Evo Morales lived in a kind of open exile for more than a year. Even with an arrest warrant for human trafficking, the former president of Bolivia remained active in political life: he participated in events, gave interviews and even voted in the 2025 presidential elections.
Everything changed after the United States attack on Venezuela and the arrest of Nicolás Maduro. Since then, Morales has disappeared from the scene, and his whereabouts have remained unknown for a month.
Shortly after the attack, he condemned the American action, calling it “brutal imperial aggression”, both on social media and on his Sunday radio program. This is transmitted from Chapare, a coca-producing region and its main political base.
Opportunity with security!
Since then, he has not appeared in public again. He missed four editions of the program and stopped attending rallies and meetings that he used to lead. The disappearance triggered a wave of speculation, including that Morales had left the country, a hypothesis raised by a conservative deputy.
Changes
The disappearance takes place at the center of a change in political direction. The current president, Rodrigo Paz Pereira, seeks rapprochement with the United States in exchange for economic aid, while the country faces a shortage of dollars and fragility in public accounts.
One of the main objectives of Rodrigo Paz Pereira’s government is to reestablish the partnership with the United States and allow the return of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). The organization was expelled from Bolivia in 2008, during the government of Evo Morales, after violent operations in Chapare resulted in clashes and deaths of coca producers.
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In Bolivia, the cultivation of coca leaves has traditional and medicinal uses, being consumed as a natural stimulant, digestive aid and treatment for altitude sickness. However, it is common knowledge that part of Chapare’s production ends up being used to manufacture cocaine, which keeps the region under international surveillance.
Meanwhile, allies and unions linked to Morales claim that the former president did not flee the country, but is facing health problems. During the first edition of his radio program without his presence, the presenter explained that Morales had contracted dengue fever, a common disease in several regions of Latin America.
Theories about whereabouts
Former senator Leonardo Loza, one of Evo Morales’ main allies, avoided clarifying where the former president is. When asked about his whereabouts, he only said that Morales is “in some corner of our Great Homeland”, an expression used to refer to Hispanic America.
Meanwhile, Morales supporters turned the mystery into a political symbol. Some started to wear masks with the former president’s face, and one group even released the song “Where is Evo?”, which recalls some of his achievements in power and ends with the verse stating that he is “with the people”.
Theories about Evo Morales’ whereabouts gained strength at the end of January, with conservative deputy Edgar Zegarra Bernal claiming that the former president was in Mexico.
Bernal’s speech refers to the 2019 episode, when Morales also left the country after being accused of rigging the elections and first took refuge in Mexico, later moving to Argentina.
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This time, however, Bernal presented no evidence or details to support the allegation. Instead, he demanded a response from the government, publicly questioning: “Why has the arrest warrant against Evo Morales not been carried out until now?”
Evo Morales has lived in seclusion in a small village in the Bolivian jungle since October 2024, protected by hundreds of coca producers who prevented the police from serving an arrest warrant against him. The former president was accused of having had a relationship with a 15-year-old teenager during his term in office in 2016.
Morales denies the accusations and claims to be a victim of political persecution, articulated by his former ally and successor Luis Arce, with whom he broke up after returning to the country in 2020.
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Facing Bolivia’s worst economic crisis in four decades and with low popularity, Arce abandoned the race for re-election. His successor, Rodrigo Paz Pereira, did not act directly against Morales, but had Arce arrested, accusing him of allowing illicit enrichment while he held the position of Finance Minister in the former government.
