Jorge Quiroga

President of Bolivia from 2001 to 2002

Jorge Quiroga OCA OSP
Official portrait by Antonio Suárez, 2001

62nd President of Bolivia
In office 7 August 2001 – 6 August 2002 Acting: 1 July 2001 – 7 August 2001
Vice President	Vacant
Preceded by	Hugo Banzer
Succeeded by	Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada
36th Vice President of Bolivia
In office 6 August 1997 – 7 August 2001
President	Hugo Banzer
Preceded by	Víctor Hugo Cárdenas
Succeeded by	Carlos Mesa
Minister of Finance
In office 17 March 1992 – 12 November 1992
President	Jaime Paz Zamora
Preceded by	David Blanco Zabala
Succeeded by	Juan Pablo Zegarra
Bolivia's international delegate to denounce human rights violations
In office 2 December 2019 – 8 January 2020
President	Jeanine Áñez
Preceded by	Position established
Succeeded by	Position abolished

Personal details
Born	Jorge Fernando Arturo Quiroga Ramírez (1960-05-05) 5 May 1960 (age 63) Cochabamba, Bolivia
Political party	Libre 21 (2020–present)
Other political affiliations	Nationalist Democratic Action (before 2005) Social Democratic Power (2005–2009) Christian Democratic Party (2014–2018)
Spouse	Virginia Gillum
Children	4
Alma mater	Texas A&M University St. Edward's University
Signature

Jorge Fernando Tuto Quiroga Ramírez (born 5 May 1960) is a Bolivian industrial engineer and politician who served as the 62nd president of Bolivia from 2001 to 2002. A former member of Nationalist Democratic Action, he previously served as the 36th vice president of Bolivia from 1997 to 2001 under Hugo Banzer and as minister of finance under Jaime Paz Zamora in 1992. During the interim government of Jeanine Áñez, he was briefly appointed from 2019 to 2020 as the country's international spokesperson to denounce alleged human rights violations by the previous government.

Quiroga was a candidate in the 2005 and 2014 presidential elections, in which President Evo Morales was elected for a first and third term respectively. In both elections, Quiroga ran on the Christian Democratic Party ticket. In the 2020 presidential election, Quiroga ran as a candidate for the Libre21 coalition, but withdrew his candidacy on 11 October 2020 (seven days prior to the election) in an unsuccessful attempt to unify the Bolivian opposition and prevent the socialist MAS-IPSP candidate Luis Arce from emerging victorious.^[1]

Background and early life

Quiroga was born in Cochabamba. He graduated from Texas A&M University in 1981 with a degree in industrial engineering, becoming the first head of state from that university.^[2] He went on to work for IBM in Austin, Texas^[2] while earning a master's degree in business administration from St. Edward's University. He and his American wife Virginia then moved back to Bolivia.^[2] He has 4 children: Vanessa Elena, Cristina Andrea, Adriana Patricia and Jorge Cristian.

Vice President of Bolivia (1997–2001)

Quiroga was Minister of Finance in 1992.^[3] He was elected as Vice President of Bolivia in 1997 running on the Nationalist Democratic Action ticket with former dictator Hugo Banzer.^[4] At 37, he was the youngest vice president in Bolivia's history.

President of Bolivia (2001–2002)

He became president when Banzer resigned because of aggravated health problems (he died a year following his resignation). Quiroga assumed office as acting president on 1 July 2001 and was sworn in on 7 August, to complete Banzer's five-year mandate.

Soon after becoming president he told a reporter from the New Yorker "We [Bolivia] will be the vital heart of South America.." believing that gas exports would lift the economy, that a long-anticipated transcontinental highway connecting Brazil to Chile would be built passing through the Bolivian city of Cochabamba, and that fibre-optic cables would soon be laid.^[2] He blamed Bolivia's lack of economic progress on hypocrisy on free trade in the United States and Europe, saying "Bolivia is the most open economy in Latin America. Meanwhile, American and European farm subsidies, along with tariffs on textiles and agricultural products, make it impossible for Bolivia to sell its exports in the Global North. They tell us to be competitive while tying our arms behind our backs."^[2] When asked about the Bolivian Water Wars of 2000, he said “A lot of things certainly could have been different along the way, from a lot of different actors. The net effect is that we have a city today with no resolution to the water problem. In the end it will be necessary to bring in private investment to develop the water."^[2]

Post-presidency (2002–present)

Quiroga ran for president in his own right in the 2005 election, as the candidate for a new right-of-center coalition known as Social and Democratic Power (PODEMOS), which included the bulk of Banzer's former ADN organization. His main opponent was the leftist Evo Morales of the Movement Towards Socialism. Morales won the election and Quiroga finished a distant second place, receiving 28.6% of the vote.

