The Presidency
Bolivia's presidential palace faces an elegant plaza near the top of a steep hill in the center of La Paz. In May 2001, the walls of the great hall were lined with sacks of rice and other grains, dried pasta, beans, and also cement, stacked to shoulder height. The president's birthday was in a few days, and the head of state had announced that he did not want any presents. Instead, he requested that well-wishers with means should donate alms for those in need, which the president or his lieutenants would distribute. After the birthday, the sacks were loaded onto the back of military trucks for delivery to poor neighborhoods.Footnote 1
Bolivia's presidency, like that in many poor countries, allows whoever holds the office to play the occasional role of benefactor. The office holds other attractions as well. When it is not storing dried goods, the palace's great hall hosts affairs of state where waiters deliver drinks and hors d'oeuvres on silver trays to ministers, foreign ambassadors, and military brass.
Beyond the perks, there is real power here. Bolivia sits on South America's second-largest reserves of natural gas, which are coveted by its more prosperous neighbors, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and beyond. The current president, Evo Morales, has made headlines around the world by tightening state control over oil and gas resources. Morales's indigenous heritage, his diplomatic flirtations with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, and even his taste for garish sweaters, have kept him in the international media spotlight since his inauguration three years ago.
At the same time, to hold the Bolivian presidency is to be surrounded by constant reminders of one's vulnerabilities. The country has never won a war, but it has lost many. In the palace's cabinet room, a wall map hangs above the president's chair, showing Bolivia's expansive borders in the 1850s. The map highlights the huge chunks of territory taken by Brazil and Paraguay in the 1870s, the loss of the country's Pacific coastline to Chile and Peru in the 1890s, and the vast region of Chaco, lost to Paraguay in Bolivia's last catastrophic war in the 1930s.
And there are more mundane indignities. The president travels around La Paz in a customized BMW, the sides of which are reinforced to provide security fit for a head of state. But the additional armor was not matched by an engine upgrade, and the car struggles in the thin air at 12,000 feet above sea level. Returning to the palace from points further downtown, the driver takes a serpentine course, switching back and forth across the hillsides rather than attempting a more direct route with a steeper ascent. The president, meanwhile, waits out the ride in the backseat.
Fall from Grace
For Bolivia's last president, Eduardo Rodríguez Veltzé, holding his nation's highest office was a path into a personal, professional, and legal wilderness. Whether there is a way out depends partly on Bolivia's unpredictable politics, and partly on whether the U.S. government recognizes Rodríguez's plight as worth rectifying, even if doing so requires owning up to some misdeeds by the U.S. military mission in the country.
Five years ago, Rodríguez was Chief Justice of Bolivia's Supreme Court. Four years ago, he began a seven-month stint as president. Three years ago, in the wake of that service, he was widely regarded to have rescued Bolivian democracy at a particularly dangerous moment, but he was also on the threshold of legal and professional limbo, where he has remained since.
Rodríguez's experience as a successful president and a Supreme Court justice left him, paradoxically, not only unemployable but subject to prosecution for treason. How this came to pass reflects the funhouse nature of politics and justice in South America's most unstable country.
The Presidential Turnstyle
When Evo Morales was sworn in on January 22, 2006, he became Bolivia's sixth president in the last four-and-a-half years. After the death of an incumbent in August 2001 and a one-year caretaker administration by the vice president, Bolivians went to the polls in 2002 and narrowly elected Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, a mining magnate who had previously served as president in the mid-1990s.
Sanchez de Lozada's second term was a failure. After a year, he fled office, and the country, in the face of street protests against his willingness to contract with foreign companies to extract Bolivia's natural gas. The leader of the protests was Morales, who had finished a close second to Sanchez de Losada in the 2002 presidential race.
In October 2003, Sanchez de Lozada's vice president, Carlos Mesa, assumed the presidency. But Mesa proved unwilling to go as far as the protesters demanded in breaking contracts with the foreign energy firms. In early 2005, he submitted his own resignation to Congress, and by May the legislators accepted the offer.
At this point, the constitutional line of succession presented a conundrum. The office of vice president had not been filled after Mesa vacated it, and the leaders of Bolivia's two houses of Congress were next in line for the presidency, followed by the Chief Justice. Both top legislators wanted the presidency, but each was even more objectionable to Morales and his protesters than Mesa had been. With some reluctance, the top legislators conceded this and stepped aside, and Chief Justice Rodríguez was sworn in as president on June 9.
