THE SUSPECTED leader of the gang accused of planning to assassinate Bolivian president Evo Morales called for him to be “stopped” and denounced him as a “white-hating national-socialist”, according to postings that bear his name and photograph on a Hungarian nationalist website.
An internet tirade attributed to Eduardo Rozsa Flores called Mr Morales a “Nazi ideologist with an Indian background” and accused him of “preparing aggression against my home town, Santa Cruz de la Sierra”, the city where he was killed along with Irishman Michael Dwyer last Thursday.
“Let’s stop the white-hating national-socialist Indians, otherwise there will be civil war in my homeland,” Flores apparently wrote on the Szekely.tk website in 2007, finishing the post with the Hungarian-language phrase: “Viva freedom, viva autonomy for Santa Cruz de la Sierra.”
Bolivian police accuse Mr Flores and Mr Dwyer of being part of a gang that planned to murder Mr Morales at the behest of right-wing opposition groups that resent his efforts to redistribute wealth in the poverty-ridden South American state.
Domestic opposition to Mr Morales’s indigenous-dominated government is concentrated in Santa Cruz, in the mostly mestizo east of Bolivia, a region that is a major transhipment point for Bolivian and Peruvian cocaine bound for Brazil and Europe.
Mr Flores was born in Santa Cruz to a Hungarian Jewish father and a Spanish Catholic mother. He and moved to Budapest before going on to fight with Croatian forces in their war for independence from Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. He converted to Islam several years ago and became increasingly involved with Hungarian nationalist groups before returning to Bolivia last year.
He was killed by Bolivian special forces alongside Mr Dwyer and Arpad Magyarosi, an ethnic-Hungarian from Transylvania, a region that was removed from Hungarian rule and awarded to Romania after the first World War, in a decision that still deeply riles the Hungarian right-wing.
Another ethnic-Hungarian from Transylvania, Elod Toaso, was arrested in the Santa Cruz operation along with Mario Astorga, a Bolivian-Croatian who reportedly fought, like Mr Flores, in the Croatian war of 1991-95.
Mr Magyarosi and Mr Toaso were both born in the Transylvanian city of Cluj, which has a large Hungarian community, and both went to school in a nearby town called Sovata.
Mr Magyarosi, like Mr Flores, had become a Muslim and was a member of the Hungarian Islamic Community.
Mr Magyarosi and Mr Toaso have also both been linked to the Szekler Legion, a group that takes its name from a Transylvanian people who see themselves as descendants of Attila the Hun, and therefore of stronger Hungarian stock than the larger Magyar tribe that arrived later in the region.
The Szekler Legion’s tough training camps for camouflage-clad volunteers and its professed desire to “fight for a free Szeklerland” have fuelled suspicion in Romania, and the group’s activities are recounted on the website that carries Mr Flores’s denunciation of Mr Morales.
It also carries links to another Szekler website that sells a CD of Mr Magyarosi’s music and lists Mr Flores as a “sponsor”.
“Magyarosi was a musician, a happy-go-lucky guy with a guitar, and Toaso was an information technology guy, just out of college, who helped me with my website,” said Laszlo Hege, founder of Mozgofilms, who is making a film based on Mr Flores’s book about his exploits in Croatia, called The Filthy War.
“I think they, and the Irishman, probably met Eduardo and were persuaded by him to take part in an important mission to fight Bolivia’s ‘communist’ government,” Mr Hege told The Irish Times.
“Eduardo could have done that – he was an extraordinary guy. He spoke five languages, wrote fine poetry and very strong political articles.
“He was a humanist more than anything and took up arms against evil leaders,” said Mr Hege, who claims to have spoken to Mr Flores on the telephone the day before he was killed.
“He didn’t tell me what he was doing. It was a secretive thing. I think he was helping his region, Santa Cruz, to secede and in case of war he would help them with his military expertise.
“I think he was preparing for a possible war, but he never mentioned any assassination attempt,” he added.