For 14 years, Evo Morales lived in Bolivia’s presidential residence.

Now, finding him means a hilly, four-hour drive to a small town called Lauca Ñ then past a checkpoint and into a compound in the woods, where loyalists protect him from arrest.

A socialist, former activist and union leader, Mr. Morales became a towering figure as Bolivia’s first Indigenous president. Starting with his first term in 2006, he reshaped the political landscape by giving marginalized Bolivians a voice and pouring resources into social programs and public projects.

But Mr. Morales’s bid for a fourth term ended in a disputed election, unrest and a flight into temporary exile. Ahead of the first round of Bolivia’s presidential election on Sunday, he is overseeing a kind of phantom campaign despite being barred from running again by Bolivia’s courts that cited term limits.

He is also being sought for arrest, charged with human trafficking and accused of impregnating a 15-year-old girl when he was president. He has not denied the accusations or that he fathered a child with her. The charge has also not dampened his support among many Bolivians.

“He has earned the respect of the people,” said Edith Mendoza, a 40-year-old mother of three in Isinuta, in central Bolivia. “He is the only president who has been with us.”

Like Mr. Morales, she called the accusations against him politically motivated.

“The opposition parties do not want to let him run because they know that Evo Morales will win,” she said. “They are afraid.”

The current president, once a Morales protégé and now a rival, is not seeking re-election in the coming vote. Another leftist, the Senate president Andrónico Rodríguez, is on the ballot, running against a wealthy, center-right businessman, Samuel Doria Medina, and a conservative former president, Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga.

Barred from running again, Mr. Morales has urged his supporters to cast null votes in protest, a call that his former leftist allies say is a selfish ploy that could swing the election to the right.

“If he is not a candidate, no one else can be a candidate,” said Luis Arce, the current president who is known as Lucho and is a member of the leftist Movement for Socialism party, known by its Spanish acronym, MAS. He said that Mr. Morales was trying “to wear us down, to prevent me from being a candidate, to prevent the MAS from having any chance of governing.”

Mr. Morales, arguing that he remains the best candidate to lead Bolivia, has surrounded himself with his most devoted loyalists at his compound.

“It’s not about protecting Evo,” Mr. Morales said in an interview this week. “It’s about protecting our process and protecting the region.”

At the heart of the enclave, among tents is a weathered office building with a modest office: the former president’s headquarters, where he broadcasts a weekly political radio show. Photographs of Mr. Morales with other regional leftist leaders hang on the walls — Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and Fidel Castro of Cuba — alongside trophies celebrating his work as the leader of Bolivia’s coca plant farmers union.

His first victory in 2005 was the culmination of decades of mobilization by Bolivia’s most marginalized people, said Mr. Arce.

“All those who had been discriminated against, who had been excluded from society and who now, instead of being excluded, took over the government,” he said. “We reduced poverty, we reduced inequalities.”

Mr. Morales served three terms, persuading the courts to let him run a third time through a legal loophole. But his bid for a fourth term in 2019, which critics called unconstitutional, ended with mass protests against him and a security crackdown that caused dozens of deaths and sent the country into a democratic crisis.

Amid allegations of electoral fraud, Mr. Morales briefly left the country.

When a new election was called in 2020, Mr. Morales tapped Mr. Arce, his former finance minister, as the candidate for the MAS. Mr. Arce’s uncontested victory appeared to mark a peaceful transfer of power and a moment of hope after so much upheaval.

That promise has since unraveled. Economic woes — fuel shortages, high inflation and a scarcity of U.S. dollars — led to protests, while Mr. Morales and Mr. Arce split in a bitter fight for control of their party.

The turmoil has cost Mr. Morales support over the years. Romina Solano, a 33-year-old law student in Cochabamba, said she had voted for him in previous elections but now backed Mr. Doria Medina.

She criticized Mr. Morales for seeking a fourth term. “That was the first strike, because I realized that he didn’t accept that we are in a democracy in Bolivia,” she said.

Later she came to believe that Bolivia’s economic gains were largely because of a commodities boom, not his leadership.

“I thought it was because of good governance, but it wasn’t,” she said. “It was a stroke of luck.”

Mr. Morales describes himself as the victim of conspiracy, saying that the president, the Senate, the courts and right-wing politicians are preventing his candidacy in “a coup by the empire against the people.”

He also accuses the United States — “the empire,” as he calls it — of interference, claiming that it helped finance his ouster in 2019.

“Here, unfortunately, there is no democracy,” he said. “Institutions are not respected. There is total persecution. We are like in the times of military dictatorships.”

Mr. Morales still retains some support among voters and members of the MAS, which he left last year. Polls from last year show his support around 12 percent to 18 percent, though that may be higher in rural areas where surveys do not reach.

He argues that if all blank, null and undecided votes went to him, he would lead the polls.

As far as he is concerned, the MAS is nothing without him.

“The plan is for Evo not to have a party,” he said.

Mr. Morales also dismisses the criminal case against him. The woman, now in her 20s, has not pressed charges. Her lawyer said this year that she believes she was being used by the government in its dispute with Mr. Morales, and submitted a statement to court in which she said she was a victim of neither trafficking nor statutory rape.

Asked about the case, Mr. Morales said, “If there is no victim, there is no crime.”

Still, when Mr. Morales travels outside his compound, he moves as fast as 90 miles an hour, weaving through traffic to avoid capture, according to a member of his security team.

He keeps a full schedule, appearing at regional events to rally supporters as if campaigning. This week, motorcycle drivers displayed Bolivian and Indigenous flags on their vehicles, joining his motorcade. Crowds gathered, taking photos, embracing him and chanting his name.

Asked whether he would have done anything differently over the years, Mr. Morales did not directly say. But he made clear that he would not leave Bolivia again.

“Everyone said, ‘Evo’s going to flee to Cuba or Venezuela,’” he said. “I’m fighting here. I have nothing to lose. Just the empire and Lucho’s right-wing government, don’t kill me, that’s all I want.”