Rodríguez immediately set about preparing for general elections in December to choose a new president, a new Congress, and the governors and assemblies of Bolivia's nine regions. Not a candidate himself, Rodríguez aimed to play the role of neutral arbiter, but the arrangements were not without controversy.
First there was the matter of Congress, which had been elected to a five-year term in 2002. In order to hold elections to renew all the major institutions, Rodríguez had to secure an agreement among the incumbent legislators to curtail their own terms.
Even more treacherous politically was the constitutional requirement to redistribute congressional seats across regions according to the most recent census, from 2001. The eastern lowland regions had gained population since the previous census, and so were owed more seats. But Morales's supporters, concentrated in the west, owned the political momentum, and objected to any reconfiguration of representation before the elections.
Facing intransigence on both sides, and a threat of an election boycott by the easterners, Rodríguez issued a decree in November effectively forcing a compromise on apportionment. Neither side got all it wanted, but both accepted the solution, and the elections were held, as promised.
Rodríguez's singular accomplishment was that the balloting was clean, peaceful, and the outcome accepted by all as legitimate. The biggest beneficiary of this achievement was Morales, who won the presidency and immediately set about to reshape Bolivian politics, in part by undercutting any established actor who might restrain his government's license.
When he turned the presidential sash over to Morales in January 2006, Rodríguez was still only 49 years old. He initially returned to the Supreme Court where he might have served his country for many more years. Instead, he immediately found himself fending off charges from Morales's attorney general of subordinating his country to control by a foreign power. Rodríguez offered Congress his resignation, effectively recusing himself to allow his colleagues on the Court consider his case impartially. His intention was to clear his name and return to the bench. As it happens, he has not been allowed the chance.
The Chinese Rockets
The allegation stems from an agreement between the Bolivian military and the United States. Since 2002, the United States has pursued a policy of de-commissioning portable surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) throughout the Americas. Until 2005, Bolivia's air defense consisted of a stockpile of Chinese-made SAMs. The missiles were obsolete, but although they were no longer regarded as reliable for military purposes, they could still have posed a threat if obtained by terrorists.
In October 2005, while then-President Rodríguez was in Brazil to attend a South American summit meeting, the Bolivian military turned 31 missiles over to U.S. Defense Department contractors to be shipped to the United States and disabled. Rodríguez did not disapprove of the general policy of de-commissioning missiles, which was endorsed by the by the United Nations, the Organization of American States, and the International Civil Aviation Organization. But neither did he approve this particular transfer.
Rodríguez learned of the transfer when it was reported in the press as a scandal. Congress responded by voting to censure the Defense Minister. As a candidate for president, Morales immediately seized on the story as evidence that Bolivia needed to throw off its tradition of servility to the United States. Rodríguez acknowledges that “the case has all the necessary ingredients to sustain a great political discourse: anti-imperialism, misconduct by gringos, corruption, compromise of sovereignty and national defense, expressions of sympathy from Hugo Chávez, nationalist rhetoric, etc.”Footnote 2
With the commotion jeopardizing preparations for the December elections, Rodríguez announced that if the balloting did not come off on schedule, he would resign the presidency and return to the Supreme Court. He called on the military high command and the Defense Minister to produce a complete report on the transfer, and he voided a memorandum of agreement that had surfaced along with the press reports, dated September 30 and signed by the Deputy Defense Minister, authorizing transfer of the missiles in exchange for a payment of $400,000 from the U.S. Department of Defense.
Rodríguez's efforts to turn down the volume of the scandal reflected his judicial temperament. “I had to make some hard decisions to try to preserve what I considered a greater good—the impartiality of the government in the elections and the presumption of innocence of those involved in the operation—all in the period of a few weeks before and after the elections. It's hard to know whether taking action faster would have cleared me of any personal liability.”
The report from the Defense Minister and the Army Commander was delivered after the December elections. It laid out the technical rationale for the military's missile deactivation plan, and acknowledged that the transfer had not received authorization from above, and did not conform to established procedure.
At this point, Rodríguez issued a diplomatic protest of the U.S. military mission's participation in the transfer. He also accepted the Defense Minister's resignation, dismissed the commander of the army, and authorized disciplinary action against officers involved in the operation. He briefed President-elect Morales on these developments as part of a series of meetings to pave the way for the transition to the new administration. At the end of one of these meetings, on January 19, 2006, days before his inauguration, Morales declared that he had been fully informed on the missile transfer case, and that President Rodríguez “had been lied to.”Footnote 3
Legal Jeopardy
Almost as soon as Rodríguez transferred power to Morales, he was charged by the new administration with treason in the case of the missiles. At first, it appeared that the administration had mistaken the sequence of events. Rodríguez publicly reminded Morales that he had been out of the country when the missiles were moved, that he had protested the haphazard agreement and the transfer, and that no payment had been accepted, so there was no appearance of impropriety.
