Iván Arias

Hernán Iván Arias Durán (né Padilla; born 8 August 1958), often referred to as El Negro, is a Bolivian politician, political analyst, and sociologist serving as mayor of La Paz since 2021. A member of the For the Common Good, of which he is the leader, he previously served as minister of public works from 2019 to 2020 and vice minister of popular participation from 2001 to 2002. A specialist in decentralized public management and indigenous matters, he was the private secretary of Víctor Hugo Cárdenas, the first indigenous vice president, and was part of the team that drafted the Law of Popular Participation, which implemented municipalism in Bolivia through the direct election of local authorities.

Born in La Paz and raised in rural poverty, Arias attended the Juan XXIII Boarding School in Cochabamba, where he was educated in Marxist thought by trade unionist Filemón Escóbar. He graduated as a sociologist from the Higher University of San Andrés. During the military governments of the late 1970s and early 1980s, Arias became a partisan of Escóbar's Workers' Vanguard. For his Marxist activism, he was imprisoned and tortured by the Luis García Meza regime, later fleeing to exile in Sweden, where he abandoned most of his subversive beliefs. Returning to Bolivia, Arias worked for the Peasant Research and Promotion Center and was a member of the Technical Support Team for Educational Reform, later serving as the private secretary of Vice President Víctor Hugo Cárdenas. In the early 1990s, Arias assisted in drafting the Law of Popular Participation, which expanded municipal autonomy and granted the populace suffrage over their local governments. During the administration of Jorge Quiroga, he served as vice minister of popular participation, resigning the post to seek a seat in the Chamber of Deputies, though he failed to attain it.

In the ensuing two decades, Arias reinvented himself as a consultant and political analyst. His unique and humorous style of conveying information gained him widespread notoriety. In 2019, he returned to political life after a seventeen-year hiatus, serving as minister of public works in the transitional administration of Jeanine Áñez. Upon the conclusion of his term, he launched his bid for the La Paz mayoralty. Arias' innovative campaign, described as populist by some observers, won him the election. As mayor, Arias launched public works projects aimed at renovating the capital's infrastructure. Despite attempting to present himself as an apolitical figure interested in "reconciliation" between opposing groups, Arias nonetheless faced numerous legal processes instigated by the ruling Movement for Socialism, actions he denounced as acts of political persecution.