Jorge Quiroga

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. He went on to work for IBM in Austin, Texas 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. He has 4 children: Vanessa Elena, Cristina Andrea, Adriana Patricia and Jorge Cristian.

Vice President of Bolivia

Quiroga was elected as Vice President of Bolivia in 1997 running on the Nationalist Democratic Action ticket with former dictator Hugo Banzer. At 37, he was the youngest vice president in Bolivia's history.

President of Bolivia

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 July 1, 2001 and was sworn-in on August 7, 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. 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." 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."

Later life

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. 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 boards of the Inter-American Dialogue and Results for Development-R4D in Washington D.C.; as a member of the International Advisory Council of the China Economic Club; and in different capacities on the Global Adaptation Institute, the Foro Iberoamericano and many others. 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.

He is a member and current Vice-President of the Club de Madrid, a group of more than 100 former Presidents and Prime Ministers of democratic countries, which works to promote "Democracy that Delivers".