The U.S. Ambassador to Bolivia, David Greenlee, confirmed Rodríguez's account of events. But Bolivia's Minister of the Presidency, Juan Ramón Quintana, responded that Rodríguez's protestations were irrelevant in the face of the damage caused to Bolivia by the loss of the missiles and the degradation to which Washington had submitted Bolivia for many years. Despite his considerable courtroom experience, Rodríguez was unprepared to present a legal defense for the litany of historical sins committed by the United States against his country.
As it turns out, Rodríguez is not alone among ex-presidents in facing legal peril. By its second month in office, Morales's administration had brought charges against each of Bolivia's four living former presidents, as well as a former Central Bank director and a former transportation minister. In the cases of Rodríguez's predecessors, the charges stem from alleged irregularities in contracts between the state and foreign energy companies. (Sanchez de Lozada also faces charges of genocide brought by the families of street protesters killed by riot police in the final days of his presidency.)
Rodríguez faces no indictment on financial charges. But the charge in the missiles case carries a prison sentence of up to 30 years, the maximum term possible under Bolivian law. It is unlikely that he will serve hard time, or even that his case will ever be tried. Its fate currently rests with the Bolivian Congress, which must vote, by two-thirds majority, for the case to procede to court. So far, Congress appears content to hold that card without attempting to play it.
As long as his legal status remains unresolved, Rodríguez cannot even practice law, much less return to the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, Morales has steadily filled vacant seats on Bolivia's Supreme Court and Constitutional Tribunal with loyalists.
Sitting in Limbo
By the spring of 2007, it was obvious to Rodríguez that efforts to clear his name in Bolivia were getting no traction. In the meantime, he was unemployed. He accepted a fellowship offer from the University of Carlos III in Madrid. That the Bolivian government did not prevent him leaving from the country with his family suggests it is not intent on trying Rodríguez for treason. Rendering him politically, and jurisprudentially, irrelevant appears to be enough.
From Rodríguez's perspective, of course, the outcome to date is anything but benign. Even at his temporary perch in Madrid, he suspected that people wondered if there was “something fishy about this guy” who faced charges about murky dealings involving an arms transfer back home. At any rate, staying in Spain indefinitely without citizenship or a real job was not an option. The United States presents similar immigration and employment challenges. In the end, Rodríguez is a Bolivian citizen, trained in Bolivian law, and with a distinctly Bolivian resumé. So he returned to resume a Bolivian life, even though the Chief Justice's chair is no longer available.
Fair Fight
When Latin Americans want to suggest that state power is being put to work for political ends, they tend to fall back on a familiar saying: “For my friends, anything; for my enemies, the law.” In Spanish-speaking countries, the quotation is generally attributed to Oscar Benavides, Peru's president for much of the 1930s. Brazilians credit Getulio Vargas, their president during the same era, and beyond. Both men probably said it, and meant it. Using the law to reward allies and hamstring adversaries is a venerable tradition throughout Latin America.
The rule of law is an abstraction. Our political lexicon holds it up as an indispensable cornerstone for the construction of democracy and prosperity. Yet its meaning is often difficult to pin down in the rhetoric of would-be state builders and the jargon of democratization theorists. In practice, the rule of law is easiest to identify in the breach, when the law is applied selectively, according to the resources of the citizens involved, or their political loyalties, or the whims of those who control the machinery of the state.Footnote 4
Weak or absent rule of law tends to advantage the well connected at the expense of the dispossessed. The irony of Rodríguez's case is that he was important enough to draw legal fire, but then suddenly not important enough to sustain anyone's interest in continuing the engagement. The Bolivian government's attack stalled, but Rodríguez is now sufficiently marginalized that Morales has little to gain by attempting to finish him off.
By contrast, Rodríguez, having lost his livelihood and his reputation, is spoiling to continue the fight. In 2008, he visited the United States to petition State Department officials and members of the U.S. Congress to pressure the Bolivian government to resolve his case. He wants a formal acknowledgement from the United States that the missiles were transferred without his compliance and that no money changed hands as part of the deal.
