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Edgar Fernández
Official portrait, 2014
Member of the Chamber of Deputies from Santa Cruz
In office 19 January 2010 – 18 January 2015
Substitute	Gladys Aguilar
Preceded by	Bismarck Soruco
Succeeded by	Miguel Ángel Feeney
Constituency	Party list
Personal details
Born	Edgar Luis Fernández (1971-11-11) 11 November 1971 (age 53) Totora, Cochabamba, Bolivia
Political party	Movement for Socialism (2001–present)
Occupation	Cab driver politician trade unionist

Edgar Luis Fernández (born 11 November 1971) is a Bolivian cab driver, politician, and trade unionist who served as a party-list member of the Chamber of Deputies from Santa Cruz from 2010 to 2015.

Born in Totora, Fernández spent most of his life residing in Santa Cruz de la Sierra. He settled in the city's Plan 3,000 [es] district, where he got his start providing share taxi services. At age 18, Fernández joined his local drivers' syndicate, progressively rising through the union's ranks throughout the early 2000s.

A member of the Movement for Socialism since 2001, Fernández actively worked to align his sector's unions with the party, resulting in a long-lasting political alliance. After two failed runs for public office in 2004 and 2005, Fernández was elected to represent the Santa Cruz Department in the Chamber of Deputies in 2009. He was not nominated for reelection.

Early life and career

Early life and education

Edgar Fernández was born on 11 November 1971 to Guemersindo Montaño and Juana Fernández. Although born in Totora, a rural town in the Carrasco Province of Cochabamba, he spent most of his life in the Santa Cruz Department, having moved there with his mother at the age of 1. The two settled in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, one of the primary zones of economic opportunity in the country since the latter half of the twentieth century. There, his mother set up shop as a merchant, with Fernández taking up a job at a local noodle factory around age 9. Simultaneously, he attended the city's San Martín School, studying up to middle grade before financial constraints forced him to drop out.

Trade unionism

Between ages 14 and 15, Fernández fulfilled his term of mandatory military service. Upon his return home, he briefly resumed his factory job before relocating to Santa Cruz's Plan 3,000 [es] district in 1987. The municipal district was a hub of lower-class immigration to the city, mostly by migrants from the western departments. There, Fernández began working as a cab driver in the employment of some family members, taking night shifts as he lacked a license at the time. Using money he saved from his factory job, he was able to buy his own minibus, which he operated as a share taxi. Through that, he eventually came to own his own bus route.

Fernández became affiliated with Santa Cruz's urban drivers' unions at the age of 18 when he joined the 24 de Septiembre Microbus and Taxi Syndicate. He got his start as head of one of Plan 3,000's taxi routes, later serving for two terms as secretary of transportation of routes 47, 62, and 94 between 2001 and 2002 before being elected president of said routes four consecutive times between 2005 and 2008. During this time, he also served as his organization's secretary of conflicts from 2003 to 2005. Fernández capped off his rise through the ranks of the sector's trade unions in 2006 when he was elected president of the Plan 3,000 Urban Drivers' Bloc, representing twenty-two of the area's workers' organizations and affiliated route owners.

Chamber of Deputies

Election

Since the district's formation, Plan 3,000's predominantly disadvantaged population made it a center of proletarian opposition to Santa Cruz's economic elite. Throughout the early 2000s, this fact was harnessed by the nascent Movement for Socialism (MAS-IPSP) into popular support for the party, converting the district into one of its primary partisan bases in the Santa Cruz Department. Fernández, for his part, first joined the MAS in 2001, around the same time that he had begun forming a political wing to represent the drivers' unions.

The confluence of these two groups – the MAS and the drivers' unions – generated a lasting political alliance, one whose vote-getting power was first put to the test at the municipal level in 2004 and at the regional in 2005. On the first occasion, Fernández contested a seat on the Santa Cruz Municipal Council but was unsuccessful. A subsequent nomination for a party-list seat in the Chamber of Deputies in the following year's general election also ended in failure. In both cases, the MAS's incipient presence in Santa Cruz prevented it from attaining significant legislative representation.

Despite these initial losses, Fernández and the drivers' union's alliance with the MAS solidified from 2005 on and continued through ensuing election cycles. In 2009, the country's national drivers' federation elected to lend its full support to the party, a pact that garnered the sector a quota of candidacies for its representatives in all nine departments. In Santa Cruz, Fernández was again put forward for a seat in the lower chamber, representing the 16 de Noviembre Federation of Unionized Drivers, a syndicate composed of fifty-six affiliated drivers' unions. Unlike in previous years, Fernández exited victorious, owing to the MAS's steadily improving performance in the Santa Cruz Department, achieved through the consolidation of a multifaceted base of support composed of lower-class urbanites, western migrant settlers, and lowland indigenous peoples.

Tenure

Fernández spent the entirety of his parliamentary term sitting on the lower chamber's Government, Defense, and Armed Forces Commission. Of his five years in office, four were spent as chair of the Government and Bolivian Police Committee, the exception being in 2012, when he briefly served on the Fight Against Drug Trafficking Committee. In legislation, Fernández helped pen multiple bills relating to public security as well as those covering the needs of the transportation sector – most notably, the General Law on Transport, enacted in 2011.

Although Fernández was not nominated for reelection at the end of his term, the sector he represented maintained its close links with the MAS as well as its positions of power within the Legislative Assembly. After leaving office, Fernández retired to Santa Cruz, where he continued to exercise leadership over Plan 3,000's urban drivers' unions into the early 2020s.

