Marcelo Quiroga Santa Cruz

Marcelo Quiroga Santa Cruz (Cochabamba, Bolivia; March 13, 1931-La Paz, Bolivia; July 17, 1980) was a Bolivian politician, socialist leader, writer and university professor.

Biography

Marcelo Quiroga was born on March 13, 1931 in the city of Cochabamba. He was the fourth of the five children of the politician José Antonio Quiroga and Elena Santa Cruz, Marcelo spent his childhood between Cochabamba and La Paz. He attended primary school at the La Salle school in Cochabamba, since in 1934 his father, who was a deputy for the Genuine Republican Party and a minister in the government of Daniel Salamanca, abandoned politics disappointed by the fall of the president and reestablished himself with the family in Cochabamba.

In 1943 the family settled again in La Paz when the father assumed the general management of Patiño Mines, the company of the tin baron. There Marcelo continues his studies first at the La Salle school, then at the American Institute and finally the National Bolívar school, where he finishes high school.

He performed military service in 1949 and witnessed the popular mobilizations during the civil war caused by the uprising of the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement.

In 1950 he traveled to Santiago to study law at the University of Chile, where his older brothers, Alfonso and Mario, were already there.

Two years later he returned to Bolivia and continued his studies in law, as well as philosophy and literature, at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés. He combines politics with literature: he organizes, together with Sergio Almaraz, a movement to stop the conflict in Korea and founds the weekly Pro Arte, which he directs. But before the April revolution, the family went into exile in Chile.

In Chile he studied theater direction and participated, as a delegate from Bolivia, in the Continental Congress of Culture. In 1954 he married María Cristina Trigo and became friends with the writer and politician Roberto Prudencio Romecín, who arrived in exile from Bolivia that same year. His daughter María Soledad was born in Santiago in 1957, while Quiroga worked as an employee in a mining company while writing what would be his first novel.

His second son, Pablo Rodrigo, was born in Salta, Argentina, in 1959. With the painter Enrique Arnal, his childhood friend, he left by boat for Europe with the plan of settling in Paris. During the voyage, he suffers an attack of appendicitis and has to undergo surgery on the ship. Given the difficulties he encounters in the French capital, he returns a few months later to Bolivia, where his novel Los deshabitados will appear that year.

In his homeland he will work in the family importing company SEFESA and in 1960 he will publish in El Diario a series of articles on the Bolivian situation under the common title of April's victory over the nation , which will later be published as a book.

He founded the newspaper El Sol in 1964, which under his direction adopted a critical position towards the government of General René Barrientos.

Political life

In 1966 he was elected deputy for Cochabamba as an independent guest of the Christian Democratic Community made up of the Christian Democratic Party and the Bolivian Socialist Falange. From parliament he continues his criticism of the Barrientos regime. Invited, thanks to his journalistic work, by the government of England, Quiroga visits that country with his wife and they take advantage of a short tour of other European countries.

His criticism of the government brought him parliamentary violation, kidnapping, an attack with explosives against his home, confinement in Alto Madidi and jail.

In 1969 he was appointed Minister of Mines and Petroleum under the government of General Alfredo Ovando Candía and, later, of Energy and Hydrocarbons. Quiroga was the author of the nationalization of the Bolivian Gulf Oil Company, of the decrees that established the monopoly of foreign trade in minerals and the obligation to deliver to the Central Bank 100% of the foreign currency generated by exports. At the same time, he teaches political science and economics at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés.

Marcelo Quiroga resigned from his position as minister in May 1970, after Ovando turned to the right and, the following year, together with a group of intellectuals and union leaders, he founded the Socialist Party, of which He became first secretary. During the coup d'état by General Hugo Banzer Suárez, Quiroga fights alongside the forces that try to resist him. But after they were defeated, and the dictatorship was established, he went into exile, first to Chile, and then to Argentina, where he taught at the University of Buenos Aires, and to Mexico (1975), a country in which he would work as a full-time professor of UNAM), in addition to being a regular columnist in local newspapers.

He was guest director of the Symposium on Political Power in Latin America organized by the Centennial Congress of Americanists at the Sorbonne (Paris 1976), founding member of the I Institute of Third World Economists, founding member of the Permanent Seminar for Latin America (Mexico 1976), delegate from Latin America for the critical analysis of the Hemispheric Policy of the US Government (Washington 1977), and delegate to the International Tribune of Socialism (Yugoslavia 1979).

In 1977 he had returned clandestinely to Bolivia, to resume leadership of the Socialist Party that had remained banned during the Banzer regime, and which adopted the name Socialist Party-1 (PS-1). He was a candidate for the presidency of the republic in the 1978 elections (he obtained 0.7% of the votes), as well as in 1979 (4.82%) and 1980 (8.71%, 4. th place).

Trial of Responsibilities of Bánzer

As a deputy in the 1979 legislature, he brought Banzer to trial for crimes committed during the seven years of dictatorship, displaying extraordinary skills as an orator, as well as a lucid analytical and critical capacity.

Murder

On July 17, 1980, when the bloody coup carried out by Luis García Meza Tejada and Luis Arce Gómez took place, he was wounded and arrested by soldiers during the assault on the Bolivian Workers' Central (COB), who took him to the General Staff of the Army, they tortured and murdered him, later making his remains disappear. Marcelo Quiroga Santa Cruz remains missing. For this assault, among other crimes, Luis García Meza was sentenced to spend 30 years in prison without the right to pardon in Bolivia.

After the creation of the Truth Commission in August 2017, it was announced that his murder would be among its investigation cases.

Works

Fiction

Tributes

The Plurinational Novel Prize, the Law to Fight Corruption, Illicit Enrichment and Investigation of Fortunes and a novel contest organized by the municipality of Cochabamba are named after Marcelo Quiroga Santa Cruz (in 2012 it was in its VI edition). In his honor there are also schools, cultural establishments, streets and squares.