Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada

Gonzalo Daniel Sánchez de Lozada Sánchez Bustamante (born 1 July 1930), often called Goni, is a Bolivian businessman and politician. He was the 61st president of Bolivia, serving from 1993 to 1997 and again from 2002 to 2003. He was a leader of the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (MNR) and earlier served as minister of planning and coordination from 1986 to 1988.

Born in La Paz into a political family, Sánchez de Lozada was raised in the United States and studied philosophy at the University of Chicago. This upbringing gave him a distinctive Midwestern accent when speaking Spanish. He built a large fortune as the founder, president, and main shareholder of the Southern Mining Company, Bolivia’s top private mining firm. He entered politics during the country’s return to democracy, representing Cochabamba in the Chamber of Deputies from 1979 to 1980 and 1982 to 1985, and in the Senate from 1985 to 1989, where he briefly served as its president in 1985.

As planning minister under Víctor Paz Estenssoro, Sánchez de Lozada became known for applying shock therapy to fix Bolivia’s economic crisis, slashing hyperinflation from nearly 25,000 percent to single digits within weeks. This work helped him inherit the MNR leadership from Paz Estenssoro. He shifted the party toward neoliberalism, bringing middle and upper classes into its base and moving away from its peasant origins. His ideology, called Gonism, became distinct from traditional movimientismo.

He ran for president in 1989 and won the most votes but lost the congressional runoff to Jaime Paz Zamora. In 1993, he was elected president with an ambitious reform program. His administration was one of the most significant since the National Revolution, passing major laws to decentralize power to local governments, reform education, and attract foreign investment. More controversially, he partially privatized large state-owned companies, selling them to foreign investors. He won a second, nonconsecutive term in 2002. By 2003, his government was paralyzed by protests during the Bolivian gas conflict. His crackdown on demonstrators led to the Black October massacre, after which he resigned and fled abroad.

Historians see Sánchez de Lozada as the key figure of Bolivia’s neoliberal era (1985–2005). His legacy is deeply disputed, especially due to his second term, and he is tied to a political and economic model that has been widely criticized. Since leaving office, he has faced multiple criminal cases in Bolivia and was found liable in the US for extrajudicial killings under the Alien Tort Statute.