On January 19, 2009, he presented a petition to Vice-President Álvaro García Linera, who is also the titular President of the Bolivian Congress, recounting a list of procedural errors the Morales administration has committed during that the three years the case has been pending in a legislative committee, and insisting that the Morales administration put its cards on the table. Neither García Linera nor President Morales acknowledged Rodríguez's petition, nor even mentioned the case in their addresses to the Congress two days later, on the third anniversary of Morales's inauguration.
Then, on January 25, Bolivians went to the polls to ratify a new Constitution that enumerated new rights for indigenous groups, limited the size of private landholdings, and allowed Morales to run for a second consecutive term. Nationwide, the charter passed with 60 percent of the vote, yet it was rejected by more than 60 percent of voters in the prosperous, eastern provinces where anti-Morales sentiment runs deep. As Bolivia braced for yet another pitched struggle over how to govern itself, the chances that Rodríguez could attract any political or legal attention to his case in the near term looked slim.
Unfortunately for Rodríguez, even if his hands are clean, the full disclosure required to prove it might exact too high a cost elsewhere. What if, for example, some money did change hands, even if Rodríguez never saw it?
A Greater Good
Few would argue that the U.S. policy of locating and de-commissioning portable SAMs is a bad idea. But persuading foreign militaries and governments to relinquish their weapons systems—even obsolete ones—is a ticklish business.
Imagine a scenario where a bunch of missiles in a poor country are ripe for de-commissioning. The country is scheduled for an election in a couple of months, and the leading candidate is a nationalist firebrand. If he wins, as polls suggest is likely, prospects for an agreement to remove the missiles look remote.
Following every procedural nicety appears equally unpromising. A formal agreement to transfer the weapons requires approval by a Congress whose members are preoccupied with an upcoming election, and skittish about being labeled lackeys of Washington.
Yet there is a narrow window of opportunity. The country's rule-bound president is scheduled to go out of town. A few well-placed Bolivian officers with good ties to the U.S. military are willing to expedite the transfer. The cause is good. Who would object that the need to dot every “i” and cross every “t” should stand in the way of taking these weapons out of circulation?
Presidential Fall Guys
Upstairs from the great hall in Bolivia's presidential palace are the private working quarters of the chief executive and his staff. Until recent decades, presidents lived in the palace and, not infrequently, they also died there.
On a palace tour, my guide recounted which presidents had perished and where. “This is called the Salon Rojo because two presidents and one Lieutenant Colonel were killed here. In 1873, President Morales was shot twice by his nephew, and died on top of the table where you are now sitting.” In another room, President Germán Busch was shot, in what was officially reported as a suicide. And in an adjoining chamber, “President Villarroel was thrown from that window to the street below, then hung from that lamppost out front. Of course, shortly after that, the generals who had organized the coup against him were also hung from lampposts, over there.”
Recent presidents have exited less dramatically than many of their nineteenth- and twentieth-century predecessors. Sanchez de Lozada fled the palace crouched in the back of an ambulance to evade protestors, but he made it out to a comfortable exile in Maryland. But Bolivia's record of 97 different administrations in 183 years since independence suggests that its presidents are eminently expendable.
As Eduardo Rodríguez discovered, the situation for ex-presidents is just as fraught. As he sees it, he failed to appreciate the treachery of the arena he had entered when he assumed the presidency. “I made a mistake to believe in the loyalty and integrity of the soldiers, Bolivian and North American. I think responsibility in this case falls to them. I made a mistake to put confidence in the good faith and integrity of bilateral relations with the United States. That was a dumb. I made a mistake to believe in the independent judgment of some prosecutors and judges in Bolivia, who succumbed to pressures from above to accuse me an deny me due process. And I made a mistake to believe in the integrity of Evo Morales, who took advantage of the issue for electoral and political ends.”
A few things that were not clear to Rodríguez in 2005 are clear now. Formal procedures and full transparency were compromised in retiring Bolivia's missiles. Military personnel from both Bolivia and the United States participated in the deal, and they did not follow the letter of their job manuals. Their possible motivations range from the noble (a commitment to counter-terrorism or to disarmament) to the mundane (impatience with bureaucratic lethargy) to the venal (if bribes were paid or taken). The net result was to render harmless a bunch of weapons with little defensive value in the first place.
Whatever transpired, it did not constitute treason on the part of Eduardo Rodríguez. Yet is there a general in Morales's military, or an official at the U.S. Defense Department willing to step forward and acknowledge playing a little fast with the rules of a missile transfer in 2005, just to clear the name of a Bolivian lawyer with no job, no party, and no powerful allies?
The answer, so far, is “No,” but the former president is still looking for that full accounting. As things stand, his calendar is wide open.
