On 16 October, when the crisis in Bolivia was threatening to spiral out of control, the presidents of Brazil and Argentina, Lula da Silva and Néstor Kirchner, decided to intervene jointly in what was described as `an attempt to bring the parties together' behind a `peaceful' solution that `respected the rule of law'. The terms chosen are important, given the context: previous utterances from outside Bolivia had concentrated on support for the `constitutional order', and an OAS official had muddied the waters by proclaiming that demanding the President's resignation, as the Bolivian protesters were doing, was `unconstitutional'.
Two fairly top-level envoys were despatched: Marco Aurélio Garcia, one of the designers of Lula's foreign policy, and Eduardo Sguiglia, secretary for Latin American affairs at Argentina's foreign ministry. From the outset the message they were carrying was that a very constitutional solution, given the situation of ungovernability, would be Goni Sánchez de Lozada's resignation and his succession by Vice-President Carlos Mesa.
Garcia later recounted that during their first meeting with Goni he showed little inclination to step down, but that this altered as the hours passed and he was left with virtually no political support. His most important partner, the MIR, had already signalled that it was taking distance when it came out in support of constitutional reform — one of the protesters' demands.
This was followed by the defection of the NFR, which joined the chorus demanding the President's resignation. One of the first to relay to the world at large that Goni had decided to step down was Garcia.
The assessment of how much the Brazilian-Argentine effort influenced the outcome varies from one source to another. Garcia has said that `in no way' had either he or Sguiglia influenced Goni's decision. Argentine foreign minister Rafael Bielsa has said instead that the joint effort by the two governments was `decisive'. Brazil was the first country to offer, on 17 October, its `full disposition to collaborate with the new Bolivian government'. The Rio Group followed suit, pointedly endorsing the `constitutional and democratic' solution to the crisis.
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