‘Our struggle to hold the Population and Housing Census was worth it,’ Vicente Cuéllar says

Vicente Cuéllar said the campaign that led to Bolivia’s Population and Housing Census was worth the legal consequences faced by Santa Cruz leaders, even though he was not satisfied with the result.

“it was worth the struggle of an entire people,” said Cuéllar, a former rector of the Autonomous University Gabriel René Moreno. He argued that the protest involved more than the five people prosecuted, saying the whole population had demanded that the government comply with the law and the Constitution.

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Our struggle to hold the Population and Housing Census was worth it, although we are not satisfied with the result. It was worth the struggle of an entire people, because it was not five people, it was an entire people telling the government that it had to comply with the law and the Constitution.

A judge on Friday ordered the extinction of the action and the closure of the case against authorities and leaders linked to the 36-day strike in 2022. The case began on November 11 of that year with a complaint filed by Marcelo Mayta Huanca, executive secretary of the Regional Workers’ Center of El Alto. The government’s Vice Ministry of Transparency later joined the proceedings on behalf of President Luis Arce’s administration.

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It leaves us a little more at ease. It is the first step toward being free of everything. Today the judge ordered the extinction of the action and the closure of the case.

The accusations included racism and discrimination, criminal association, public disorder or disturbance, and terrorism. Those prosecuted included then-Santa Cruz governor Luis Fernando Camacho, Cuéllar, lawyer José Luis Santistevan and Reinerio Vargas, the current rector of the state university in Santa Cruz.

Cuéllar said the ruling left them “a little more at ease” and represented the first step toward being entirely free of the case. He said they would be free of the proceedings if the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the other complainants did not appeal. He also maintained that the case lacked legal support, an assessment he said their lawyers and an audit of the proceedings had demonstrated.

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There was no legal basis, and the lawyers who defended us demonstrated that clearly, as did the audit carried out on the proceedings. There were no longer grounds for the judge to continue with the case.