Rogelio Mayta: “We underline the disastrous role of Luis …

By Gustavo Veiga

Rogelio Mayta is an Aymara, 49 years old and has a background as a defense lawyer for victims murdered in El Alto during the so-called Black October massacre in 2003. MAS activist, he came from the plains to one of the highest positions in the government of Luis Arce Catacora. He was elected chancellor of a country that became a pariah after the overthrow of Evo Morales. Today, he must retrace this path, but in an international scenario more conducive to the resumption of continental integration that the putschists had dismantled. A regional council where the authors of Sacaba and Senkata in 2019 are now starting to be held accountable.

-What is your opinion on the recent arrest of the de facto ex-president Jeannine Áñez and some ministers of the dictatorship?

-This process is in the hands of the Bolivian justice. The complaint was lodged with the prosecution several months ago and has proceeded normally. Police authorities responded to a request for the detention of Ms Áñez and others in the de facto government. It is up to the executive to create an environment where this process can continue its normal course. We hope this is the case and that your constitutional and human rights are protected.

-What can you explain to us about the alleged British interference in the 2019 coup as reported by the British media?

– Faced with the publication of investigative journalism disseminating the declassification of certain documents from the United Kingdom’s Foreign Office, we summoned the ambassador of that state to the Chancellery and asked him in writing that he could make us understand this situation. On Friday March 12th, we received a written note responding to this request and we are in the process of evaluating the information given to us to see if it is satisfactory or not. As a state, we will treat the matter with great caution. Although here in Bolivia it has fallen very sharply in various sectors of our society. Social organizations even demanded the expulsion of this diplomat, but we will follow what is established by the rules of international law.

-What conclusions did you draw from the meeting you had with Felipe Solá in La Paz, your Argentinian counterpart, a week ago?

-This was a very important meeting for us because it hijacks the bilateral relationship between our states which had deteriorated to the extreme when the de facto government took office. Chancellor Solá’s visit ended with a joint declaration which we both signed. It has several points and covers the multilateral aspect of what concerns the two countries in different fields such as science, technology, culture, gender, atomic energy, lithium, a fairly broad spectrum. On the other hand, the Argentinian delegation presented us with a draft agreement which would somewhat renew our bilateral relations within the framework on which we were already working and with a view to signing it as soon as possible.

-What is the policy that the Bolivian government has defined for multilateral organizations such as Mercosur, Unasur, Celac, Alba or the Andean Community?

-The de facto government by its very nature tended to isolation, it excluded itself from various multilateral organizations such as Unasur, like Mercosur, like Alba and bilateral relations did not only strain them in the case of Argentina , Spain, Mexico, Cuba, Nicaragua, Iran and other countries in a rather ideological position, not very pragmatic. This has cooled relations with China, with Russia, which in the end is a very negative cooling and more if we see it from the current moment when the main suppliers of vaccines and medical supplies are precisely the Russian Federation and China. Instead, it relied heavily on the United States. We want to have relations with all the countries of the international community on the condition that our sovereignty is respected. We’re looking to empower Celac, rethink Unasur to see if we can get it back on track and overcome the bad weather it faces. In the case of Mercosur, we were in the process of joining, but the coup d’état suspended this possibility and we resumed it because we decided to have the quality of full members. We are also present again in Alba.

– What is your vision of the OAS?

– We want to have a strong presence in different contexts and not only in the organizations I mentioned, but also in others such as the OAS for which we have a rather critical vision due to our bad experience with the mission election observation and the electoral audit carried out in 2019 and we underline the disastrous role of Luis Almagro as Secretary General.

– How are relations with Brazil, a regional power on our continent with which Bolivia shares 3,400 kilometers of common border and has a president like Jair Bolsonaro who supported the coup from day one?

– At the moment we do not have a very fluid relationship, it is not negative either. We will work to find points of common interest that will allow us to move forward on certain aspects, such as the question of our inclusion in Mercosur. We are awaiting treatment in the Brazilian Congress of this possibility. We will try to be positive and constructive in this relationship beyond the fact that we can have a different political vision in different aspects.

– What is happening with the pandemic in Brazil, isn’t this an additional worrying factor due to the lack of control it has achieved?

-We are concerned about the pandemic in general and this has forced us to take restrictive measures. We are concerned about all of our borders and obviously there are more complicated ones like the case Brazil reported due to the extension, but we are taking the necessary precautions and constantly monitoring.

– How has the relationship with the United States since the Washington government changed with the inauguration of Biden instead of Trump?

– So far there has been no significant change. For our part, we declare that we want to establish constructive and positive relations with all the countries of the international community, including the United States. Always under the respect of the Bolivian sovereignty and we are there, a little with an open hand to tighten the bonds. Unfortunately, it becomes more dependent on the will of the United States because they have a bad track record, they meddle politically, they try to have some control over certain aspects of regional interest or those of certain countries. There is a lot of declassified evidence and documents showing this to us over the past decades. Also, in our recent memory there are de facto governments, military governments that we had here in Latin America that were motivated by American actions. Despite this, we are ready to create constructive and positive relationships, I think, as who would say, is more on the ground in the United States than on our own.

– The United States has agencies which act in our countries like USAID, the NED, without forgetting the role played by the CIA or the DEA. You expelled them even during the government of Evo. What do you think of them?

– It is clear that they are as negative and abhorrent as the actions of the state itself. That they only tend to camouflage or try to hide the actions or interests determined by a hegemonic state or power like the United States. For us, all this should not happen and I believe that we are at a point in history where we are fully aware of these mechanisms. Therefore, in 2008, when we were living in a time of political tension here, a so-called anti-drug agency like the DEA and later USAID had to be phased out. We already know them and reject them. We will ensure that these types of situations do not happen again in Bolivia. The world changes. Since the 90s when Fukuyama said that it was the end of history and that we had hegemonic power in a unipolar world, at the moment we are warning that we are in a multipolar or tripolar world since the Russian Federation and the China have specific weights.

– President Arce, when he was Minister of the Economy, had a very clear position on the defense of Bolivia’s natural resources such as lithium, is this policy supposed to be ratified?

-More than a political position of a government, it is a constitutional determination. Natural resources belong to the Bolivians and Bolivians and we will ensure that their benefits flow to the people at all times. That they do not go with the transnationals as was the case before. This does not mean that we are closed to foreign investment, to establish relationships that allow us to better exploit our resources, but as we have nurtured them for over a decade, not as foreigners on our own land, but in a role of partners., of equal. Others probably have capital and technology, but we have natural resources.

– How is the search for a solution continuing to exit the Pacific Ocean with Chile, which for Bolivia is a historic claim?

– Bolivia’s maritime claim is inalienable. It is even defined in our political constitution of the state. But the relationship between Chile and Bolivia does not end with the maritime question, this is also clear to us. We share an important border, a flow of people who come and go from one country to another, we use the Chilean ports to export Bolivian products and this means that we must look for approaches that allow us, in all the differences that we can have, to maintain the treatment of two neighboring and brother countries, in short.