Commission assignments

• Government, Defense, and Armed Forces Commission
  • Government and Bolivian Police Committee (Secretary: 2010–2012, 2013–2015)
  • Fight Against Drug Trafficking Committee (2012–2013)

Electoral history

References

Notes

1. Fernández never met his father and, hence, chooses only to carry his maternal surname.
2. ^ Presented on an electoral list. The data shown represents the share of the vote the entire party/alliance received in that constituency.

Footnotes

1. ^ Vargas & Villavicencio 2014, p. 70.
2. ^ Gonzales Salas 2013, p. 322.
3. ^ Romero Ballivián 2018, p. 215.
4. Gonzales Salas 2013, p. 322; Vargas & Villavicencio 2014, p. 70.
5. ^ Gonzales Salas 2013, p. 322; Romero Ballivián 2018, p. 215.
6. Rivero Sierra 2015, pp. 239–240.
7. Vicepresidencia 2010; Romero Ballivián 2018, p. 215.
8. Gonzales Salas 2013, pp. 322–323.
9. Romero Ballivián 2018, p. 199.
10. Gonzales Salas 2013, p. 323; Romero Ballivián 2018, pp. 215–216.
11. Opinión 2011; Vargas & Villavicencio 2014, p. 70.
12. Romero Ballivián 2018, p. 216.
13. UNITEL 2021.
14. Prensa Diputados 2011; Vargas & Villavicencio 2014, pp. 310, 315, 319.
15. Prensa Diputados 2012.
16. Atlas Electoral 2004.
17. Atlas Electoral 2005.
18. Atlas Electoral 2009.

Works cited

Online and list sources

• "Comisiones y Comités: Periodo Legislativo 2011–2012". diputados.bo (in Spanish). La Paz: Cámara de Diputados del Estado Plurinacional. Archived from the original on 26 May 2011. Retrieved 1 August 2023.
• "Comisiones y Comités: Periodo Legislativo 2012–2013". diputados.bo (in Spanish). La Paz: Cámara de Diputados del Estado Plurinacional. Archived from the original on 5 February 2012. Retrieved 1 August 2023.
• "Edgar Luis Fernández". vicepresidencia.gob.bo (in Spanish). La Paz: Vicepresidencia del Estado Plurinacional. Archived from the original on 26 August 2016. Retrieved 24 August 2023.
• "Elecciones Municipales 2004 | Atlas Electoral". atlaselectoral.oep.org.bo (in Spanish). La Paz: Órgano Electoral Plurinacional. Retrieved 24 August 2023.
• "Elecciones Generales 2005 | Atlas Electoral". atlaselectoral.oep.org.bo (in Spanish). La Paz: Órgano Electoral Plurinacional. Archived from the original on 1 January 2023. Retrieved 24 August 2023.
• "Elecciones Generales 2009 | Atlas Electoral". atlaselectoral.oep.org.bo (in Spanish). La Paz: Órgano Electoral Plurinacional. Archived from the original on 1 January 2023. Retrieved 24 August 2023.

Digital and print publications

• "El presidente promulga hoy Ley General de Transporte pese a rechazo" [The President Enacts the General Law on Transport Despite Opposition]. Opinión (in Spanish). Cochabamba. 15 August 2011. Archived from the original on 25 February 2023. Retrieved 24 August 2023.
• "Transporte urbano no acatará el paro departamental del lunes en Santa Cruz" [Urban Drivers Will Not Support Monday's Departmental Strike in Santa Cruz]. UNITEL (in Spanish). Santa Cruz de la Sierra. 23 July 2022. Archived from the original on 25 February 2023. Retrieved 24 August 2023.

Academic journals

• Rivero Sierra, Fulvio (June 2015). "Mi papá se fue pero va a volver: Experiencias de la migración entre los no migrantes. 'Cultura migratoria' en el Barrio Plan 3.000 en Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia" [My Father Left but Will Return: Experiences of Migration Among Non-migrants. "Migratory Culture" in the Plan 3,000 Barrio of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia]. Trabajo y Sociedad (in Spanish) (24). Santiago del Estero: 235–248. ISSN 1514-6871 – via SciELO.

Books and encyclopedias

• Gonzales Salas, Inés, ed. (2013). Biografías: Historias de vida en la Asamblea Legislativa Plurinacional (in Spanish). Editorial Gente Común; ERBOL; Fundación Friedrich Ebert; IDEA Internacional. pp. 322–324. ISBN 978-99954-93-05-9. OCLC 876429743 – via the Internet Archive.
• Romero Ballivián, Salvador (2018). Quiroga Velasco, Camilo (ed.). Diccionario biográfico de parlamentarios 1979–2019 (in Spanish) (2nd ed.). La Paz: FUNDAPPAC; Fundación Konrad Adenauer. pp. 215–216. ISBN 978-99974-0-021-5. OCLC 1050945993 – via the Internet Archive.
• Vargas Luna, María Elena; Villavicencio Arancibia, Jois Sarelly, eds. (2014). Primera Asamblea Legislativa Plurinacional de Bolivia, Cámara de Diputados: Diccionario biográfico, diputadas y diputados titulares y suplentes 2010–2015 (in Spanish). La Paz: Cámara de Diputados del Estado Plurinacional. p. 70. OCLC 961105285 – via the Internet Archive.

External links

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

• Biography
• Bolivia
• Organized labor
• Politics

• 1971 births
• Living people
• 21st-century Bolivian politicians
• Taxi drivers
• Bolivian trade union leaders
• Members of the Bolivian Chamber of Deputies from Santa Cruz
• Movimiento al Socialismo politicians
• People from Carrasco Province
• People from Santa Cruz de la Sierra