:Edgar Fernández
{{Short description|Bolivian politician (born 1971)}}
{{For|the Kenyan field hockey player|Edgar Fernandes}}
{{Hatnote|In this Spanish name, the second or maternal family name is Fernández.}}
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{{Use American English|date=February 2023}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=February 2023}}
{{Infobox officeholder
| name = Edgar Fernández
| image = Edgar Luis Fernández. Official portrait, 2014. Chamber of Deputies of Bolivia. Original.png
| caption = Official portrait, 2014
| alt = Headshot of Edgar Fernández
| office = {{Br list|Member of the Chamber of Deputies|from Santa Cruz}}
| 1blankname = {{Nowrap|Substitute}}
| 1namedata = Gladys Aguilar
| term_start = 19 January 2010
| term_end = 18 January 2015
| predecessor = Bismarck Soruco
| successor = Miguel Ángel Feeney
| constituency = Party list
| birth_name = Edgar Luis Fernández
| birth_date = {{Birth date and age|1971|11|11|df=y}}
| birth_place = Totora, Cochabamba, Bolivia
| death_date =
| death_place =
| party = Movement for Socialism {{Nowrap|(2001–present)}}
| occupation = {{Hlist|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 {{ill|Plan 3,000|es|Plan 3000 (Santa Cruz de la Sierra)}} 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.
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Early life and career
= Early life and education =
Edgar Fernández was born on 11 November 1971 to Guemersindo Montaño and Juana Fernández.{{sfn|Vargas|Villavicencio|2014|p=70}}{{efn-lg|Fernández never met his father and, hence, chooses only to carry his maternal surname.{{sfn|Gonzales Salas|2013|p=322}}}} 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.{{sfn|Gonzales Salas|2013|p=322}} 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.{{sfn|Romero Ballivián|2018|p=215}} There, his mother set up shop as a merchant, with Fernández taking up a job at a local noodle factory around age 9.{{sfn|Gonzales Salas|2013|p=322}} Simultaneously, he attended the city's San Martín School, studying up to middle grade before financial constraints forced him to drop out.{{sfnm|1a1=Gonzales Salas|1y=2013|1p=322|2a1=Vargas|2a2=Villavicencio|2y=2014|2p=70}}
= 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 {{ill|Plan 3,000|es|Plan 3000 (Santa Cruz de la Sierra)}} district in 1987.{{sfnm|1a1=Gonzales Salas|1y=2013|1p=322|2a1=Romero Ballivián|2y=2018|2p=215}} The municipal district was a hub of lower-class immigration to the city, mostly by migrants from the western departments.{{sfn|Rivero Sierra|2015|pp=239–240}} 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.{{sfn|Gonzales Salas|2013|p=322}}
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.{{sfn|Vargas|Villavicencio|2014|p=70}} 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.{{sfnm|1a1=Gonzales Salas|1y=2013|1p=322|2a1=Romero Ballivián|2y=2018|2p=215}} 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.{{sfnm|1a1=Vicepresidencia|1y=2010|2a1=Romero Ballivián|2y=2018|2p=215}}
Chamber of Deputies
= Election =
{{Further|2005 Bolivian general election|2009 Bolivian general 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.{{sfn|Romero Ballivián|2018|p=215}} 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.{{sfn|Vargas|Villavicencio|2014|p=70}}
The confluence of these two groups{{snd}}the MAS and the drivers' unions{{snd}}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.{{sfn|Gonzales Salas|2013|pp=322–323}} In both cases, the MAS's incipient presence in Santa Cruz prevented it from attaining significant legislative representation.{{sfn|Romero Ballivián|2018|p=215}}
Despite these initial losses, Fernández and the drivers' union's alliance with the MAS solidified from 2005 on and continued through ensuing election cycles.{{sfn|Romero Ballivián|2018|p=199}} 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,{{sfnm|1a1=Gonzales Salas|1y=2013|1p=323|2a1=Romero Ballivián|2y=2018|2pp=215–216}} representing the 16 de Noviembre Federation of Unionized Drivers, a syndicate composed of fifty-six affiliated drivers' unions.{{sfn|Vargas|Villavicencio|2014|p=70}} 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.{{sfn|Romero Ballivián|2018|p=215}}
= 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{{snd}}most notably, the General Law on Transport, enacted in 2011.{{sfnm|1a1=Opinión|1y=2011|2a1=Vargas|2a2=Villavicencio|2y=2014|2p=70}}
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.{{sfn|Romero Ballivián|2018|p=216}} 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.{{sfn|UNITEL|2021}}
