U.S. efforts to shore up conservative Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz’s troubled, almost year-long tenure recently took a bizarre turn. Measures taken to protect one of Washington’s agents have gone to extraordinary lengths, signaling hyped-up U.S. determination to ward off social revolution in Bolivia.
Argentinian Fernando Cerimedo and his paramour, Nadia Beller, were close advisors of the newly-elected Paz and his family, but the couple had a falling-out. Cerimedo allegedly arranged for Beller to be shot, but she survived. Hospitalized, she told reporters about all of her lover’s crimes.
And as it turns out, there are plenty of them, because Cerimedo is no ordinary political consultant. The Miami-based operative co-founded the right-wing outlet La Derecha Diario and, with lobbyist Damián Merlo, the Numen publicity firm. He has credited Brad Parscale, Donald Trump’s former digital director, with teaching him the craft of bots and algorithms.
In 2023, he boasted to Argentina’s La Nación that he controlled “farms” of thousands of troll and bot accounts. When he was arrested for Beller’s attempted murder, investigators reportedly found computer equipment for running such a bot farm at his home, along with hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash.
His alleged handiwork shows up in election after election across the region. He worked on Jair Bolsonaro’s campaigns in Brazil and allegedly helped with Bolsonaro’s failed coup attempt. He helped elect Javier Milei in Argentina that same year. In Chile, he backed the campaign against the 2020 constitutional referendum and allegedly aided José Antonio Kast in 2025.
In Honduras, a former election official says Cerimedo’s voice can be heard on leaked audio discussing stuffing ballot boxes for Nasry Asfura, who had been running third in the polls before he won. He allegedly helped carry Paz to victory in Bolivia and was later photographed with the new president and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. This year, he reportedly advised Keiko Fujimori’s campaign in Peru, and Colombian President Gustavo Petro has accused him of colluding with electoral officials to help Abelardo de la Espriella win.
Some in the Bolivian law enforcement establishment have had their eye on Cerimedo for a while, but it was the failed hit on Beller that brought his operation crashing down. He’s now in prison, charged with narcotrafficking, illicit wealth, attempted murder, and domestic abuse.
Arrests and firings to frustrate investigations
Bolivian Attorney General Roger Mariaca was investigating Cerimedo’s alleged crimes when the U.S. government, on Sept. 28, imposed sanctions on Mariaca and 13 other prosecuting officials. Bolivian police arrested Mariaca on Oct. 1, with help from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. He too is now in prison, charged with narcotrafficking and money laundering. He may be extradited to the United States.
Bolivia’s Legislative Assembly has the power to install and dismiss an attorney general, and allegations are circulating that a U.S. official paid Legislative Assembly members to approve Mariaca’s removal from office.
The deposed A.G. claims the U.S. and Paz moved against him because the Trump administration wants to end his investigation of Cerimedo. Former President Evo Morales agrees.
Meanwhile, Paz, returning to Bolivia after addressing the UN General Assembly on Sept. 24, made a three-day stopover in Boca Raton, Fla. There’s so far no explanation or indication of why, but Mar-a-Lago isn’t far away.
Vice President Edmand Lara normally presides over the Legislative Assembly, but he was in Spain when Mariaca was arrested. A substitute Assembly president on Oct. 2 approved both Mariaca’s removal and appointment of a replacement attorney general—big moves for a temporary stand-in to be authorizing.
Lara reported that, while in Spain, the “police…warned him of a plan to plant false evidence and arrest him.” He had already claimed that U.S. agents had participated in Mariaca’s arrest. Having returned to Bolivia, he accused the Assembly of “violating the principle of the presumption of innocence.” He eventually certified the new attorney general, however.
The aim of these U.S.-assisted shenanigans, it would appear, is to return Cerimedo to his role as a U.S. agent. As detailed above and in previous reporting, the U.S. government, intervening in the region’s elections and more, has relied on Cerimedo’s arsenal of bots and social media, his right-wing news service, and the tight relations he has with regional powerbrokers.
