Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada

Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada ( La Paz , July 1 , 1930 ) is a Bolivian businessman, president of his country (1993-1997 and 2002-2003), responsible for crimes during his presidency. He had to leave office in October 2003 after several weeks of popular revolts.

Summary

[ disguise ]

• 1 Biographical summary
  • 1 Family
  • 2 Early years
  • 3 Return to the country
• 2 Business and beginnings in politics
  • 1 First term
  • 2 Second term
• 3 Search and prosecution
• 4 Awards
• 5 References
• 6 Sources

Biographical summary

Family

He was born on July 1, 1930 , in central Murillo, La Paz , Bolivia . He belongs to one of the most outstanding families in Bolivia, son of Enrique Sánchez de Lozada Irigoyen and Carmen Sánchez Bustamante. Linked to the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (MNR) party, his father served for many years in the United States , assuming the diplomatic embassy in Washington , between 1930 and 1936 , and as a professor of Political Science at Harvard University .

Early years

His father’s exile in the United States meant that he lived there from the first year of age, living in several cities in Washington, Boston and Williamstown, Massachusetts . All of her school education was completed here. He then enrolled at the University of Chicago in Illinois , earning a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy and English Literature. He mastered spoken and written English with perfect skill , not distinguishing himself in this aspect from a cultured native.

It was her daily language, to the point of neglecting Spanish and speaking it quite imperfectly, however, her mother proposed that it be, at least, her second language. He always had Bolivian nationality despite having spent his childhood and part of his youth there.

Return to the country

Gonzalo returned to his country in 1951 , willing to stay and with various business projects. His move occurred on the eve of the revolutionary uprising of April 1952 . After the events where the MNR took power and brought its two top leaders, Víctor Paz Estenssoro and Hernán Siles Zuazo , to the Government , and as a result of which Don Enrique (the father) ended his exile in the United States .

Business and beginnings in politics

He would dedicate his time to the creation of various companies that he founded and directed over the next 25 years, including the film production company Telecine 1953 , Andean Geo-Services, dedicated to oil prospecting and geodesy work 1957 , the most important of them the Compañía Minera del Sur (Comsur), created in 1962 from the productive exploitation of the Porco mine, in the department of Potosí .

By the end of the sixties it was already one of the most powerful industrialists in tin and zinc mining . Comsur, through a network of subsidiaries and multinational companies in the sector, was inaugurating new deposits or purchasing others already in service, of non-ferrous , gold-bearing and silver metals .

In 1979 , while the country intended to leave behind years of military dictatorships and de facto governments , and recover democratic civility, Gonzalo temporarily abandoned the presidency of Comsur to debut in professional politics in the ranks of his lifelong party, the MNR.

He was named president of the Upper House and was in charge of taking the oath of office of the new president of the Republic, Víctor Paz Estenssoro. A year later, he was named Minister of Planning and Coordination, a position from which he promoted an economic liberalization plan included in the New Economic Policy decree. Two years after implementing his plan, the country registered the first rate of economic growth and a slow recovery of the system. In December 1990 he called for a Constituent Assembly to change the country’s political system, with the aim of abandoning presidentialism in favor of a new parliamentary system. That same month, he agreed, together with the leaders of the other opposition parties, to establish the guidelines for electoral reform, expedite administrative decentralization and continue the trial opened against eight judges of the Supreme Court, accused of economic damages to the State for invalidating a tax law.

First term

On August 6, 1993 , Gonzalo took possession of the Presidency with a four-year mandate, in an event attended by presidents Carlos Menem of Argentina , César Gaviria of Colombia , Alberto Fujimori of Peru and Juan Carlos Wasmosy of Paraguay (the latter in his capacity of president-elect), as well as, making a historic visit, Cuban President Fidel Castro Ruz . The first presidential administration was characterized by a broad compendium of reforms in education, justice bodies, social services and, above all, in the economy, whose very liberal approach pointed to the president’s long-cherished desire to introduce to the country completely and definitively in the currents of regional integration and globalization of exchanges.

He ordered administrative decentralization, introduced the system of pension funds managed by private companies and undertook a privatization consisting of the opening of state-owned companies to foreign capital – European, American and South American, which could acquire half of their shares and become charge of its administration. The Capitalization Law, of March 1994 , authorized the Executive to sell up to 50% of business assets to private buyers and to transfer the other 50%, state-owned, free of charge to all citizens of legal age through the so-called “shares”. popular”, which would serve to finance retirement pensions contracted with private companies.

