Cindy Vargas, the woman allegedly trafficked and raped by socialist former President Evo Morales when she was a child, resurfaced in an interview this week after going missing for months, claiming the socialist government of Bolivia is persecuting her.
Vargas, 21, spoke with the Latin American news outlet DNews from an undisclosed location and with her face concealed. She claimed she was forced to leave Bolivia with her daughter — who Morales allegedly fathered — and accused the Bolivian Minister of Government Carlos del Castillo and the departmental prosecutor in the southern city Tarija of participating in a “network of threats and cover-up.”
“I am Cindy Saraí Vargas Pozo and I have been and continue to be victimized by the previous government [of Morales] and this government [current socialist President Luis Arce]. I have really suffered all the collateral effects of power,” Vargas asserted.
Vargas was reported missing in October by local police authorities and was last seen with her daughter near a school located in the municipality of Yacuiba, where the now eight-year-old child was enrolled.
Evo Morales, a 65-year-old former president whose attempt to install himself as dictator failed, is being investigated by local prosecutors on accusations of human trafficking and statutory rape allegedly committed over the course of his lengthy presidency (2006-2019).
Local investigators found evidence in Tarija that indicates Morales had a sexual relationship with Vargas in 2016 at a time when she was 15 years old. Vargas eventually gave birth to a child when she was 16. A birth certificate was found in Tarija’s civil registry listing Morales as the father of the child.
Morales was formally charged in mid-December with aggravated human trafficking, but has repeatedly refused to attend summons and calls to testify. Morales has spent the past months “bunkered” in Chapare, a rural province in central Bolivia, under the constant protection of hundreds of his loyalists.
According to current socialist President Luis Arce — Morales’ former protegé turned main rival — Morales’ pedophilia allegations were an “open secret” during his presidency.
Vargas asserted that Morales is the father of her child but claimed that, until now, “a half-truth” has been said on the matter and assured DNews that the process initiated by the Bolivian State against her is, according to her, “political” and “does not seek justice” for her.
“I am in a dangerous situation, I am in a risky situation. I am on the run. I am being persecuted by the Arce government, by the Bolivian government. I am being persecuted by the police, I am being persecuted by the Prosecutor’s Office and I am the victim,” she claimed.
Vargas further affirmed that her child was indeed born in 2016 but the birth was officially registered in 2017, pointing out that the information in the birth certificate found by the investigators can corroborate her claims.
The Bolivian woman asserted that the decision to register the child’s birth led to persecution against her that began at the time and continues today. Vargas identified Morales (who she did not directly name in the interview), Tarija prosecutor Sandra Gutiérrez, and current Minister of Government Eduardo del Castillo as the main actors persecuting her.
“The day I went to register my daughter, when I went [to the civil registry office], there were only two girls, the civil registry officer was not there. I registered her legally,” Vargas said.
“In the afternoon, hours after I registered her, because it was almost noon when I registered her, in the afternoon the officer of the [civil] registry office arrived, the one who was not there when I registered her, to force me to remove the registration,” she continued.
According to Vargas, local officials threatened her if she did not rescind the registration. She claimed del Castillo was among those who forced her to change the child’s last name.
“Even the change of last name that they [people from the Arce Government] made to my daughter involves Eduardo del Castillo because he was the one who called me in 2021 and his words were: ‘We have already closed the case and we need you to change your daughter’s last name,’” Vargas said.
“The last name she [the child] had is the one everyone knows, it is the certificate that has been published and pamphleted everywhere, that is the certificate they made me change to my daughter,” she continued.
Vargas asserted in the interview that both she and her mother decided to keep quiet in 2017 because the child was born during a time in which Bolivia was experiencing a high rate of missing children and she did not want her daughter to “suffer the same fate.”
Vargas’ mother, whose name has not been publicly disclosed, is being investigated for allegedly “handing over” Vargas to Morales and allowing the sexual relationship to happen in exchange for political benefits from the socialist former president. An arrest warrant was issued against the mother alongside Morales in December.
According to Vargas, del Castillo visited her home in 2019 during that year’s electoral campaign and demanded that she leave Bolivia, arguing that her life and that of her family were in danger. Vargas claimed to DNews that del Castillo arranged for the travel documentation for her, the child, and Vargas’ two younger siblings to travel to Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Vargas accused del Castillo of being “a perpetrator of trafficking and smuggling” and said that her parents were unfairly called “traffickers.”
Asked by the interviewer what she would say to Evo Morales, Vargas responded:
I want to tell him; but not only to him, not only to this government, to its officials … they involved me in their political struggles; they used my case, they used my name, they used my family to open this case, which I did not initiate, I did not open it, it was opened through a report from the Attorney General’s Office.
“With lies, with threats, they harassed us, all this time they have been harassing us with the same thing. I told them, please don’t put my daughter’s life at risk, but they didn’t listen. And even so, putting my daughter’s life at risk, they did it,” Vargas said.
Morales, who has refused to attend past summons, was once again called to testify on January 14, 2025, as part of the ongoing investigation into his charges of human trafficking and statutory rape.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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