Jessica Villarroel, a 24-year-old Bolivian woman, accused Bolivia’s socialist President Luis Arce of sexual harassment and abuse of power for engaging in an extramarital affair with her.
The accusations against the Bolivian president come as another socialist former head of state – Evo Morales, Arce’s predecessor and former mentor now turned main rival – faces accusations of human trafficking and pedophilia.
Both Arce and Morales are at the forefront of an ongoing power struggle over control of the ruling Movement Towards Socialism Party (MAS) that has split the ruling party in two ahead of the 2025 presidential elections: one faction loyal to Arce and the other to Morales. Morales insists he will run for president for a fifth time next year despite having already exceeded the two-term limit established by the nation’s constitution.
Villarroel made her public denouncement of Arce in the Bolivian Congress in the company of lawmakers and Héctor Arce Rodríguez (no relation to the president), a member of Congress reportedly loyal to Morales, who stated that he will file a criminal complaint against the president.
The woman claimed to reporters that she had a six-month-long “love affair” with President Arce that allegedly occurred three years ago, at a time when she was 21 years old. According to her statements, she first met Arce at the Bolivian presidential palace when she was applying for the position of vice-minister of sports, a position she has reportedly never occupied.
“He [Arce] sent for me with his official vans from El Alto [airport], they took me to the Casa Grande del Pueblo [presidential palace], we sat down, I presented my portfolio, we chatted for three hours, he waited for me with Tarija wines and told me: ‘you are already vice minister, it is time to celebrate’. We drank alcoholic beverages and what had to happen happened,” Villarroel asserted.
“We started a relationship of half a year and the president knows very well. We went about three blocks from the Casa Grande del Pueblo, he picked me up dressed as a cab driver in a blue car, there he made a pass at me,” she narrated. “He did not speak to me as president, he made me a proposal. He always said he liked my leadership, he took me to an apartment where we continued drinking alcoholic beverages and he stayed to sleep with me until four in the morning.”
Villaroel also claimed that Arce proposed her to be his “lover” upon their second counter, which she accepted. Villarroel presented evidence such as photographs and WhatsApp text message logs as proof of her allegations. Additionally, she presented a scarf she claimed to use to conceal her identity during her encounters with Arce.
“We saw each other twice a week, in Santa Cruz at the Radisson Hotel,” she claimed, pointing out that, during one such encounter, she told Arce that she was pregnant, to which the socialist President allegedly responded that she “can’t have that child.”
Villaroel told reporters that she had a motorcycle accident three days later and lost the child when she was run over by a “van without a license plate.” According to her testimony, Arce offered her an embassy position to leave the country, but she refused.
Villaroel further claimed that there are “six victims” of Arce that he has allegedly “silenced with work and has abused his power, harassed me and threatened me.”
Lawmaker Héctor Arce Rodríguez told reporters that a criminal complaint against the socialist president is ready and will be filed “in the coming days” for at least seven crimes, stressing that “abuse of authority and misuse of state property cannot be tolerated.”
“In our condition of national congressman, we have a criminal complaint against Mr. Lucho Arce for having used state assets, for the following crimes: abuse of authority, improper use of public goods and services, extortion, sexual harassment, psychological violence, passive bribery and human trafficking,” Arce Rodríguez said.
While Arce has not publicly commented on the accusations at press time, Bolivian Government Coordination Vice Minister Gustavo Torrico dismissed the accusations as “delusional” in remarks given to reporters on Wednesday, and described Villaroel’s claims as a “badly written script” and as a “mockery of the public’s intelligence.”
“With all due respect to the citizens, this ‘mental fart’ that this girl has put into her head is not understood by anyone,” Torrico said. “It is total madness, you would have to be mentally deranged or living inside a bottle to come up with such a badly written script, that not even an apprentice could write. It is a mockery to the intelligence of the citizens.”