He has also worked as a consultant for the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. In 2002, he was honored in a tribute exhibit at his alma mater, Texas A&M University.^[5] He is, as of November 2016, active in the private sector and many international organizations, among them: as vice-president of Club de Madrid with almost 100 former heads of state and government; on the board of Results for Development-R4D in Washington D.C.; as a member of the Inter-American Dialogue and the International Advisory Council of the China Economic Club; and in different capacities on the Global Adaptation Institute, the Foro Iberoamericano and many others.^[6] He has presided FUNDEMOS since 2002, a Bolivian public policy foundation. His areas of expertise are: management of international aid and cooperation for developing countries; macroeconomic policy; constitutional, legal and institutional reforms; private and official external debt restructuring and relief; programs to reduce drug trafficking and cocaine production; and broadly in Latin American public policy, trade, economics, finance and banking, integration, politics and development issues.^[6]

He was appointed as vice president of the Club de Madrid in 2011.^[7]

On 2 December 2019, the interim government of Jeanine Áñez appointed Quiroga as an international delegate on a special mission to denounce alleged human rights violations by the ousted Morales administration.^[8] He held the post for just over a month, before resigning on 8 January 2020 in order to announce his presidential candidacy for the snap elections to be held later that year.^[9] Throughout the election cycle, he remained around sixth place reaching between 1 and 2% in opinion polling and never surpassing 7%. On 11 October, one week before the scheduled election, Quiroga announced he was dropping out of the presidential race. He indicated in his withdrawal announcement that he wished to prevent an outright victory of Luis Arce of the Movement for Socialism party in the first electoral round by consolidating the right around Carlos Mesa.^[10]

He currently holds the role of a senior advisor at New Direction, a think tank affiliated with the European Conservatives and Reformists Party in the European Parliament.^[11]

He supports far-right candidate Javier Milei in 2023 Argentine general election.^[12]

References

^ "A una semana de las elecciones, Tuto Quiroga declina su candidatura a la presidencia". Los Tiempos. 11 October 2020. Retrieved 22 February 2021.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f William Finnegan (8 April 2002). "Leasing The Rain". The New Yorker. Retrieved on Feb. 15, 2007
^ "Globalisation and the reform of the Bolivian state, 1985-2005" (PDF). CORE.
^ "Vicepresidencia". www.vicepresidencia.gob.bo. Archived from the original on 16 April 2009. Retrieved 22 February 2021.
^ "Tribute Exhibit". www.aggienetwork.com. Retrieved 22 February 2021.
^ ^a ^b "President Jorge Quiroga | One Young World". www.oneyoungworld.com. Retrieved 22 February 2021.
^ "Tuto Quiroga elegido 'vice' del club de madrid". El Día. 30 November 2001. Retrieved 20 January 2020.
^ Bolivia, Opinión (2 December 2019). "Añez designa a Tuto como delegado internacional por los DDHH". Opinión Bolivia (in Spanish). Retrieved 20 February 2022.
^ "Tuto renuncia al cargo de delegado presidencial ante instancias internacionales". Correo del Sur (in Spanish). Retrieved 20 February 2022.
^ "Quiroga, Ex-President of Bolivia, Drops Out of Race - Communal News". Retrieved 19 October 2020.
^ "About". New Direction. Retrieved 11 July 2023.
^ "El Nobel Vargas Llosa y los expresidentes Rajoy, Duque y Piñera piden el voto para el ultraderechista Milei en Argentina". 12 November 2023.

External links

Jorge Quiroga at the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB) (in Spanish)
Member profile at The Dialogue
Profile at the BBC
thebatt
Bolivia's Precarious Upcoming Election-Council on Hemispheric Affairs Archived 20 July 2008 at the Wayback Machine