He was known as ‘MAGA’s Man’ in Latin America. Now he is charged with homicide

MEXICO CITY — He’s been known as the “MAGA man” of Latin America, a brash political provocateur whose social media assaults boosted right-wing campaigns from his native Argentina to Central America.

His profession as political guide and co-founder of an ultra-right on-line outlet made him a wealthy man and helped elect Trump-aligned politicians throughout the area. The Economist gave him the “MAGA Man” label, whereas political commentators gave him one other nickname — the “Steve Bannon of Latin America” — a nod to the longtime Trump ally and advisor.

Now, nevertheless, Fernando Cerimedo, 45, sits in a maximum-security jail in Bolivia, accused of masterminding a murder-for-hire plot: the tried femicide of his pregnant mistress, Nadia Beller, 33, a Bolivian lawyer and activist.

It’s a shocking collapse for a onetime advert man with a dodgy fame who rose to develop into the go-to digital marketing campaign guru for Latin America’s ascendant proper wing. Cerimedo’s signature boasts, exaggerations and peddling of false election-fraud narratives mirrored these of his political mannequin, President Trump.

Cerimedo is also one other instance of how right-wing political operatives outdoors the United States — corresponding to these in Colombia and Germany — have adopted Trumpian techniques and messaging.

The fall of the “King Midas of the Latin American proper,” mentioned Daniel Matamala, a distinguished Chilean journalist, shocked “the ecosystem of pretend information, bots, trolls and disinformation that has taken this area by storm in recent times.” Speaking on his podcast, Matamala added, “The identify of Cerimedo looms like a ghost over the summit of the unconventional proper.”

The Aug. 17 assault on Beller was a seemingly well-planned ambush that was captured by safety cameras, the grainy photos extensively disseminated on social media.

One of two would-be assassins dressed as fast-food deliverymen pulled out a pistol and shot Beller level clean outdoors a resort within the jap Bolivian metropolis of Santa Cruz. She fell to the bottom and, based on her account, feigned dying. The subsequent day, at daybreak, Cerimedo was arrested as he was about to board a aircraft to Buenos Aires.

Cerimedo arrange the hit, prosecutors cost, in a nefarious try at injury management. Beller had threatened to reveal his alleged prison habits and bodily abusive habits towards her whereas revealing Cerimedo, a married man with two kids, as the daddy of her unborn little one.

Cerimedo can also be beneath investigation on suspicion of unlawful enrichment and potential hyperlinks to cocaine trafficking.

He has denied any wrongdoing.

Even earlier than Cerimedo’s arrest, Latin American journalists had begun unmasking Cerimedo as a prodigious purveyor of pretend information — about himself. New studies revealed that his frequent boasts about U.S. connections — that he attended Harvard, skilled with U.S. Navy SEALs, labored within the Obama White House — have been fanciful.

“He actually exaggerated issues,” mentioned Damian Merlo, a Miami-based guide who labored with Cerimedo on the 2023 marketing campaign of Argentine President Javier Milei, a Trump favourite. “I by no means actually acquired the impression that Cerimedo was ‘MAGA’s man in Latin America.’ The man may hardly communicate English! But that’s how he bought himself.”

Many occasions, the gross sales pitch labored. It was Cerimedo who helped dealer then-candidate Milei’s celebrated 2023 interview with Tucker Carlson, on the time a Trump confidant, an look that thrust Milei into the transnational highlight.

Like Milei, Cerimedo appeared to relish any proximity to Trump-land.

In February, on the inaugural “Hispanic Prosperity Gala” — a right-wing pep rally held at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property — Cerimedo was honored as “Hispanic Political Consultant of the Year.” From the rostrum, he spoke of Latin America’s “tradition warfare” and the necessity to make sure that “the left by no means once more returns” to governments which have elected conservative leaders.

Switching to closely accented English, Cerimedo gave a shout-out to Brad Parscale, Trump’s former marketing campaign supervisor, whom Cerimedo thanked for “believing [in] me on a regular basis and giving me your know-how.”

Parscale declined to remark.

Both Cerimedo and Parscale have been concerned in final 12 months’s marketing campaign that resulted within the election of Honduran President Nasry Asfura, whom Trump backed publicly.

