Media Luna

'extended half-moon') refers to a group of four departments – Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando, and Tarija – in Bolivia which are home to a greater proportion of opponents to the national government led by Evo Morales and the Movement for Socialism (MAS) than the rest of the country.

In contrast to the predominantly Indigenous Andean (Quechua and Aymara) populations of the Andean region such as La Paz and Cochabamba, the departments in the Media Luna are majority mestizo, as well as being made up of the remaining 26 groups of lowland indigenes with white minorities, specifically in Santa Cruz de la Sierra.

The term media luna was coined soon after the election of Evo Morales to designate the mostly eastern-located departments that objected to the nationalization and redistribution of natural gas that is a major natural resource in the region and the policy of land reform that would be most vigorously enacted in those regions.

Cochabamba's prefect, Manfred Reyes Villa endorsed the other Media Luna governors' proposals for departmental autonomy.

[2] Following the Porvenir Massacre, Pando's opposition prefect Leopoldo Fernández, who was arrested and detained for his suspected involvement in the massacre of at least 20 peasants, was replaced by an interim prefect from the military in September 2008.