The Reckoning Comes for Bolivia's Former Strongman

Power in La Paz has always been a volatile affair, but political survival rarely excuses extrajudicial violence indefinitely. Seventeen years after a deadly hotel assault in Santa Cruz, Bolivian authorities have launched a formal criminal investigation into former president Evo Morales and his former vice-president, Álvaro García Linera.

The case stems from an April 2009 operation in which police stormed a hotel, killing three European citizens: Eduardo Rózsa Flores, Michael Dwyer, and Árpád Magyarosi. Two survivors, Mario Tadic and Elöd Tóásó, were taken into custody and subsequently reported being subjected to severe torture. At the time, the Morales administration dismissed any wrongdoing, insisting that Rózsa Flores led a separatist movement backed by the right-wing economic elite of Santa Cruz. Morales himself made little effort to conceal his involvement, telling reporters during an official visit to Venezuela that he had personally ordered the operation to detain foreign mercenaries.

International bodies took a drastically different view of the operation. In 2021, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights concluded that the Bolivian government had committed state human rights violations during and after the assault. Yet, as is so often the case when state authority is deployed against foreign nationals, accountability was deferred while domestic political fortunes shifted.

The political tide appears to have turned decisively. Prompted by a complaint from opposition lawmakers Tomasa Yarhui and Rodrigo Antonio, acting attorney general José Armando Urioste notified the supreme court of a preliminary probe. Urioste, who had been in his post for just a single week, stated that state prosecutors are gathering evidence regarding alleged crimes of murder, abuse, torture, and unlawful detention against the former head of state.

Morales, who rose to power as Bolivia’s first Indigenous president, now finds his legacy consumed by criminal allegations. Currently in hiding, he evades two active arrest warrants: one concerning his role in inciting 53 days of paralyzing national protests, and another regarding the alleged trafficking of a minor with whom he is said to have fathered a child. While Morales denies all wrongdoing and neither accused man has commented on the latest probe, the fresh momentum behind the 2009 killings inquiry indicates that his past appeals to state security will no longer shield him from judicial prosecution.

Written by Thomas Nussbaumer thomas.nussbaumer@alpineweekly.com