The coca farmers, especially those from the jungle region of Chapare, in Cochabamba , led by the indigenous Aymara Evo Morales Ayma , union leader of the Coordinator of Federations of the Tropics of Cochabamba, and encouraged by the also Aymara Felipe Quispe Huanca , leader of the Single Trade Union Confederation of Peasant Workers of Bolivia (CSUTCB), did not stop complaining about the meager compensation they received for the sale of their farms to the Government, when they did not resolutely oppose, sometimes resorting to violence, the entire government plan, which did not disdain forced expropriations and which opted for the planting of bananas, pineapples, palm hearts and tropical flowers.

Outside of this controversy, the Capitalization Plan provided the State with income worth 1.7 billion dollars while having a catalytic effect on a process already underway, that of the progressive dollarization of the Bolivian economy. As it had announced, in November 1996, the Government relied on the 50% of shares reserved for the State of the six intervened monopolies to launch an annual solidarity bonus (bonosol) of $240 aimed at all Bolivians over 21 years of age. and thus cover a peremptory social debt. The social bonds and pension funds maintained in part with the individual account contributions of social security affiliates were intended to make the benefits of partial privatizations reach citizens.

On August 6, 1997 , Sánchez handed over the Presidency to Hugo Banzer, who formed the so-called government megacoalition with all the parliamentary parties, plus a few extraparliamentary parties, with the exception of the MBL and the United Left.

Second term

Gonzalo assumes the Presidency of the Republic of Bolivia after winning a national election for the fifth time. He is favored by an association of his party, the MNR, with the MIR (Revolutionary Left Movement), which would later be joined by the NFR (New Republican Force), dividing political positions between the 3 parties.

He occupies the presidency to face a social and economic crisis inherited from the previous government. The country’s economic growth fell from 4.8% at the end of Sánchez de Lozada’s first presidency to 2% in 2002. The fiscal deficit in 2002 was 8%. On December 6, Gonzalo participated in Brasilia at the XXIII Summit of Presidents of MERCOSUR , which involved the adoption of the Economic Complementation Agreement between MERCOSUR and the CAN, with a view to articulating a Free Trade Area between the two blocks in the short term. as well as the Agreements on Internal Migration Regularization of Citizens and Residence for Nationals of MERCOSUR, Bolivia and Chile , which paved the way for the free movement of people between the signatory countries, a fundamental advance towards the construction of a common market.

On February 10, the government presented the new direct, progressive and non-deductible tax, of up to 12.5%, with which it hoped to obtain the tax revenue that was not generated by the value added tax (VAT), which allowed up to Now Bolivians can deduct even the entire 13% tax on personal income with consumer bills. The country was plunged into gigantic chaos as a result of clashes between a few thousand protesters and Army troops. On October 13 , with La Paz about to be plunged into popular insurrection and 20,000 people demonstrating in the streets, and the protests spreading to the other departments of the country with the exception of the usually peaceful Beni and Pando. Gonzalo made a momentous announcement: he put the gas plans on hold and called for a national dialogue that would take place until December 31 , during which the Government would gather the opinions of all social sectors.

The president began to suffer political rudeness in his own field. On the same day the 13th, Vice President Carlos Mesa Gisbert withdrew his support for Gonzalo citing reasons of conscience, while the Minister of Economic Development, Mirista Jorge Torres Obleas, also presented his resignation in disagreement with the recourse to the Army to stop the protests. . Harassed by these sectors and faced with the loss of support from the parties that formed the government coalition (MIR and NFR), on October 17 , Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada resigned from the Presidency of the Republic by letter to the National Congress and left the country.

Search and prosecution

After his resignation and departure from the country with members of his cabinet and family, bound for Washington ; The Attorney General’s Office of Bolivia announced a resolution to begin the political and criminal prosecution of the former president with the aim of clarifying his responsibility in the social revolt that left seventy dead. In 2007 , the Supreme Court ordered the search and capture of him and began the procedures for the request for the former president’s extradition from the United States , the country in which he resides. After several attempts to imprison him and assume guilt, the plans drawn up could not be carried out because, according to the United States ambassador in La Paz, he enjoyed legal stay in his country.

On April 4, 2018 , the jury of the Fort Lauderdale Court of the state of Florida, United States (USA), found him and his former Minister of Defense Carlos Sánchez Berzaín guilty of the October 2003 massacre. . ^[1] .

Awards

He holds the Golden Musa award, awarded in 1995 by the homonymous Organization based in Caracas , and the Latin American Leadership Award, awarded in 1996 by the Pan American Development Foundation (PADF). He also received an Honoris Causa Doctorate from various universities in the United States and Japan , and a member of the Club of Madrid as well as the Council of Presidents and Prime Ministers of the Americas Program of the Carter Center in Atlanta , United States.

References