A press release from the Foreign Ministry to which Prensa Latina had access warns that in a television interview the president stated ‘(…) that the real owners of drugs (…) the big ones, the big fishes, will be in Colombia, in Paraguay, in Bolivia.’

The text confirms that in view of this situation, on March 7, 2024, Minister Celinda Sosa summoned Uruguayan Ambassador Fernando Daniel Alejandro Marr Merello.

It adds that the purpose of this summon was to request clarification from the Uruguayan Government, ‘within the framework of bilateral relations of respect for sovereignty, non-interference, in internal affairs and good neighborhood that characterize our countries (…)’

The communiqué concludes with a call to join Bolivia’s proposal to regionalize the fight against drug trafficking.

In the interview, the Uruguayan dignitary insisted that ‘the issue of financing and the real owners of drugs, I have no doubt that they are not Uruguayan and that they are somewhere else in the world.’

In defense of his term of office, the head of State added that ‘when you see the figures of seized mobiles, seized money, seized drugs, of those investigated and prosecuted, there is no comparison in the history of our country.’

However, Lacalle Pou failed to mention the nationality of drug trafficker Sebastian Marset, currently the most wanted drug lord in South America.

Of Uruguayan origin, Marset illegally established a criminal organization in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, for several years, and in 2023, after being discovered, he fled the country and has remained at large since then, unaccounted for under a search and arrest warrant.

On repeated occasions, the government of President Luis Arce has insisted that Bolivia is not a drug producing country, but an obligatory transit territory on the route of controlled substances from Latin America and the Caribbean.

He has insisted in all international forums on regionalizing the war against this scourge and promotes the creation of the Latin American Intergovernmental Counternarcotics Alliance.

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