Cerimedo, a fixer for all time, was also a conduit for huge sums of money. He orchestrated lobbyists in the United States and contributed much to successful U.S. efforts to install right-wing governments in Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Honduras, Peru, and Bolivia. And for all that work, Southern Florida’s right-wing émigré community has spared no pains in honoring Cerimedo.
Revolutionary possibilities
The Paz government works to fulfill the expectations of Bolivia’s upper classes and of its overseers in Washington. From the colonial era on, foreign powers, joined later by the United States, exploited Bolivia’s strategically-important natural resources.
Long subjected to class-and-ethnic-based oppression, and to extreme poverty, Bolivia’s majority population has resisted, to the point even of revolutionary stirrings. This was the scenario for Cerimedo’s activities.
The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy, released late last year, announced a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. It pledged to “restore American pre-eminence in the western hemisphere” and to “deny non-hemispheric competitors,” China above all, “the ability…to own or control strategically vital assets” in the region.
According to the Oakland Institute, the compliant Paz “opened the mining sector [and] its vast resources of lithium, silver, and tin to U.S. corporate interests.” Bolivia commands “about 30% of global resources” of lithium.
That Bolivia has “$2 billion in contracts with Chinese and Russian firms to extract lithium” suggests difficulties ahead for U.S. ambitions. A leading impediment, no doubt, would be the rebelliousness of oppressed Bolivians.
In May and June 2026, “transport workers, miners, teachers, the Bolivian Workers’ Center, and other workers” protested massively against “[a]usterity measures, public spending cuts, the privatization of state enterprises, along with tax cuts for large-scale corporate projects.”
Observer Lena Souza suggests the Paz government was “up against the ropes” and that the creation of more than 100 highway blockades throughout the nation represented a “general strike.” The uprising ultimately failed, however.
Memories of success
The U.S. and Bolivian governments most certainly took comfort from the mobilization’s fault lines: lack of centralized coordination, divisions among protesting groups, their separate negotiations with the government, and their “vacillation.”
U.S. officials likely approved of the Bolivian government’s repressive measures and criminalization of rebels as narcotraffickers. Even so, “millions of people began to question the very legitimacy of the government,” and Bolivians retained their “enormous capacity for struggle,” according to Souza.
It’s likely that, in the end, oppressed Bolivians harbor an awareness of past revolutionary successes, also that such awareness strengthens their zeal for real change. It seems likely that, what with attitudes like these, aggressive U.S. intrusions aimed at protecting Fernando Cerimedo are extremely unwelcome in their viewpoint.
To explain: For 10 years or so following 2006, Bolivia’s government achieved much under the leadership of President Evo Morales and his Movement Toward Socialism party (MAS). That experience may still incentivize oppressed Bolivians.
Academic and writer Jorge Majfud conveniently enough provides a summary of the Morales years. He cites “poverty reduced by 25%, extreme poverty reduced by 43%…large increase in the minimum wage…high level of international reserves, [and] unprecedented economic growth.” He notes a marked decrease in economic inequality, a 45% increase in social spending over seven years, gas and oil revenues shifted to the public sector via nationalization, and the “highest foreign direct investment in South America.”
The effort lapsed, though, as MAS leaders could not overcome difficult realities beyond their control, among them: lowered prices on the world market for the oil and natural gas whose export paid for social services, exhausted natural gas deposits, and the resulting lack of dollars for servicing loans and purchasing fuel and basic household supplies.
Planners partially filled the void with foreign currency reserves, and these were soon exhausted. Difficulties culminated in a U.S.-assisted coup taking place in 2019.
It’s true also that MAS achievements fell victim to divisions, schism, and corruption. Nevertheless, revolutionary strivings did bear fruit, and that’s a reality informing oppressed Bolivians now. Surely, their will to confront U.S. tricks and perversions and U.S. imperialism itself prevails still.
No paywalls at People’s World
We hope you appreciated this article. At People’s World, we believe news and information should be free and accessible to all, but we need your help. Our journalism is free of corporate influence and paywalls because we are totally reader-supported. Only you, our readers and supporters, make this possible. If you enjoy reading People’s World and the stories we bring you, please support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today. Thank you!
CONTRIBUTOR
