It was a soap opera that changed the political history of Bolivia. The relationship between President Evo Morales and Gabriela Zapata kept the country in suspense for years and led to two trials against the woman, the first with a conviction and the second, which has just ended, with an acquittal due to lack of evidence. Zapata has emerged free from an eight-year trial for the alleged use of a hired child to impersonate the son she said she had with Morales and that she needed to show before a family judge. The judge discovered the hoax and concluded that the son had never existed. From there, the prosecutor’s office began proceedings against Zapata and others, including her lawyers, for “human trafficking,” but in the end they were unable to prove this charge. Morales’ ex-girlfriend defended herself during the trial with the argument that while the events were taking place she was in prison and the lawyers and emissaries who, taking advantage of her lack of emotional relationships, were imposed on her by both the then Government and the by the opposition.
This closes the story of President Evo Morales’ risky romance with a very young and very bold woman, who used this relationship, her attractiveness and an ostentatious life to establish very close relations with the Government, relationships that she took advantage of to benefit businessmen. of different types, especially of Chinese origin. For this reason, Zapata was in prison between 2016 and 2020, serving a sentence for illicit enrichment.
The story began with the entry of Gabriela Zapata into the “community social workers”, a group of young people aimed at spreading the ideas of the Movement towards Socialism (MAS), Evo Morales’ party, with social volunteer actions. She was around 18 years old and came, unlike most of her classmates, from the white Bolivian middle class. There she met Paola Choque, who would become her best friend and end up with her in prison. And also Evo Morales, who was 27 years older than her and was, in the girl’s opinion, “the greatest leader in the history of Bolivia.” They had a relationship that scandalized the country. According to Morales, the love affair began in 2007, when the socialist activist was already of age.
The relationship lasted “one, two, three years,” the former president would later recall. During this period, Zapata told him that they had conceived a son, which Morales agreed to acknowledge. Without seeing the child, who was supposedly sick, he attended the civil registry in Cochabamba, the city where they both come from, and he and two of his assistants signed a birth certificate. On the occasion, the alleged mother presented a “live birth” document from a clinic, which would later be revealed to be false. In the following months she asked the president for money to cure her son and then allegedly told him that, despite his efforts, he had died.
In February 2016, shortly before a referendum that should enable Morales for a new re-election, the birth certificate ended up in the hands of journalist Carlos Valverde, who discovered that the woman who appeared in this document was the commercial manager of the Chinese company. CAMC Engineering, millionaire government contractor. Valverde denounced influence peddling. Morales denied this accusation, but acknowledged that there had been a relationship and a deceased son.
Shortly after the referendum, which Morales lost partly due to the shadow of the scandal, the Government arrested Zapata and Choque. He accused them of having set up a group that obtained privileged information and contacts for companies. Gabriela was no longer the simple girl she was nine years ago; Several cosmetic operations had transformed her body, she wore blonde hair, she lived in one of the most luxurious neighborhoods in La Paz, she drove Mercedes Benz cars and appeared frequently on the covers of the tabloid press. Her name was on the personal agenda of several ministers and political and entertainment personalities. She herself suggested that she slept with some of them.
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From prison, Zapata began to show off his ties with some authorities, but without involving Evo Morales. The press was sure that these statements were the anticipation of great revelations that never came. Simultaneously, the Zapata woman, surrounded by lawyers with political pretensions, one of whom ended up in exile and another committed to the overthrow of Morales in 2019, indicated that her son with Morales was alive. It was then that the then president initiated proceedings before a family judge, who determined that the accused party had tried to fake the existence of the minor in court. This was the act that Zapata attributes to her lawyers and the people who surrounded her at the time, all interested in helping her because they believed that she was the “lady who would liquidate the MAS Government.”
The legal nonexistence of the child allowed it to be affirmed that Zapata had deceived the then president, although a number of questions remained about his paternal behavior, who had registered a son without ever seeing him, and also about the lies of his closest collaborators. to cover the paternal irresponsibility of the president: some even declared that “they had played” with the non-existent child.
During his last trial, Zapata considered himself a victim of politics. He affirmed that the trials against him and his imprisonment were a smokescreen by the MAS to cover up the electoral defeat of his “companion Evo” in the 2016 referendum and assured that the son did exist, but that he was handed over to Morales, something which he had never said before and which was not taken seriously by jurists or the press.
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