Gary Prado Never Changes his Spots
BY PEDRO DE LA HOZ

When a few days ago the connection of former general, Gary Prado Salmón, with the terrorist cell thwarted in April 2009 in the Bolivian city of Santa Cruz was confirmed, some recalled the old Spanish saying: a leopard never changes its spots. And in this case it’s full of obscure instincts and an obstinate vocation for marching against history.

PRADO SALMÓN in the terrorist plot.

As many might remember, Prado, then a Captain and an obsequious disciple of the US green berets, commanded the troops that participated in the final combat against Ernesto Che Guevara at Quebrada del Yuro. Although he didn’t participate directly in the assassination in cold blood of the guerrilla, his statements and later behaviour place him along with those who committed that La Higuera crime.

He was the one who most systematically spread the rumor that it was useless to look for the mortal remains of the internationalist commander, in a futile attempt to prevent the finding of the pit that held Che’s remains and those of several of his companions in the Bolivian exploit. He tried to ridicule the memory of the combatant in an opuscule entitled Cómo capturé al Che (How I captured Che), and in 2007, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of his assassination and in view of the devotion of thousands of youngsters who camped in La Higuera, had words that oozed hatred.

It’s hardly surprising that Prado Salmón has appeared in the investigations of the plot by the cell of terrorist Eduardo Rosza Flores. The link of the retired soldier with the Croatian-Bolivian, who tried to arouse a violent separatist protest in Santa Cruz to subvert the institutionality of Evo Morales’s government, was highlighted, so there is no doubts about it, by one of those involved in the plot before a US federal judge no less.

In order to obtain the support of the US authorities for a request for asylum a month after Rosza’s group was gunned down in the Las Américas Hotel on April 16, 2009, the former manager of the Pro Santa Cruz Committee, Lorgio Balcázar Arroyo, declared under oath that in mid October 2008 he received "the order from Carmelo Paz, manager of the Rural Cooperative of Electrification (CRE) to participate in a meeting in the house of retired general Gary Prado Salmón, in which lawyer Alejandro Melgar, former soldier Lucio Áñez and Luis Orlando Justiniano were present."

The copy of the document was not initially published by the Cambio newspaper or spread by Bolivia TV, which are state organizations, but by El Día, a newspaper that is classed among the most rabid of the opposition, in which the actions of Branko Marinkovic prevail. Branko is a wealthy businessman from Santa Cruz now on the run and against whom there’s evidence that he was summoned in September 2008 by the Department of State in Washington to speed up the civil-prefectural coup against Evo.

In his deposition, Balcázar stated that it was agreed to create a so-called "consultative council for the defense of Santa Cruz" and that "there were several subsequent meetings in some which Eduardo Rozsa Flores, who introduced himself initially as Luis Hurtado, participated."

Interviewed by Radio Fides, Áñez gave his version of the events. On the one hand he tried to exonerate himself but on the other he admitted having recognized Rosza "one day he was speaking with Prado."

On January 18, the Vice-ministry of Interior Regime of the the Ministry of Government made public how "according to statements by Lorgio Balcázar, Gary Prado and General Lucio Áñez, along with Eduardo Rosza Flores, had carried out a study, an analysis of the military and operating situation in Santa Cruz, collecting information about oil wells, refineries, roads, bridges and rivers for the purpose of isolating Santa Cruz and separating it from the rest of the country. We’re requesting the District Attorney’s Office as plaintiff, that they should be summoned to give evidence and that, of course, after obtaining the evidence, legal preventive measures should follow, because they were the ringleaders of the military strategy. Lorgio Balcázar has confessed and confirmed that Bolivia was in the serious risk of being divided in terms of its territory and of a fratricidal clash between Bolivians and then a repeat of the history of Yugoslavia."

It’s worth recalling that the expelled US ambassador in Bolivia, Philip Golberg had, in his curriculum, being an advisor of Kosovo’s separatist forces during the Balkans’ conflict.

Prado Salmón does not regret of his links with Rosza’s group. The last straw? He says that the latter was "a man who came to defend Santa Cruz."

Taken from Granma Daily