Bolivia: Lawmakers Call for Evo Morales Arrest After Attorney General’s Detention
BOLIVIA · POLITICS
Key Facts
- —The country Bolivia, an Andean nation of about 11 million people, governed since November 2025 by Rodrigo Paz. Evo Morales was president from 2006 to 2019 and still leads the Chapare coca growers.
- —What happened In remarks La Patria published on Sunday 4 October, one senator and two deputies said an Evo Morales arrest should come next, after the detention of the attorney general, Roger Mariaca.
- —Who is involved Senator Ernesto Suárez and deputies Edgar Zegarra and Alejandro Reyes. Zegarra said Morales’s “days are numbered” and predicted action before 15 October, without giving a legal basis.
- —What it means for you A political demand is not a court order. Morales has called protests from 13 October, so anyone travelling in Bolivia should watch road conditions that week.
- —Still open Whether prosecutors act. None of Sunday’s reports describes a new arrest request against Morales; an older warrant in a trafficking case remains unexecuted.
Three Bolivian lawmakers say an Evo Morales arrest should follow the detention of the country’s attorney general, Roger Mariaca. The Oruro newspaper La Patria published their remarks on Sunday 4 October.
None of Sunday’s reports describes a new arrest request by prosecutors or a judge. Morales, speaking on his Sunday radio programme, called the case against Mariaca illegal and the government a “dictatorship”.
Why Morales Is Back in Focus
Mariaca, removed from office by Congress, was ordered into six months of preventive detention late on Saturday 3 October. The Rio Times covered that ruling in Bolivia Judge Orders Six Months Detention for Mariaca.
He and three co-defendants face drug trafficking and criminal organisation charges. None of the accusations has been proven in court.
What the Lawmakers Said
Senator Ernesto Suárez said the link between drug trafficking and the previous government had been an open secret. He pointed to former government minister Eduardo del Castillo, who La Patria noted is wanted by the courts.
“There is another one, the fundamental one and ringleader of everything, and he is hiding in the Chapare,” Suárez said. The Chapare is the coca-growing region of Cochabamba that serves as Morales’s political base.
Deputy Edgar Zegarra said Morales was now the main target. “Evo Morales has his days numbered, I don’t think it goes beyond 15 October,” he said, without explaining the date.
Zegarra also claimed that Sebastián Marset, the Uruguayan trafficker now in the United States, had “sung like karaoke”. He offered no evidence for that claim.
Deputy Alejandro Reyes cited “irregular financing” and what he called an attempted coup by Morales. “Evo Morales has to be apprehended,” Reyes said.
Morales Calls the Mariaca Case Illegal
Morales did not answer the lawmakers directly, but he attacked the process against Mariaca. “There is no due process, there is no rule of law,” he said, according to the radio network Erbol.
He added that the law and the Constitution were being violated. “That dictatorship is serious,” he said.
He argued that Mariaca would still hold office if the rules were respected. The television network Unitel carried the same remark: “If the norms and the Constitution were respected, Mariaca is still the prosecutor.”
Morales said the case aims to bury the investigation into Argentine adviser Fernando Cerimedo and to free him. He also claimed, without public evidence, that Del Castillo was briefly held at an airport and then released.
Older Warrants Are a Separate Matter
The lawmakers’ call for an Evo Morales arrest is distinct from the cases already open. Morales faces an arrest warrant in an aggravated human trafficking case opened in Tarija, the news agency ANF reported.
Prosecutors allege he had a relationship with a 15-year-old girl while he was president. Morales says the case was built to keep him out of the 2025 election.
He also faces a warrant over this year’s road blockades, as reported in Bolivian Lawmakers Urge Pre-emptive Arrests Before Evo Morales Protests. Police had executed neither warrant by then.
On Saturday it emerged that Argentine federal judge Sebastián Ramos had closed a related complaint, ANF reported. The judge found no crime had been shown, after hearing 28 federal police officers who guarded Morales in 2019–2020.
Morales said on Sunday that the Tarija case should now close “automatically”. The Argentine ruling has no binding force on Bolivia’s separate case.
What Is Not Yet Known
It is not known whether prosecutors under the incoming interim attorney general, José Armando Urioste, will seek an Evo Morales arrest. Zegarra’s 15 October date has no stated legal basis.
Morales’s call for protests from 13 October also hangs over the coming days. A move against him in the Chapare could harden those protests, while a calm week would ease pressure on the roads.
Sources: La Patria (lawmakers’ remarks, 4 October 2026); Erbol (Morales radio remarks, 4 October 2026), also carried by Opinión; Unitel (4 October 2026); ANF (Tarija case and Argentine ruling, 4 October 2026).
This article was produced by The Rio Times’ automated newsroom system. How we use AI · Report an error · Editorial responsibility: Matthias Camenzind, Editor-in-Chief