= Commission assignments =
- Government, Defense, and Armed Forces Commission
- Government and Bolivian Police Committee (Secretary: 2010–2012, 2013–2015){{sfnm|1a1=Prensa Diputados|1y=2011|2a1=Vargas|2a2=Villavicencio|2y=2014|2pp=310; 315; 319}}
- Fight Against Drug Trafficking Committee (2012–2013){{sfn|Prensa Diputados|2012}}
Electoral history
| class="wikitable" style="font-size: 90%; text-align:center;"
|+ {{sronly|Electoral history of Edgar Fernández}} ! style="background-color:#EAECF0;" rowspan=2 | Year ! style="background-color:#EAECF0;" rowspan=2 | Office ! style="background-color:#EAECF0;" colspan=2 rowspan=2 | Party ! style="background-color:#EAECF0;" colspan=3 | Votes ! style="background-color:#EAECF0;" rowspan=2 | Result ! style="background-color:#EAECF0;" rowspan=2 | {{abbr|2=Reference|Ref}}. |
| style="background-color:#EAECF0;" | Total
! style="background-color:#EAECF0;" | % ! style="background-color:#EAECF0;" | {{abbr|2=Position|P}}. |
|---|
| style="background-color:#EAECF0;" | 2004
| style="background-color:{{party color|Movement for Socialism (Bolivia)}};"| | 34,063 | 9.51% | 4th | {{no2|Lost}} | {{sfn|Atlas Electoral|2004}}{{efn-lg|name=fn1|Presented on an electoral list. The data shown represents the share of the vote the entire party/alliance received in that constituency.}} |
| style="background-color:#EAECF0;" | 2005
| rowspan=2 | Deputy | style="background-color:{{party color|Movement for Socialism (Bolivia)}};"| | 207,785 | 33.17% | 2nd | {{no2|Lost}} | {{sfn|Atlas Electoral|2005}}{{efn-lg|name=fn1}} |
| style="background-color:#EAECF0;" | 2009
| style="background-color:{{party color|Movement for Socialism (Bolivia)}};"| | 441,705 | 40.91% | 2nd | {{yes2|Won}} | {{sfn|Atlas Electoral|2009}}{{efn-lg|name=fn1}} |
| style="background-color:#EAECF0;" colspan=9 | Source: Plurinational Electoral Organ {{!}} [https://atlaselectoral.oep.org.bo/#/ Electoral Atlas] |
References
= Notes =
{{Notelist-lg}}
= Footnotes =
{{Reflist}}
= Works cited =
Online and list sources
{{Refbegin|35em}}
- {{Cite web |ref={{harvid|Prensa Diputados|2011}} |title=Comisiones y Comités: Periodo Legislativo 2011–2012 |url=http://www.diputados.bo/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=83&Itemid=59 |website=diputados.bo |language=es |publication-place=La Paz |publisher=Cámara de Diputados del Estado Plurinacional |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110526205735/http://www.diputados.bo/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=83&Itemid=59 |archive-date=26 May 2011 |access-date=1 August 2023}}
- {{Cite web |ref={{harvid|Prensa Diputados|2012}} |title=Comisiones y Comités: Periodo Legislativo 2012–2013 |url=http://www.diputados.bo/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=83&Itemid=59 |website=diputados.bo |language=es |publication-place=La Paz |publisher=Cámara de Diputados del Estado Plurinacional |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120205103931/http://www.diputados.bo/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=83&Itemid=59 |archive-date=5 February 2012 |access-date=1 August 2023}}
- {{Cite web |ref={{harvid|Vicepresidencia|2010}} |title=Edgar Luis Fernández |url=https://www.vicepresidencia.gob.bo/spip.php?page=parlamentario&id_parlamentario=134 |website=vicepresidencia.gob.bo |language=es |publication-place=La Paz |publisher=Vicepresidencia del Estado Plurinacional |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160826224211/http://vicepresidencia.gob.bo/spip.php?page=parlamentario&id_parlamentario=134 |archive-date=26 August 2016 |access-date=24 August 2023}}
- {{Cite web |ref={{harvid|Atlas Electoral|2004}} |title=Elecciones Municipales 2004 {{!}} Atlas Electoral |url=https://atlaselectoral.oep.org.bo/#/subproceso/67/1/4 |website=atlaselectoral.oep.org.bo |language=es |location=La Paz |publisher=Órgano Electoral Plurinacional |access-date=24 August 2023}}
- {{Cite web |ref={{harvid|Atlas Electoral|2005}} |title=Elecciones Generales 2005 {{!}} Atlas Electoral |url=https://atlaselectoral.oep.org.bo/#/sub_proceso/19/41/3 |website=atlaselectoral.oep.org.bo |language=es |location=La Paz |publisher=Órgano Electoral Plurinacional |url-status=live |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/yVSN9 |archive-date=1 January 2023 |access-date=24 August 2023}}
