The main civil organizations of Santa Cruz, a prosperous agricultural region of eastern Bolivia, announced on Thursday a 24-hour work stoppage and a road blockade, in repudiation of the arrest of the local governor and former presidential candidate.
The measures, which will begin early on Friday, are a new episode of the crisis that began in 2019 with the resignation of then-President Evo Morales and have as a background the desire for autonomy of the territory with respect to the national government, based in western La Paz.
“Departmental civic strike of 24 hours is declared as of zero hours on Friday, December 30, 2022, demanding the immediate release of the governor of the department,” said a resolution of the Pro Santa Cruz Committee, the agglutinator of these groups, after an assembly .
In addition, he reported that he supports the decision of a provincial civic committee to block the roads that connect the region with the rest of the country, supposedly to prevent new “kidnappings” of citizens, leaders or authorities of the department.
Hours earlier, the Bolivian prosecutor’s office requested six months of preventive detention for the governor of Santa Cruz, Luis Fernando Camacho, while the legal team of the politician arrested on Wednesday, under the charge of “terrorism”, denounced obstruction of justice.
Camacho, who was third in the 2020 presidential election, is being held in La Paz after the police captured him in Santa Cruz in an operation with tear gas that his relatives described as “kidnapping” and in which, according to them, there were shots.
If the prosecutor’s request is accepted, Camacho would be sent to a jail in El Alto, a municipality near La Paz, prosecutor Omar Mejillones said in the document, who warned of an alleged flight risk because the detainee “does not have a habitual address ” and has “different passports”.
Mejillones indicated that, in addition to the charge for terrorism, Camacho has several open processes for crimes such as breach of duties, resolutions contrary to the Constitution, drug trafficking, insulting national symbols, discrimination and racism.
The arrest is related to the overthrow in 2019 of former President Morales, of the Movimiento Al Socialismo (MAS) party, the same organization as the current chief executive Luis Arce, an event for which former president Jeanine Áñez, accused of orchestrating the coup, remains imprisoned. .
That year, after a series of protests against alleged electoral fraud by Morales, who had been in power since 2006, the Armed Forces withdrew their support and the ruler fled to Mexico thanks to the asylum offered by the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Camacho, former leader of the Pro Santa Cruz Civic Committee, a conservative bloc that has led the demands for autonomy for years, came to ask for Morales’s resignation through a letter that he delivered at the presidential palace.
Accusation against Camacho is “invented”
Earlier on Thursday, Camacho’s legal representatives denounced obstruction of justice after his arrest, which has raised tension between the government and the politician’s base in the eastern region where there were violent protests.
“The Bolivian judiciary kidnapped by the MAS does not allow the lawyers of our leader Luis Fernando Camacho to carry out the respective process to present a freedom action,” said the governor’s team through their Twitter account.
In a video, one of his representatives, who did not identify himself, explained that the judiciary argues that it cannot receive the constitutional appeal because the prosecutor’s office in Santa Cruz was burned in a protest by supporters of the governor, a lawyer and right-wing civic leader, 43 years old.
However, hours later, deputy María René Álvarez, from the governor’s political alliance, Creemos, said that the appeal had been filed in a court in La Paz.
After the arrest, dozens of protesters went to the airport of the capital of the border department with Brazil and Paraguay on Wednesday to prevent him from being transferred by air to La Paz. Then they burned the prosecutor’s office and dozens of vehicles in its surroundings.
Already with Camacho in the Andean city, where the headquarters of the national government is located, his communication team published a statement in which the politician says that the accusations against him lack truth and that he is proud to be part of the fight for the “Freedom and Democracy” in Bolivia.
The prosecutor’s office has denied the arrest was a “kidnapping” or was politically motivated, while Morales said Wednesday that the detention will bring justice after three years.
In response to the request for preventive detention, former President Carlos Mesa (2003-2005), second in the elections won by Arce, told Reuters on Thursday that the flight risk argued by Mejillones is “nonsense” and also rejected the main charges against the governor of Santa Cruz.
“The figure of a coup d’état is invented, spurious and non-existent, much less the figure of terrorism,” he declared.
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