Luis Arce Gómez (1938 – March 30, 2020) was a colonel in the
Bolivian Army. In 1980 he backed the bloody coup (sometimes referred to as the "
Cocaine Coup") that brought to power the General
Luis García Meza
Luis García Meza Tejada (8 August 1929 – 29 April 2018) was a Bolivian general who served as the ''de facto'' 57th president of Bolivia from 1980 to 1981. He was a dictator convicted of human rights violations and leader of a violent coup. ...
. Arce served as García Meza's Minister of the Interior.
Biography
Early life
Arce was born in 1938 in
Sucre
Sucre () is the Capital city, capital of Bolivia, the capital of the Chuquisaca Department and the List of cities in Bolivia, 6th most populated city in Bolivia. Located in the south-central part of the country, Sucre lies at an elevation of . T ...
, Bolivia. He was the cousin of the notorious Bolivian drug lord
Roberto Suárez Goméz.
Career
Arce's tenure as Minister involved the passing of such measures as the banning of all political parties, the incarceration and/or exile of most political opponents, the repression of
trade unions, and the censorship of the
mass media. Arce had said that all Bolivians who may be opposed to the new order should "walk around with their written will under their arms."
The García Meza government was also deeply involved in
drug trafficking
A drug is any chemical substance that causes a change in an organism's physiology or psychology when consumed. Drugs are typically distinguished from food and substances that provide nutritional support. Consumption of drugs can be via insuffla ...
activities, with Arce as a link. Eventually, Arce was forced to resign, as was García.
Incarceration
In the late 1980s, Arce was extradited to the
United States, where he was put in jail, serving a lengthy sentence for drug trafficking. On April 21, 1993, while he was still incarcerated, he was condemned by the Bolivian justice system to 30 years in prison for serious human rights violations incurred by the regime he took part in.
In November 2007 he was released from his US prison sentence and applied for political asylum in the US. His application was denied, and on July 9, 2009, he was deported back to Bolivia to serve out the sentence for his convictions there. He was held in
Chonchocoro Prison in
La Paz
La Paz (), officially known as Nuestra Señora de La Paz (Spanish pronunciation: ), is the seat of government of the Bolivia, Plurinational State of Bolivia. With an estimated 816,044 residents as of 2020, La Paz is the List of Bolivian cities ...
. In 2009, he was in poor health but apparently expressed a willingness to speak about his role in the 1980-81 dictatorship.
In September 2010, Arce Gómez offered to share his knowledge about the remains of people who disappeared during the dictatorship in "exchange for something": "If they want to know something... I have to gain something as well. It's not free." His sentence is not subject to negotiation. Interior Minister
Sacha Llorenty
Sacha Sergio Llorenti Soliz (born 13 March 1972) is the Secretary General of ALBA–TCP and the previous Permanent Representative to the United Nations and Ambassador of Bolivia to the United Nations from September 2012 until November 2019. He ...
stated that Arce Gómez could face disciplinary sanctions for refusing to reveal this information, although the legal basis for doing so was disputed by legal experts.
On 17 January 2017, Italian courts condemned Arce to life imprisonment for his role in the death of Italian dual-nationals in the 1970s and 1980s. The deaths had been part of
Operation Condor.
In popular culture
General Cocombre, a character based on Gómez, is featured briefly in the 1983 film ''
Scarface''. The picture of Cocombre that the Bolivian cocaine investigator Orlando Gutiérrez shows on TV during his interview (that Alejandro Sosa shows to
Tony Montana and the rest of his guests), is in fact of Gómez.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Arce Gomez, Luis
1938 births
2020 deaths
20th-century Bolivian politicians
Bolivian anti-communists
Bolivian expatriates in Spain
Bolivian expatriates in the United States
Bolivian drug traffickers
Bolivian military personnel
Bolivian people imprisoned abroad
Bolivian photographers
Deaths from sepsis
Immigration ministers of Bolivia
Interior ministers of Bolivia
Justice ministers of Bolivia
People convicted in absentia
People extradited from Bolivia
People extradited to the United States
People from Sucre