- {{Cite web |ref={{harvid|Atlas Electoral|2009}} |title=Elecciones Generales 2009 {{!}} Atlas Electoral |url=https://atlaselectoral.oep.org.bo/#/sub_proceso/82/41/3 |website=atlaselectoral.oep.org.bo |language=es |location=La Paz |publisher=Órgano Electoral Plurinacional |url-status=live |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/Njv8C |archive-date=1 January 2023 |access-date=24 August 2023}}
{{Refend}}
Digital and print publications
{{Refbegin|35em}}
- {{Cite news |ref={{harvid|Opinión|2011}} |title=El presidente promulga hoy Ley General de Transporte pese a rechazo |trans-title=The President Enacts the General Law on Transport Despite Opposition |url=https://www.opinion.com.bo/articulo/el-pais/presidente-promulga-hoy-ley-general-transporte-pese-rechazo/20110815204200373965.html |work=Opinión |language=es |publication-place=Cochabamba |date=15 August 2011 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230225004910/https://www.opinion.com.bo/articulo/el-pais/presidente-promulga-hoy-ley-general-transporte-pese-rechazo/20110815204200373965.html |archive-date=25 February 2023 |access-date=24 August 2023}}
- {{Cite news |ref={{harvid|UNITEL|2021}} |title=Transporte urbano no acatará el paro departamental del lunes en Santa Cruz |trans-title=Urban Drivers Will Not Support Monday's Departmental Strike in Santa Cruz |url=https://noticias.unitel.bo/sociedad/transporte-urbano-no-acatara-el-paro-departamental-del-lunes-en-santa-cruz-DFUN417675 |work=UNITEL |language=es |publication-place=Santa Cruz de la Sierra |date=23 July 2022 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230225005620/https://noticias.unitel.bo/sociedad/transporte-urbano-no-acatara-el-paro-departamental-del-lunes-en-santa-cruz-DFUN417675 |archive-date=25 February 2023 |access-date=24 August 2023}}
{{Refend}}
Academic journals
{{Refbegin}}
- {{Cite journal |last=Rivero Sierra |first=Fulvio |date=June 2015 |title=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 |trans-title=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 |url=http://www.scielo.org.ar/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1514-68712015000100013 |journal=Trabajo y Sociedad |language=es |publication-place=Santiago del Estero |issue=24 |pages=235–248 |issn=1514-6871 |via=SciELO}}
{{Refend}}
Books and encyclopedias
{{Refbegin|35em|indent=yes}}
- {{Cite book |editor-last=Gonzales Salas |editor-first=Inés |year=2013 |title=Biografías: Historias de vida en la Asamblea Legislativa Plurinacional |url=https://archive.org/details/historias-de-vida-en-la-asamblea-legislativa-plurinacional/page/322 |language=es |publisher=Editorial Gente Común; ERBOL; Fundación Friedrich Ebert; IDEA Internacional |pages=322–324 |isbn=978-99954-93-05-9 |oclc=876429743 |via=the Internet Archive}}
- {{Cite book |last=Romero Ballivián |first=Salvador |author-link=Salvador Romero |year=2018 |editor-last=Quiroga Velasco |editor-first=Camilo |title=Diccionario biográfico de parlamentarios 1979–2019 |url=https://archive.org/details/diccionario-biografico-de-parlamentarios-1979-2019/page/215 |language=es |edition=2nd |location=La Paz |publisher=FUNDAPPAC; Fundación Konrad Adenauer |pages=215–216 |isbn=978-99974-0-021-5 |oclc=1050945993 |via=the Internet Archive}}
- {{Cite book |ref={{harvid|Vargas|Villavicencio|2014}} |editor-last1=Vargas Luna |editor-first1=María Elena |editor-last2=Villavicencio Arancibia |editor-first2=Jois Sarelly |year=2014 |title=Primera Asamblea Legislativa Plurinacional de Bolivia, Cámara de Diputados: Diccionario biográfico, diputadas y diputados titulares y suplentes 2010–2015 |url=https://archive.org/details/primera-asamblea-legislativa-plurinacional-de-bolivia/page/70 |language=es |location=La Paz |publisher=Cámara de Diputados del Estado Plurinacional |page=70 |oclc=961105285 |via=the Internet Archive}}
{{Refend}}
External links
{{Commons category|Edgar Fernández (Bolivian politician)}}
- [https://www.vicepresidencia.gob.bo/spip.php?page=parlamentario&id_parlamentario=134 Parliamentary profile] Office of the Vice President {{inlang|es}}.
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{{s-bef|before=Bismarck Soruco}}
{{s-ttl|title={{Br list|Member of the Chamber of Deputies|from Santa Cruz}}|years=2010–2015}}
{{s-aft|after=Miguel Ángel Feeney}}
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{{Portal bar|Biography|Bolivia|Organized labor|Politics}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Fernandez, Edgar}}
Category:21st-century Bolivian politicians
Category:Bolivian trade union leaders
Category:Members of the Bolivian Chamber of Deputies from Santa Cruz
Category:Movimiento al Socialismo politicians