A Bolivian court held a final hearing Wednesday on the release of opposition leader Luis Fernando Camacho after two years of pretrial detention. The conservative politician's widely expected release would deliver a victory to his supporters, who long criticized his prosecution as politically motivated.
A judge on Tuesday lifted Camacho's preventative detention in the explosive case, which has not yet gone to trial, and Wednesday's hearing reviews a pretrial detention order against him in a different but related case from 2022. His detractors say the decision reflects a judicial pendulumswinging to the right.
Camacho, the governor of Bolivia's easternmost province of Santa Cruz, spent two years and eight months behind bars on charges of sedition tied to his involvement in violent unrest over the disputed 2019 reelection of socialist former President Evo Morales.
Camacho's lawyer expressed confidence that the review would clear the way for the suspended governor to return to Santa Cruz, reunite with his family and resume work in the coming days. But release doesn’t mean acquittal. Camacho still faces trial in these and other serious cases, though no dates have been set.
The firebrand Christian leader of a powerful Santa Cruz business association, Camacho gained prominence while leading protests against Morales in 2019 that ultimately forced Bolivia’s first Indigenous leader to resign under pressure from the military and flee to exile.
Allegations of political persecution dog both sides
The impending release of Camacho comes after Bolivia's Aug. 17 elections signaled the end of nearly 20 years of left-wing rule under Morales' Movement Toward Socialism, or MAS party. A presidential runoff in October pits centrist Senator Rodrigo Paz against right-wing former President Jorge Quiroga, assuring a rightward tilt in the country's politics.
Quiroga in particular has called for the release of his jailed allies, including Camacho as well as caretaker interim President Jeanine Añez, who assumed the presidency in 2019 in what Morales' supporters call a coup.
Both Añez and Camacho are divisive figures.
Although Añez vowed to steer Bolivia to new elections in which she wouldn't run following her 2019 takeover, she swiftly cemented her hold on power, transforming the country's policies, violently cracking down on protests and provoking Morales’ Indigenous supporters.
After elections in 2020 vaulted Morales' handpicked successor, President Luis Arce, to the nation's top job, the same judicial system that Añez wielded against Morales and his followers sentenced her to 10 years in prison on charges of sedition and terrorism stemming from her takeover.
Camacho was scooped up on the same charges over his pivotal role in pressuring Morales to quit the presidency in 2019. At the time, he called on all MAS lawmakers to resign and even proposed that an unconstitutional junta take power before ultimately backing Áñez’s government.
Unlike Áñez, Camacho was never tried.
Arrested in 2022 as he led a 36-day strike against Arce’s government in Santa Cruz that shut down Bolivia’s most populous and economically vital region, Camacho faced separate charges of criminal association and illegal use of public property.
Wednesday’s hearing weighs his detention order in that 2022 strike case.
Every time he maxed out the legal detention period, a prosecutor extended his jailing in a widely criticized tactic that Bolivia’s judiciary often deploys in high-profile political cases.
Cases scrutinized after opposition wins first election in decades
The judiciary's sudden moves in long-stalled cases come as Bolivia’s right-wing opposition prepares to return to power for the first time in decades.
Last week, Bolivia’s Supreme Court issued a rare ruling ordering all judges in the country to review the legality of pretrial detention in the cases against Añez and Camacho, as well as in the case of Marco Antonio Pumari, another opposition leader held over his role in the 2019 crisis.
On Tuesday, after more than 10 hours of deliberations, the judge granted Camacho house arrest with work-release privileges that allow him to resume his duties as governor of Santa Cruz within three days, said his lawyer, Martín Camacho.
Camacho spent the night in jail Tuesday and turned up to the last hearing Wednesday in which the judge is widely expected to lift or soften his second detention order.
As news broke of the judge's ruling late Tuesday, crowds of Camacho's supporters in central Santa Cruz erupted in cheers.
The court also ordered the unconditional release of Pumari, a former civic leader in Bolivia's southern town of Potosí and Camacho’s running mate in the 2020 elections, who has been detained since 2021.
Quiroga hailed the release orders for Camacho and Pumari, writing on social media that “justice cannot be an instrument of revenge.”
On Monday, a Bolivian court annulled the trial against Áñez over her involvement in the killing of dozens of protesters in 2019, ruling that she is entitled to a special judicial process for former heads of state handled by Congress, not an ordinary court. A separate hearing in the case was pushed to Friday.
Bolivia's divisions on vivid display
Outside the courthouse in Bolivia's capital of La Paz, protesters — incensed by the release of Camacho, who they consider indirectly responsible for the killing of 37 people following Morales’ 2019 ouster — chanted “Justice for the victims” and “Without justice there is no democracy.”
“Justice must be impartial, whoever must pay, must pay, but justice has to be done,” Gloria Quisbert, a representative of the victims, told local TV channels. She condemned the dismissal of Áñez’s trial as bringing “new pain” to the victims.
Revelers — thrilled by the long-awaited release of the most prominent symbol of opposition to MAS rule — shouted “Freedom for Camacho" and tried to to touch and take selfies with the governor as he emerged in handcuffs and his governor’s sash. Many flew or took 16-hour bus rides from Santa Cruz to attend the hearing in La Paz.
Security forces in riot gear struggled to contain the competing rallies.
“This is the first step towards freedom,” Camacho said after the court decision. “The elected representatives of justice today begin to restore the rule of law.”
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DeBre reported from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
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