Carlos Mesa

Through his father, José de Mesa, he is of Spanish descent; his grandfather, José Mesa Sánchez, emigrated to Bolivia from Alcalá la Real in 1910.

Carlos Diego de Mesa Gisbert (born 12 August 1953) is a Bolivian historian, journalist, and politician who served as the 63rd president of Bolivia from 2003 to 2005.

Carlos Mesa was born on 12 August 1953 in La Paz.

Between 1959 and 1970, Mesa completed primary and began secondary studies at the all-boys private Catholic and Jesuit San Calixto School in the Següencoma barrio of La Paz.

In 1970, he traveled abroad to Spain, completing his high school education at the San Estanislao de Kotska School in Madrid.

After graduating, Mesa entered the Complutense University of Madrid, pursuing majors in political science and letters.

During his stay there, in 1974, he directed the UMSA's Faculty of Humanities magazine.

At the age of twenty-two, Mesa married Patricia Flores Soto, though they divorced three years later.

On 12 July 1976, while still a student of the UMSA, Mesa, along with Pedro Susz and Amalia de Gallardo, helped found the Bolivian Cinematheque.

With the support of Renzo Cotta of the Center of Cinematographic Orientation and La Paz Mayor Mario Mercado, the group secured a small amount of space on the fifth floor of the La Paz House of Culture in order to start their film archive.

The first addition to the collection was a short film directed by Jorge Ruiz Laredo about the violinist Jaime Laredo, which was donated by the pianist Raúl Barragán.

After three years, he returned to Bolivia, where he enrolled in the Higher University of San Andrés (UMSA), graduating with a degree in literature in 1978.

Two years after that, on 28 March 1980, he married Elvira Salinas Gamarra, a psychologist and environmental consultant with whom he has two children: Borja Ignacio and Guiomar.

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.

Along with Susz, Mesa served as the cinematheque's executive director from its foundation until 1985, remaining a member of its board of directors after that.

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.

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.

Due to his heritage, in 2005, the city's council unanimously designated Mesa as the adoptive son of the municipality.

His mother, Teresa Gisbert, was of Catalan descent; her father and mother emigrated from Barcelona and Alicante.

Together, de Mesa and Gisbert were two of the most prominent Bolivian architects, historians, and museologists of their time.

He has three younger siblings: Andrés, Isabel, and Teresa Guiomar.

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.

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.

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.