Rebeca Delgado
Rebeca Elvira Delgado Burgoa is a Bolivian academic, lawyer, magistrate, and politician who served as president of the Chamber of Deputies from 2012 to 2013. As a member of the Movement for Socialism, she served as a party-list member of the Chamber of Deputies from Cochabamba from 2010 to 2014. Prior to her election to the lower chamber, Delgado served as a party-list member of the Constituent Assembly from Cochabamba from 2006 to 2007 and was vice minister of government coordination from 2008 to 2009. Delgado's near-decade-long political and legislative tenure was preceded by a fifteen-year career as a public servant, during which time she worked as a public defender and examining magistrate, was a magistrate on the Departmental Electoral Court of Cochabamba, and served as the Ombudsman's Office's delegate for the fight against corruption in Cochabamba.
Born in La Paz and raised in Cochabamba, Delgado graduated as a lawyer at the Higher University of San Simón. She ventured into public activity through the field of human rights, supporting the Departmental Human Rights Assembly during her days as a law student. She worked as coordinator for public defense in Cochabamba and as an examining magistrate before being selected to serve on the department's Departmental Electoral Court, part of the first group of women to hold seats on the bench. Delgado became politically involved during the first government of Evo Morales when she was invited to run for a seat in the Constituent Assembly, tasked with drafting the country's current Constitution. She continued in public administration following the assembly's closure, serving as presidential delegate in Cochabamba, vice minister of government coordination, and head of the Departmental Coordinator of Autonomies.
In 2009, Delgado was elected to represent Cochabamba in the Chamber of Deputies, and was elected to the presidency of the lower chamber in 2012. Delgado's tenure saw a deterioration in relations between herself and the administration due to her willingness to challenge executive interference in legislative matters, briefly upending the subservient role the legislature had begun to take starting from Morales's second term. Delgado was not reelected to the presidency and spent the remainder of her term as persona non grata within her own party, assuming leadership over a nascent group of "freethinkers" that defected from the ruling party in the latter years of the 1st Plurinational Legislative Assembly. In late 2014, she launched a bid for the Cochabamba mayoralty on behalf of her own party, Freedom of Thought for Bolivia. However, her candidacy was disqualified due to a controversial judicial ruling that barred most outgoing legislators from running for local public office. Delgado took her grievance to the United Nations, which in 2018 ruled that the government had violated her civil and political rights.
Early life and career
Rebeca Delgado was born on 1 June 1966 in La Paz to Alfredo Delgado and Rebeca Burgoa. Delgado's mother was raised in Charazani, the cultural center of the Kallawaya, an itinerant group native to the Saavedra Province. Her father was the son of a local landlord from the rural town of Pumujri in the adjoining Camacho Province. Orphaned as a child, Alfredo Delgado spent much of his youth in the care of the area's Kallawaya community, to whom he later bequeathed his inherited land titles in gratitude. Her parents' rural roots led Delgado to heavily identify with Kallawaya culture as a child, with the family often returning to vacation in Pumujri, where she participated in indigenous festivities and traditions.Delgado concluded her primary studies in La Paz before moving with her family to Cochabamba, where she attended the city's Catholic Handmaids institute. She studied law at the Higher University of San Simón, graduating with a master's in criminal science and a diploma in higher education with a specialization in human rights. During her time in university, Delgado made her first forays into the public sector, serving as a volunteer member of the Departmental Human Rights Assembly's legal commission. Upon graduating, she briefly worked as a university professor at the Bolivian Catholic University and the Bolivian Private University before moving on to serve as coordinator for public defense of Cochabamba, her first official public function. It was while exercising this position in the 1990s that Delgado first became acquainted with cocalero activist Evo Morales when she was assigned to assume the defense of the region's coca growers.
In the ensuing years, Delgado worked as an examining magistrate and was an active member of several women's organizations. In 1991, during the period of judicial reform spearheaded by René Blattmann—which for the first time prioritized the appointment of impartial professionals over fulfilling partisan quotas—Delgado was nominated by these women's organization to serve as a magistrate on Cochabamba's Departmental Electoral Court. The hard-fought push for women's representation in the judiciary meant that not only was Delgado part of the first group of women to serve on the court, but the body actually held a female majority. Upon the conclusion of her term, Delgado was appointed to work for the Ombudsman's Office as its delegate for the fight against corruption in Cochabamba.
Constituent Assembly
Election
Throughout her fifteen years of public service, Delgado remained on the sidelines of partisan politics, a situation that changed in late 2005, when her name was put forward by several women's organizations as a potential candidate for a seat in the newly-formed Constituent Assembly on behalf of the Movement for Socialism. Delgado received the formal invitation in 2006, accepted, and was elected on the MAS's party list in that year's constituent elections. The postulation of retired former magistrates to contest elective office was a not uncommon tactic among political parties of the day, taking advantage of the good public image individuals like Delgado had accrued as impartial arbiters of the law.Tenure
As a constituent, Delgado chaired the assembly's Justice Commission, applying her legal knowledge to the process of writing and drafting articles in the new Constitution related to judicial matters. Of particular note was the decision to open up the designation of the country's highest judicial officials to popular vote, with candidates pre-selected by the Legislative Assembly. Though intended to alleviate the crisis of judicial independence the country faced at the time, Delgado later lamented that the legislature's ability to pre-select candidates made the judiciary subject to the whims of "buddies and friends" in the Legislative Assembly. Years later, she called for amendments to the Constitution allowing for popular participation in the pre-selection of judicial candidates. Regardless of its shortfalls, Delgado regarded her term in the Constituent Assembly as her "strongest political moment and proof of political commitment".Government official
Half a year after the closure of the Constituent Assembly, Delgado was appointed to serve as the government's presidential delegate in Cochabamba, charged with coordinating government actions with the region's social sectors. Added to this was the mission of acting as a liaison between executive and departmental authorities, a task of particular import when managing relations between the government and opposition-led regions like Cochabamba. Delgado's prominent position as a regional authority led President Morales to consider appointing her as the department's acting prefect in replacement of Manfred Reyes Villa, whom voters had recently recalled. For a while, she remained the president's preferred pick among a crowded field of possible candidates and was one of the final two contenders for the position, together with David Herrera, who enjoyed the support of the department's social movements. Ultimately, however, neither were chosen, with Morales instead designating Rafael Puente to hold the post.Just a month after being sworn in as a presidential delegate, Delgado was reassigned to head the Vice Ministry of Government Coordination. In her service as vice minister, Delgado assisted in drafting and elaborating supreme decrees issued by the executive branch, contributed to the process of implementing the new Constitution, and successfully developed a system for monitoring the performance of public management. In April 2009, having spent the past two years in public administration, Delgado resigned and returned to Cochabamba to focus on her family. She was quickly substituted by Martín Burgoa, who served in an acting capacity until Wilfredo Chávez was appointed as Delgado's permanent replacement in May. The following month, Delgado returned to public service in a more localized role, being appointed to head the Departmental Coordinator of Autonomies of Cochabamba, a position focused on developing the department's newly granted political autonomy, including drafting its autonomous statute.