MEXICO CITY — He’s been called 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 career as political consultant and co-founder of an ultra-right online outlet made him a rich man and helped elect Trump-aligned politicians across the region. The Economist gave him the “MAGA Man” label, while political commentators gave him another nickname — the “Steve Bannon of Latin America” — a nod to the longtime Trump ally and advisor.
Now, however, Fernando Cerimedo, 45, sits in a maximum-security prison in Bolivia, accused of masterminding a murder-for-hire plot: The attempted femicide of his pregnant mistress, Nadia Beller, 33, a Bolivian lawyer and activist. It’s a stunning collapse for a onetime ad man with a dodgy reputation who rose to become the go-to digital campaign guru for Latin America’s ascendant right wing. Cerimedo’s signature boasts, exaggerations and peddling of false election-fraud narratives reflected those of his political model, President Trump.
Cerimedo also is another example of how right-wing political operatives outside the United States — as recently in Colombia and Germany — have adopted Trumpian tactics and messaging. The fall of the “King Midas of the Latin American right,” said Daniel Matamala, a prominent Chilean journalist, stunned “the ecosystem of fake news, bots, trolls and disinformation that has taken this region by storm in recent years.” Speaking on his podcast, Matamala added, “The name of Cerimedo looms like a ghost over the summit of the radical right.” The Aug. 17 attack on Beller was a seemingly well-planned ambush that was captured by security cameras, the grainy images widely disseminated on social media. One of two would-be assassins dressed as fast-food deliverymen pulled out a pistol and shot Beller point blank outside a hotel in the eastern Bolivian city of Santa Cruz.
She fell to the ground and, according to her account, feigned death. The next day, at dawn, Cerimedo was arrested as he was about to board a plane to Buenos Aires. Cerimedo set up the hit, prosecutors charge, in a nefarious attempt at damage control.
Beller had threatened to expose his alleged criminal behavior and physically abusive behavior toward her while revealing Cerimedo, a married man with two children, as the father of her unborn child. Cerimedo is also under investigation for alleged illegal enrichment and potential links to cocaine trafficking. Even before Cerimedo’s arrest, Latin American journalists had begun unmasking Cerimedo as a prodigious purveyor of fake news — about himself.
New reports revealed that his frequent boasts about U.S. connections — that he attended Harvard, trained with U.S. Navy SEALs, worked in the Obama White House — were fanciful. But that’s how he sold himself.” Many times, the sales pitch worked.
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