Ramiro Apaza Nieves (died 2019), also known as Pac Katari, was a Bolivian communist revolutionary and the leader of the Kataris 26 revolutionary movement during the 2010s. He was murdered by the Santa Blanca Cartel in 2019.
Biography[]
Ramiro Apaza Nieves was born in Itacua, Bolivia, the nephew of Amaru. Of mestizo heritage, he claimed descent from the 18th-century indigenous revolutionary Tupac Katari and adopted the name "Pac Katari" after he became an indigenist activist. An advocate for the interests of the rural cocaleros (coca farmers), he founded the Kataris 26 communist rebel group in 2013 in response to the Santa Blanca Cartel's takeover of the cocalero unions. With his uncle Amaru as the group's ideologist, Katari served as the group's military leader and resisted the Santa Blanca Cartel's attempt to expand into Itacua in 2019. That same year, the United States launched Operation Kingslayer, inserting a four-man Ghost Recon team in Bolivia to assist Katari's rebels with taking down the cartel and the corrupt La Unidad military police unit. In order to gain the trust of the rebels, Anthony Perryman's team rescued Amaru from cartel captivity. Over the ensuing weeks, Katari worked with the Americans to empower his rebel movement, with the Americans marking supply dumps for the rebels to pick up and Katari providing the support of his rebels in battle. After much of the cartel was destabilized, however, Katari decided to betray the Americans, believing that it was his destiny to free his country without outside influence. He executed his uncle for not believing strongly enough in his vision, but he was killed by Santa Blanca leader Rodrigo Carlos Pérez Morales in a failed attempt to kill him. Katari's severed head was left at El Sueño's mausoleum as a message to the Ghosts.