The Mexican embassy in Bolivia granted asylum to Nadia Beller, the lawyer who was the victim of a failed assassination attempt allegedly organized by the star adviser of the Latin American far-right, Fernando Cerimedo.
The administration of Claudia Sheinbaum accepted Beller’s request for asylum. Mexican authorities confirmed this on the sidelines of the Madrid 30th Ibero-American Summit on November 4, the Bolivian Foreign Ministry explained in a statement.
However, in the statement, Bolivia’s government clarified that at that meeting, no “commitment whatsoever” had been made to grant a safe-conduct to Beller.
“We would respect this woman’s right to asylum, just as we have respected and not intervened at any stage of the investigation,” Bolivian Government Minister Marco Antonio Oviedo said, according to Red Uno. However, Roger Mariaca, Bolivia’s attorney general, who was leading the investigation of Cerimedo, was removed from office and charged with drug trafficking weeks after the probe began. Those allegations have not yet been ruled on.
Later, Mariaca confirmed that the requested safe-conduct would be granted.
The official also noted that, at Beller’s request, authorities had removed the police protection she had been provided with since surviving the assassination attempt and revealing the Cerimedo scandal, the repercussions of which have reached as far as the Bolivian government of Rodrigo Paz.
Who is Nadia Beller?
Nadia Beller was shot three times on August 17 by hitmen, disguised as delivery workers, who were allegedly hired by Cerimedo. Beller accused Cerimedo—the powerful political adviser, her former lover, who is currently held in a maximum security prison—of attempting to kill her after she told him she was pregnant.
From the hospital, the woman began to make statements related to Cerimedo, who is said to have advised not only Paz but also far-right leaders and politicians across Latin America, such as Javier Milei in Argentina and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil.
Beller, a lawyer, is from the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra. In 2019, she ran for a seat in the Plurinational Legislative Assembly on the lists of the then-ruling Movement for Socialism (MAS), Ámbito reports.
However, her emergence into Bolivia’s media sphere occurred during the administration of former president Evo Morales. At that time she presented herself as a constitutionalist and left-leaning political analyst, though without a known partisan affiliation.
From left to far right: the political pendulum of Nadia Beller, Bolivian activist shot
In 2019, Bolivia went through a severe political crisis that ended with the forced resignations of Morales, his vice president Álvaro García Linera, and other high officials from that administration after an Organization of American States observation mission accused them—without grounds—of perpetrating fraud amid a wave of political violence fueled by that narrative, which was later shown to be false.
Subsequently, a de facto government led by Jeanine Áñez was installed. In that context, Beller appeared alongside Luis Fernando Camacho, former governor of Santa Cruz and one of the most prominent figures of the ultra-right opposition to the MAS, offering herself as a mediating figure, although without much success.
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After the fall of the Áñez regime and the return of the MAS, this time led by Luis Arce, Beller made occasional appearances as an analyst on Santa Cruz television programs without demonstrating any open party adherence.
(RT)
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/SL
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