Background
Related to four-time President of Bolivia Víctor Paz Estenssoro [First cousin with his father general of the Bolivian navy: Nestor Paz Galarza].
Related to four-time President of Bolivia Víctor Paz Estenssoro [First cousin with his father general of the Bolivian navy: Nestor Paz Galarza].
Exiled by dictator Hugo Banzer, in 1971 he co-founded in Chile the Revolutionary Left Movement (Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria, MIR), originally a member of the Socialist International. Soon, the MIR attracted the support of a large portion of the Marxist intelligentsia, especially university students. Upon returning to Bolivia in 1978, Paz's MIR cemented an alliance with the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario de Izquierda of former President Hernán Siles. The result was the formation of the Unidad Democrática y Popular (UDP). It was a mutually beneficial pact, since Siles offered everything the MIR lacked (experience and legitimacy with the working class stemming from the 1952 Revolution) while Paz, in turn, provided Siles what he did not have: the support of the university students and younger intellectuals. The UDP participated in the June 1978 elections, with Siles at the head of the ticket and, by all accounts won a plurality. In April, the small rented plane in which Paz and a delegation of UDP politicians were traveling crashed in the Altiplano near La Paz, with the resulting death of all on board except the Vice-Presidential candidate. Paz fled to exile, but returned in 1982, when the military's experiment had run its course and the Bolivian economy was on the verge of collapse. In October 1982 the results of the 1980 elections were upheld to save the country the expense of yet another vote, and Siles was sworn in, with the MIR's Jaime Paz as his Vice-President. By 1985, the government's impotence prompted Congress to call early elections, citing the fact that Siles had been originally elected five years before. Having broken with Siles, the MIR this time ran on its own, led by the ubiquitous Paz as its presidential candidate. Paz finished a respectable third, and the MNR's Víctor Paz Estenssoro was elected president (1985–89). During the 1985-1989 period, the MIR underwent major ideologicl transformations, with Paz and Oscar Eid advocating a break with Marxist notions and with any call for class-based struggle. Paz once more ran for president in May 1989. He finished third. The administration of Jaime Paz was rather successful. He opposed the complete eradication of the coca leaf, as proposed by the U.S. administration of George H. W. Bush while cooperating with the main thrust of the so-called War on Drugs. He advocated the potential medicinal and industrial use of coca, but achieved very little in the way of concrete results.
Divorced from Carmen Pereira Carballo.