Roberto Rojas

An ethnic Aymara,[1] Roberto Rojas was born on 25 November 1966 in Warisata, a minor hamlet situated in western La Paz's Omasuyos Province. Raised in rural poverty to a merchant mother and a farmer father, Rojas attended the Elizardo Pérez School, where he graduated in 1984.[2][3] The following year, he moved to El Alto in search of better economic opportunity,[4] a common destination among the department's rural inhabitants, whose exodus from the Altiplano in the latter decades of the twentieth century exponentially increased the city's demographic growth.[5] Rojas worked for some time as a police officer while continuing his studies at various universities in La Paz, finally graduating as a general accountant with a diploma in governance. Later, he studied to become an auditor at the Public University of El Alto but could not afford to finish the degree, switching his major to law sometime thereafter.[4]

Around this time, Rojas became active in local community leadership, joining his district's neighborhood council. He got his start as secretary of sports for El Alto's San Pablo Zone before later presiding over the city's District 3 Neighborhood Council from 2000 to 2009. He served as secretary of organization of the Federation of Neighborhood Councils from 2008 to 2010 and was a member of the body's citizen security commission.[3][4] The neighborhood councils served as organizations of particular import in El Alto, taking charge of negotiating with public officials for the provision of basic services—electricity, water, and so on—and organizing community events. In that sense, they constituted one of the main spaces in the city for figures like Rojas to gain political notoriety.[6] To that end, the sector's solid alliance with the nascent Movement for Socialism (MAS-IPSP) allowed many prominent community leaders to access political positions.[7] Such was the case with Rojas, who in 2009 was made vice president of the La Paz Departmental Autonomous Council, a body established to aid in implementing the department's newly-granted political autonomy.[8]

Beyond minor political posts, the MAS's alliance with El Alto's neighborhood councils granted the organizations a quota on the party's parliamentary lists.[9] For the 2009 general elections, the Federation of Neighborhood Councils was granted the ability to designate two candidates to represent them in the Chamber of Deputies. Rojas was among those selected, being run to represent circumscription 15 of El Alto,[10] the district with the largest number of registered voters in the country.[11] He won by an overwhelming majority, attaining over 100,000 votes, the highest single vote count for any candidate running in a uninominal constituency that cycle.[12] Even so, upon the conclusion of his term, Rojas was not presented for reelection, reflecting the preference of the neighborhood councils towards rotating out their sector's parliamentary representatives.[13] This mechanism of nomination, in which the choice of candidates corresponds to allied social organizations and not the party itself, is the primary reason why so few MAS parliamentarians ever attained reelection.[14]

Though his legislative tenure had concluded, Rojas continued in public service. In mid-2016, a year after leaving the lower chamber, he was appointed to serve as regional manager of the state-owned Public Social Water and Sanitation Company in El Alto, charged with guaranteeing the city's drinking water supply.[15] His tenure coincided with a local water crisis that affected the cities of La Paz and El Alto in late 2016, leading Rojas to implement rationing measures in the city. The decision was criticized by the Federation of Neighborhood Councils, which demanded Rojas' resignation, culminating in his dismissal at the end of November.[16] After that, Rojas retired from public life, dying on 17 October 2022 from undisclosed health complications.[1]

• Parliamentary profile Office of the Vice President (in Spanish).
• Biographic profile ERBOL (in Spanish).