Last 12 months, Cerimedo was a key participant within the election of Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz, the center-right, U.S.-educated son of a former president who transitioned from Marxist firebrand to reasonable. The ascension of Paz broke nearly twenty years of leftist rule by the Movement for Socialism celebration of ex-President Evo Morales.

Cerimedo had no official capability in Paz’s authorities, however he loved insider standing. He accompanied Paz in March to Trump’s anti-narco “Shield of the Americas” summit, a confab of largely conservative leaders at Trump’s Doral resort in south Florida.

Among the gadgets present in searches of Cerimedo-linked properties, authorities say, was a commerce card itemizing him as Paz’s “chief adviser” — a nonexistent publish.

“Mr. Cerimedo by no means had the authorization to symbolize … the presidency, the federal government or my household,” a deeply discomfited Paz mentioned in a Facebook message final month.

How precisely Cerimedo acquired into politics — and the way he grew to become a right-wing rabble-rouser — stays considerably opaque. According to media accounts, he labored a collection of uninspiring jobs — together with stints as a taxi driver, a schoolteacher and an worker of insurance coverage and pc companies — earlier than veering into promoting. In 2019, he assisted the campaigns of a number of leftist Peronist candidates in provincial races in Argentina, and later based his personal consultancy, Numen.

Cerimedo first gained prominence in neighboring Brazil. That’s the place he championed false election-fraud narratives following the slim reelection defeat in 2022 of President Jair Bolsonaro — a MAGA stalwart — in his reelection bid in opposition to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a leftist. Cerimedo’s “Brazil Was Stolen” livestream exacerbated the sense of concern amongst Bolsonaro loyalists, who took to the streets in mass protests.

The Brazil publicity helped catapult Cerimedo into profitable presidential campaigns in Argentina (Milei), Honduras (Asfura) and Bolivia (Paz). His arrest prompted Chilean lawmakers to create a fee to research Cerimedo’s potential position in that nation’s latest electoral shift to the best.

With Cerimedo’s identify now poisonous, Paz, Milei and different former allies have distanced themselves.

Also ditching Cerimedo was his shut accomplice, Javier Negre, a right-wing Spanish media founder who, in 2024, bought 50% possession of Cerimedo’s La Derecha Diario (The Daily Right), a web-based, Spanish-language MAGA megaphone. The website strongly backed Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella — who had Trump’s assist — throughout his tight marketing campaign this summer season.

Following Cerimedo’s arrest, Negre introduced that he had purchased out his former accomplice in La Derecha Diario.

In Bolivia, the Cerimedo scandal has taken on the character of a Latin American telenovela.

A recovering Beller, shot thrice in her higher physique, granted interviews from her hospital mattress, dishing on her lover’s alleged brutality and criminality.

According to Beller’s testimony to authorities, Cerimedo tricked her into the near-fatal rendezvous outdoors the resort. He advised her {that a} supply was ready to share particulars in regards to the purported rape of a 13-year-old, she mentioned. The supposed rapist? Bolivian ex-President Morales — a despised determine on the Latin American proper.

The case has seen the as soon as high-flying Cerimedo diminished to a slumping presence in a hoodie as authorities have shuffled the baldish, heavyset determine to hearings and lockups. Last week, he was transferred whereas awaiting trial to Bolivia’s maximum-security Chonchocoro jail, notorious for its high-altitude, ill-heated confines.

“I wish to see my kids!” a sobbing Cerimedo declared at one level in earshot of the media.

His authorized workforce has pushed again. A protection lawyer, Margarita Arce, questioned whether or not Cerimedo had impregnated Beller and asserted to reporters that Beller staged a “self-inflicted assault” to smear Cerimedo and undermine the Bolivian authorities.

But prosecutors have sided with Beller, who advised the Argentine every day Clarín: “Fernando Cerimedo wished to kill me as a result of I can inform all the things that I do know.”

Times workers author Ana Ceballos in Washington and particular correspondents Andrés D’Alessandro in Buenos Aires and Cecilia Sánchez Vidal in Mexico City contributed to this report.