience of the Fatherland, CONDEPA). Palenque was a musician and broadcast announcer before buying Radio Metropolitana and Channel 4 and then forming Radio y Televisión Popular (RTP) in 1985. His entry into politics came after a dispute with the government in which RTP was closed following the broadcast of an interview of Palenque with Roberto Suárez, the country's principal narcotics trafficker. He then founded CONDEPA, which gained substantial support from the indigenous underclass that constituted his main television audience. Alongside Johnny Fernandez's Unidad Cívica Solidaridad (UCS), CONDEPA marked the entry of anti-establishment, personalistic, and populist-style parties into Bolivia's political system and the beginning of a downward trend for the country's traditional parties.

CONDEPA consistently won local elections in the La Paz Department, including the huge yet poor municipality of El Alto, and earned modest results in the national elections of 1989, 1993, and 1997. Palenque's best showing in the presidential contests came in 1997, when he earned 17 percent of the vote in elections that took place shortly after he died of a heart attack. Taking twenty-two seats in the congress, the party formed part of President Hugo Banzer's governing coalition for a short time. However, it suffered without Palenque's charismatic leadership and eventually collapsed in 2002, when it gained no seats at all. Evo Morales's Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS; Movement to Socialism) largely supplanted CONDEPA's appeal to the Aymara indigenous community.

See alsoBolivia, Political Parties: Overview .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gamarra, Eduardo A. "Municipal Elections in Bolivia." In Urban Elections in Democratic Latin America, edited by Henry A. Dietz and Gil Shidlo. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1998.

Van Cott, Donna Lee. "From Exclusion to Inclusion: Bolivia's 2002 Elections." Journal of Latin American Studies 35 (2003): 751-775.

                                      Robert R. Barr