Politics interferes with mother’s visit to place where her son died

Santa Cruz is planned out in a series of concentric circles. My translator tells me there were just two when he was growing up. Now, each year seems to bring a new circle. Such is the growth rate of this flatland of urban sprawl.

The city is a late developer. Mineral and oil finds, coupled with the mass ranches that surround it, have drawn populations from around the country, and the globe. The 16th-century colonial-style houses are few and far between. The small oasis of the city’s main square offers a fleeting reminder of how things were, but even that bears signs of demolition and crude modernity.

In my capacity as an adviser to the family, I am accompanying the mother and sister of Michael Dwyer on a visit to Bolivia. They are here to see the places where he spent his last days before he was shot dead by Bolivian police in April 2009. To spend time in the room where he was killed. To meet people who saw and knew him there. To call on the Bolivian authorities to permit an investigation into his killing.

Towering heels

We are weeks from Bolivia’s general election, and our visit has politics breathing all over it. Our flight arrives early on a Sunday morning. At arrivals, families are reunited. Businessmen shake hands. And then the cameras start. Caroline Dwyer’s face is familiar in the Santa Cruz press. She is approached by an overly made-up woman in towering heels who presents an outreached hand. Snap, snap. The woman is happy. An election candidate for one of the opposition parties, she has made the news.

By mid-afternoon, a visit to the hotel where Michael’s body lay has taken its toll. With no appetite, we sit down for lunch. The woman reappears and stretches out her hand again. Our guard is up. We want to avoid politics. We politely ask her to leave us alone.

But by now, every exit of our hotel is marked by men snapping away with their smartphones. Only when I start snapping back at them do they flinch.

A visit to the Santa Cruz courthouse is met by a media avalanche. We are at the trial of an exhaustive list of defendants on charges of terrorism against the Bolivian government. Among them, two men who were with Michael on that fateful night.

Inside the court, defendants sit with their families. A defence witness, who once was a legal adviser to the incumbent Morales administration, sits waiting, for the third consecutive week, to give evidence. He whips off a blue T-shirt to reveal a white one with the writing Preso político (political prisoner).

The woman with the towering heels enters. It’s said she normally commands media attention. But all the attention is on the Dwyers. She doesn’t even look at us today.

Another woman, appearing in business attire and more reserved, offers – through a third party – to provide the family with some documentation. The next morning, she’s reported in the paper as having actually presented these papers to the family. She too is running for election.

A young man, also a candidate, sits it out in the lobby of our hotel. The family is not available, I tell him. A 30-minute monologue ends with him handing over some drawings.

By the fourth day of our five-day visit, avoiding the political doorstep is almost as challenging as avoiding those unknown men who take our photos every time we leave a building.

Covert meeting

There are some people we still want to meet. People who were around in the days before, and just after, Michael’s killing. Some of them were not even interviewed by police in the aftermath. We track some of them down. It requires long trips out of town in the dead of night.

Some people just don’t want to talk. They are afraid.

On our final morning, we have one more covert meeting. President Evo Morales is in the city. His party will win Santa Cruz in the upcoming election, thanks to the candidacy of Carlos Rameros, who is touted to become the leader of the Senate. It is a remarkable rise for a left-wing politician in a city of expensive restaurants and SUVs.

At the airport, we go through various scanning procedures. The man who searches my luggage scatters dirty laundry about. He takes out the set of rosary beads presented to me by an election candidate, and leaves them aside.

Men get a simple frisking down. The women are called into cubicles for a more intimate search.

The clouds are dark and heavy. The plane ascends. There is no looking back.