Bolivia’s Special Force for the Fight Against Crime (Felcc) announced on Wednesday that Cindy Vargas, the woman allegedly trafficked and raped by socialist former President Evo Morales as a child, is missing.
Prosecutors are investigating Morales – a failed socialist dictator who ruled Bolivia between 2006 and 2019 and is presently leading efforts to run for president again despite having already exceeded the term limits established by the Bolivian constitution – on accusations of human trafficking and statutory rape allegedly committed during his presidency.
Evidence found in the southern city of Tarija indicates that Morales had a sexual relationship with Vargas in 2016, at a time when she was 15 years old. Vargas gave birth to a child when she was 16. Local authorities found a birth certificate issued in Tarija listing Morales as the father of the child. The investigation began in 2019 but was “frozen” until recently, when it was reactivated by prosecutors from Tarija upon discovery of the birth certificate.
Additionally, both of Vargas’s parents are being investigated for having allegedly received political benefits and public positions in exchange for “handing over” Vargas and allowing the sexual relationship between Morales and the then-minor to happen.
José Luis Zenteno, Felcc’s director in the city of Tarija, announced in a press conference that Vargas, now 23 years old, and her eight-year-old daughter, as well as Vargas’s mother, are missing. Police launched a search operation to find their whereabouts.
Zenteno informed that Vargas and her daughter were last seen in the evening hours of October 2 in the vicinity of a school located in the municipality of Yacuiba, which neighbors Argentina. According to local media, the police official did not rule out that the women may have crossed into Argentina due to its proximity to Yacuiba. The daughter was reportedly enrolled in the same school where she was last seen with Vargas.
Bolivian Minister of Government Eduardo Del Castillo told local media that, according to preliminary reports given by the Bolivian police, the disappearances were processed “because there had been an attempt of kidnapping against this presumed victim.”
“Days later this woman is no longer seen. The girl of only eight years old did not return to school and, therefore, the Bolivian Police have opened this case ex officio to find this woman [and] to be able to tell all the Bolivian people that she is alive and that she is completely safe and sound,” Del Castillo said.
The Bolivian minister stressed that it is not possible to give much more information, because the Public Ministry presented two memoranda to the Bolivian Justice branch to keep the case in reserve. He noted, however, that police were operating under the presumption that “this woman, when she was a child, had been victimized by Evo Morales … she could be in the country or could be in Argentina given the border that exists in the municipality of Yacuiba and this brother country.”
In testimony given to local authorities this week Vargas’s father reportedly asserted that Morales impregnated his daughter when she was a minor. The father, only identified by his initials “E. V. M.”, claimed that he does not know at what age Vargas gave birth and that he found out about it “because of what people sometimes talked about,” as he allegedly did not live with Vargas or her mother.
The father was placed in preemptive detention in the Morros Blancos prison in Tarija for four months.
Morales was called in to testify in Tarija last week but refused to abide by the summons and remains “bunkered” in Chapare, Cochabamba, his political stronghold. Morales is believed to be under the protection of loyalists, including local coca leaf farmers.
Morales, who is currently engaged in an ongoing power struggle against socialist President Luis Arce over control of the ruling Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) party, recently threatened to have his followers blockade Bolivia’s main roads to prevent his possible arrest as part of the probe. Some supporters have already erected blockades. If extended, the blockades would result in severe shortages of food and other essential supplies, causing at least $120 million in damages per day to the Bolivian economy according to the nation’s government.
While the Bolivian government announced on Wednesday that police were able to dismantle “at least three” blockades, nine blockades in Cochabamba have left the region “practically isolated” from the rest of the country as of Thursday morning, according to local media reports.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.