Ángel Víctor Paz Estenssoro (2 October 1907 – 7 June 2001) was a Bolivian politician who served as the 45th president of Bolivia for three nonconsecutive and four total terms from 1952 to 1956, 1960 to 1964 and 1985 to 1989. He ran for president eight times (1947, 1951, 1960, 1964, 1978, 1979, 1980 and 1985) and was victorious in 1951, 1960, 1964 and 1985. His 1951 victory was annulled by a military junta led by Hugo Ballivián, and his 1964 victory was interrupted by the 1964 Bolivian coup d'état. Founding of the MNR and early political years (1941–1952) In 1941 Víctor Paz Estenssoro co-founded (along with Hernán Siles and others) the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (Revolutionary Nationalist Movement, MNR), originally a reformist revolutionary movement and later a centrist party. Paz became an influential member in the cabinet of Colonel Gualberto Villarroel (1943–1946), but was forced out of that government as a result of pressure emanating from Washington. The United States was at the time involved in World War II, and suspected some members of the MNR leadership of harboring pro-fascist sympathies. Paz Estenssoro nonetheless ran for president in 1947, earning 3rd place, and again in 1951, when the MNR surprisingly won the electoral contest, despite the fact that the laws of that time confined the vote to a small, propertied stratum of the citizenry. The elections, however, were unilaterally annulled by the ultra-conservative government of Mamerto Urriolagoitía, and the MNR at that point went underground, coming to power after a popular national revolution the next year. The 1952 Revolution, First Paz Estenssoro government (1952–1956) Among the many important structural reforms adopted by the popular Paz Estenssoro government was the extension of universal suffrage to all adult citizens (natives and illiterates included), the nationalization of the largest tin-mining concerns, and an extensive program of land distribution (agrarian reform). Much of the military, which had served so well the interests of the economic elites prior to the Revolution, was dismantled and re-organized as a virtual arm of the MNR party. Clearly, the idea was to fashion a hegemonic party in the image of Mexico's Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Institutional Revolutionary Party, PRI). The crucial difference between the MNR and PRI was the decidedly de-centralised structure of the country's new military power (i.e., armed workers and peasants), which was largely overseen by the left-wing minority bloc in the MNR, headed by the Bolivian Workers'