Carlos Mesa

Carlos Mesa OCA OSP OMAA OMM
Official portrait, 2004
63rd President of Bolivia
In office 17 October 2003 – 9 June 2005
Vice President	Vacant
Preceded by	Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada
Succeeded by	Eduardo Rodríguez Veltzé
37th Vice President of Bolivia
In office 6 August 2002 – 17 October 2003
President	Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada
Preceded by	Jorge Quiroga
Succeeded by	Álvaro García Linera
Leader of Civic Community
Incumbent
Assumed office 13 November 2018
Preceded by	Alliance established
Official Representative of Bolivia for the Maritime Claim
Ad honorem
In office 28 April 2014 – 1 October 2018[a]
President	Evo Morales
Preceded by	Position established
Succeeded by	Position dissolved
Personal details
Born	Carlos Diego de Mesa Gisbert (1953-08-12) 12 August 1953 (age 70) La Paz, Bolivia
Political party	Revolutionary Left Front (2018–present)
Other political affiliations	Independent (before 2018)
Spouses	Patricia Flores Soto ​ ​ (m. 1975; div. 1978)​ Elvira Salinas Gamarra ​ ​ (m. 1980)​
Children	Borja Ignacio Guiomar
Parents	José de Mesa Teresa Gisbert
Education	San Calixto School San Estanislao de Kotska School
Alma mater	Complutense University of Madrid Higher University of San Andrés
Occupation	Historian journalist politician
Awards	List of awards and honors
Signature
Website	carlosdmesa.com bibliotecavirtualcarlosdmesa.com
Carlos Mesa's voice Academic presentation delivered to a session of the Argentine Council for International Relations, 13 March 2019.

Carlos Diego de Mesa Gisbert^[b] (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈkaɾlos ˈðjeɣo ˈmesa xisˈβeɾt] ^ⓘ; born 12 August 1953) is a Bolivian historian, journalist, and politician who served as the 63rd president of Bolivia from 2003 to 2005. As an independent politician, he previously served as the 37th vice president of Bolivia from 2002 to 2003 under Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada and was the international spokesman for Bolivia's lawsuit against Chile in the International Court of Justice from 2014 to 2018. A member of the Revolutionary Left Front, he has served as leader of Civic Community, the largest opposition parliamentary group in Bolivia, since 2018.

Born in La Paz, Mesa began a twenty-three-year-long journalistic career after graduating from university. He rose to national fame in 1983 as the host of De Cerca, in which he interviewed prominent figures of Bolivian political and cultural life. His popular appeal led former president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada of the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (MNR) to invite him to be his running mate in the 2002 presidential election. Though Mesa's moderate left-wing sympathies contrasted with centre-right policies of the MNR, he accepted the offer, running as an independent in a hotly contested electoral campaign. The Sánchez de Lozada-Mesa ticket won the election, and, on 6 August, Mesa took charge of a largely ceremonial office that carried with it few formal powers save for guaranteeing the constitutional line of succession. Shortly into his term, conflict between Sánchez de Lozada and Mesa arose. By October 2003, the increasingly tense situation surrounding the ongoing gas conflict caused a definitive break in relations between the president and vice president, leading the latter to announce his withdrawal from government after clashes between protesters and military personnel led to several deaths. Crucially, Mesa opted not to resign from his vice-presidential post and succeeded to the presidency upon Sánchez de Lozada's resignation.

Mesa assumed office with broadly popular civic support but leading a government without a party base and devoid of organic parliamentary support left him with little room to maneuver as his public policy proposals were severely restricted by the legislature—controlled by traditional parties and increasingly organized regional and social movements spearheaded by the cocalero activist and future president Evo Morales. As promised, he held a national referendum on gas which passed with high margins on all five counts. Nonetheless, widespread dissatisfaction resurged, and his call for a binding referendum on autonomies and the convocation of a constituent assembly to reform the Constitution failed to quell unrest. Mesa resigned in June 2005, though not before ensuring that the heads of the two legislative chambers renounced their succession rights, facilitating the assumption of the non-partisan Supreme Court judge Eduardo Rodríguez Veltzé to the presidency. With that, Mesa withdrew from active politics and returned his focus to various media projects and journalistic endeavors. In 2014, despite previous animosity, President Evo Morales appointed him as the international spokesman for the country's maritime lawsuit against Chile before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), a position he held until the final ruling at The Hague in 2018.

Mesa's work for the maritime cause propelled him back into the national consciousness, and he soon emerged as a viable alternative to Morales as a contender for the presidency, even surpassing the president in electoral preference polls. Shortly after the ruling by the ICJ, Mesa announced his presidential candidacy. In the 2019 election, Mesa was defeated by Morales, who failed to garner a majority but won a wide enough plurality to avoid a runoff. However, irregularities in the preliminary vote tally prompted Mesa to denounce electoral fraud and call for mass demonstrations, ultimately ending in Morales' resignation and an ensuing political crisis. The following year, snap elections were held, but numerous postponements and an unpopular transitional government hampered Mesa's campaign, resulting in a first-round loss to Movement for Socialism (MAS) candidate Luis Arce. Mesa emerged from the election as the head of the largest opposition bloc in a legislature that does not hold a MAS supermajority for the first time in over a decade.

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