Ana María Romero

Possessing strong convictions and great charisma, she showed leadership skills from her college days when she was elected president of the Catholic University's Journalism Student Center, between 1968 and 1970.

Her marriage and subsequent motherhood to three children did not prevent her from completing her university studies, developing a renowned career in journalism and excelling in public life, even at a time when these activities were primarily male-dominated.

Her ideals of freedom and inclusion, along with her purposeful defense of universal human rights, were rapidly taken up during a tenure that made history for making visible sectors that had been historically marginalized within Bolivian society.

Having become a respected figure who was at the same time feared by the political spectrum, her continuation as Ombudswoman began to be questioned by a sector of the ruling party, the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR), and their representation in Congress.

In September 2003, President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada refused to re-elect Ana Maria Romero into office and ordered the bench of the MNR to block the vote in her favor in Congress.

Ana María Romero headed the UNIR Foundation until December 2008, when she retired to take a break and devote her time to writing a novel, which she would not be able to finish due to her entry into politics and her subsequent illness.

Guevara became Bolivia's President by constitutional succession in August 1979 but was overthrown by a military coup led by Colonel Alberto Natusch in November of that year in the so-called "All Saints Massacre", where more than 100 people were killed in a massive deployment of violence that showed outstanding brutality.

During this period, Ana Maria Romero was given the task of coordinating with the national press and more than 100 international journalists that had arrived in the country to cover the Ninth General Assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS).

Father and daughter met in public service, where he gave an outstanding performance as mastermind and chief promoter of the OAS resolution in 1979 which urged Chile to give Bolivia a sovereign and useful outlet to the Pacific Ocean.

It was she who performed the function of discrediting the versions of Guevara's resignation being put forward by the de facto regime, announcing the existence of a clandestine Constitutional Government and defending the rule of law.

The crowd had been trying to stop a convoy carrying fuel and food into the City of La Paz, which needed these supplies after several days of blockages by social movements unified around the premise of the nationalization of hydrocarbons and the convening of a new Constituent Assembly to refound Bolivia.

With indigenous leaders, intellectuals, students, teachers and representatives of civil society, she spoke strongly against the violence that took place in El Alto and in defense of the large number of victims of what came to be known as the "Gas War".

[5] After this period expired, Romero accepted an invitation from Evo Morales to run for the first Senate seat of the Department of La Paz in the December 2009 election for the Bolivia's Plurinational Legislative Assembly (National Congress).

This situation motivated her to publicly explain her reasons through an open letter, in which she stated the following: In January 2010, the nascent Plurinational Legislative Assembly unanimously elected her as President of the Senate, a position which she had intended to use to encourage communication and consensus building among the various sectors of the polarized country.

After her death, on October 25, 2010 - when the Bolivian Government declared seven days of official mourning – Ana Maria Romero de Campero has been the subject of several displays of posthumous recognition, commemorating and highlighting her legacy in the areas of journalism, the defense of freedom of speech and human rights, and her work for social justice and peace.In October 2011, the Municipality of the City of La Paz inaugurated and nominated a small park in her memory, located in the neighborhood of Sopocachi, where a statuette of the Bolivian journalist’s was erected.