Protests erupted in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, this week and continue at press time in response to the socialist government arresting the region’s governor, right-wing opposition leader Luis Fernando Camacho.
A judge sentenced the 43-year-old lawyer, who has long been at odds with the socialist government, to four months in “pre-trial detention” in Bolivia’s Chonchocoro maximum security prison on December 30 on “terrorism” charges. “Pre-trial detention” means the government does not have to prove that Camacho committed any crimes to imprison him for that amount of time.
Protesters have flooded the province’s cities demanding Camacho’s freedom after the leader proclaimed his arrest a “kidnapping.” Truckers joined the protests this week, blocking the highways of Bolivia’s farming region and economic engine with hundreds of trucks. The farming province of Santa Cruz is considered to be the economic engine of Bolivia.
On Monday, a group of peaceful women took the streets of Santa Cruz throughout the day to demand the liberation of Camacho, setting up a vigil in front of the local Police Command.
“The Governor has been brutally kidnapped,” said Fátima Jordán, Camacho’s wife, who participated in the women’s march.
The Bolivian police have responded to the peaceful protesters by spraying tear gas at them, with some protesters accusing the police of orchestrating “self-attacks” that have caused damages and burnt vehicles in the region.
Protesters have responded by attacking the police with fireworks.
The Santa Cruz Civic Committee accused the socialist government of President Luis Arce on Sunday of establishing a “state terrorism regime” against the protesters through the “irrational use of force” against them.
Outside of Bolivia, a group of Bolivians held a peaceful motorbike caravan this week through the streets of Manhattan, New York, culminating in Times Square, to express their support of Camacho.
The Bolivian government is accusing Camacho of allegedly having “staged a coup” in 2019 by protesting former Bolivian President Evo Morales. At the time, Morales had served since 2006, which should have term-limited him, and had forced the courts to allow him to run for president unconstitutionally in 2019. Pro-Morales courts ruled that not allowing him on the ballot because he had already served three terms as president violated Morales’ human rights.
Morales voluntarily resigned in November 2019 after evidence presented by the Organization of American States (OAS) indicated irregularities in vote counting favoring the socialist. Following his resignation, Morales, alongside a group of cabinet members from his Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) political party, fled Bolivia to Mexico.
Despite the evidence of electoral fraud presented against Morales – and his voluntary departure – the former socialist president claimed to have been the victim of a “coup,” of which the protests Camacho partially led were allegedly a part.
“I lament this civic coup, with some sectors of the police, for uniting to attack democracy, social peace, with intimidation of the Bolivian people,” Morales said during his resignation. Polls conducted at the time showed that 70 percent of Bolivians believed that Morales’ resignation was not a “coup,” but rather, the result of “social unrest.”
The mass fleeing of the nation’s political elite resulted in then-Senator Jeanine Áñez becoming president, as she was the highest-ranking person in the presidential line of succession still in the country. Áñez is a conservative Christian and opposes the MAS party. She chose not to be on the ballot for the 2020 election, resulting in the MAS returning to power and immediately imprisoning her for allegedly staging a “coup.” Áñez’s family accuses the MAS government of routinely beating and torturing her in prison.
In this March 13, 2021 file photo, standing behind bars, Bolivia’s former interim President Jeanine Anez speaks to an unidentified woman at a police station jailhouse, in La Paz, Bolivia. The United States said Saturday, March 27, 2021, that it is concerned about increasingly ″anti-democratic behavior and the politicization of the legal system” in Bolivia following the arrests of officials from the country’s former interim government. (Juan Karita, File/AP)
In a handwritten letter written by Camacho and published on social media on Sunday, Camacho, who suffers from the autoimmune disorder Churg-Strauss syndrome, stated that Bolivia’s socialist president Luis Arce would be directly responsible if something were to happen to him.
“Whether it is due to my illness or any other reason that causes my death, this will have a first and last name: Luis Arce Catacora,” the letter reads.
Camacho’s lawyers requested that the Santa Cruz governor be transferred to a health center so that he could receive the daily medical attention that his condition requires after reports of Camacho having suffered two health incidents over the weekend surfaced on Monday.
Juan Carlos Limpias, the director of Bolivia’s prison system, claimed on Monday that Camacho was receiving appropriate medical treatment in his cell room.
Arce, who had not publicly commented on Camacho’s arrest at the time it occurred, claimed during an interview given to the far-left Brazilian newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo published on Wednesday that Camacho’s “involvement” in the alleged coup against Evo Morales was “evident.”
“Camacho refused to attend the four [court] citations. Today, there are videos on the networks in which he confesses to having participated in the plan to put Áñez in office,” Arce said to the Brazilian newspaper. “And as if that were not enough, everyone saw him on the terrace of the Burnt Palace [Bolivia’s presidential offices] with the Bible in hand. The evidence of his involvement is evident.”
Arce, who was in Brazil for the inauguration of hardline socialist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s third presidential term, claimed that he would present Lula with a hypothesis allegedly involving former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro in the 2019 Morales affair.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, right, and Bolivia’s President Luis Arce pose for photos during a bilateral meeting at Itamaraty Palace the day after Lula’s inauguration in Brasilia, Brazil, Monday, January 2, 2023. (Eraldo Peres/AP)
The government of Bolivia announced on Monday that it would introduce a formal complaint to the governments of Spain and Chile after accusing Spanish populist party VOX Senator Víctor González and Chilean Republican Party Congressman Luis Fernando Sánchez of “interference,” after both lawmakers traveled to Bolivia to protest against Camacho’s arrest.