Rodrigo Paz allies and Trump links fuel institutional crackdown in Bolivia

Bolivia's Attorney General, Roger Mariaca, was detained without a court order after the United States accused him of tipping off drug traffickers. The underlying investigation points to a network that allegedly used drug money to finance disinformation campaigns in South America.

Bolivian politics has been moving for weeks across terrain where nobody quite knows where it ends. The executive branch arrested the state's attorney general, **Roger Mariaca**, without a court order and on presidential orders, according to reports. It was not an isolated episode. That same day the headquarters of the Public Prosecutor's Office was raided, the officials there were detained, also without a court order, and all documentation in the offices was seized.

## What the attorney general is accused of and why the US made its move

The trigger was an accusation from the United States: the prosecutor was tipping off South American drug traffickers so they could get to safety before being arrested. As a result, Washington suspended his visa, as reported by redbolivision.tv.bo. Mariaca's detention took place a few days later at an airport, and the Santa Cruz prosecutor who was with him at the time was also arrested, according to izquierdaweb.com.

The institutional response did not stop there. A representative of the American embassy phoned members of parliament to pressure them into choosing another attorney general, bypassing the legally established procedure for such cases. Meanwhile, the presidency issued veiled threats to the judiciary, warning that its every move would be watched very closely.

## The Cerimedo affair: from an attempted murder to a drug trafficking network

All of this actually stems from an earlier event. The attempted murder of the partner of Mr **Cerimedo**, an adviser to several right-wing South American presidents. The attempt failed, he was arrested and, since the Bolivian vice president is at odds with the president, the investigation ended up in the hands of a prosecutor willing to investigate it seriously.

Several accusations against Cerimedo emerged from it: attempted murder of his pregnant partner, the use of fake news and bots to fabricate narratives, and illicit enrichment. The serious part came with drug trafficking. According to the audio recordings that have come to light, Cerimedo and the Bolivian government's top anti-drug official were paid **15,000 dollars per plane per month** to clear the way for drug trafficking.

The evidence linked Cerimedo to the **CIA**, the **DEA** and the newly formed **Escudo de las Américas** (Shield of the Americas), and the tentacles reached as far as President **Trump's** son. There were also rumors that they were going to indict the vvife of Bolivia's current president, because there were audio recordings implicating her in the affair.

## The names that appear in the web

Cerimedo was a partner of Mr **zaine** and chief adviser to several right-wing South American presidents who have won elections in the region. Among them, **Javier Milei**, president of Argentina; **Rodrigo Paz Pereida**, president of Bolivia; **Jair Bolsonaro**, former president of Brazil, currently imprisoned over an attempted coup; and **Nasry Asfura**, president of Honduras.

The pattern that emerges recalls operations we have seen before. Drug trafficking money used to finance disinformation campaigns and sway elections in South America. A kind of Iran-Contra, South American style, with the difference that here the audio recordings are on the table and the arrests were made without paperwork.

## What may happen next

The hearing for the woman who was the target of the murder attempt, scheduled for these days, has been suspended. Rumor has it that Cerimedo will soon be released from pretrial detention. And the attorney general, detained without a court order, remains at the center of a standoff between powers that shows no sign of being resolved soon.

I will not be the one to vouch for Bolivia's attorney general. Given the procedural guarantees with which all this has been carried out, one day evidence may surface that he was even involved in the death of Manolete. But it is worth remembering that the accusations against Mariaca come from a foreign administration and that the arrests took place outside the law. In economic terms, that translates into one thing: uncertainty. And uncertainty, in a country that already lives off raw material exports, comes at a high price.