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Bolivia: Evo Morales didn’t have a son

As you may recall, I posted last month about Evo’s girlfriend, the Chinese deals, and the campaign to be president-for-life,

Back in March I linked to an English language article summarizing Evo Morales’s missing child story and how it relates to corruption, Beyond the Zapata scandal: Outsourcing Bolivia’s National Development to China

“The basic details behind the scandal have been confirmed by President Morales himself. In 2007 or shortly before, the President had a relationship with Gabriela Zapata, resulting in a child who died shortly after birth. Zapata went on obtain a university education and alaw degree, and in 2013 was contracted by the Chinese company CAMC Engineering which won an estimated $580 millionin work from the Bolivian state, of which,$366 million was awarded after Ms. Zapata was hired to represent the company.”

As it turns out, Evo’s child is eight years old (link in Spanish), but Evo not only claims the child is dead, he threw in the clink Zapata’s aunt for asserting that the child is alive, which is one heck of a way to avoid a paternity suit.

In yet one more bizarre twist to the already-weird baby story, now it tuns out that Bolivian President Evo Morales’s “Secret Son” Was a Hoax.Son Who Appeared in Court Was Borrowed From Family Friend

First and foremost, I apologize to all involved (including Evo) for assuming that child was his.

I should have waited for the DNA test results.

No word as to whether any DNA tests were performed.

Now that that’s out of the way, it turns out that Evo’s former girlfriend Gabriela Zapata borrowed the boy from his natural parents, Victor Carlos Vega and Isela Chávez, for five years. Claudio Rivera Guzmán (the son of Pilar Guzmán, Zapata’s “spiritual” aunt – whatever that means) and another family member, Juan Garrido Espinoza, plus Zapata’s lawyers, William Sánchez Peña and Wálter Zuleta, were also found to be involved illegally in the hoax, so now all of them are in the clink.

You can’t make this up if you try.

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We talked about this and other topics in last night’s podcast,

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