Veronica Zapana S. / La Paz
At the age of 18, Diana Porcel met Carlos Vargas, who was 21 at the time. They fell in love and he convinced her to live together. She had many dreams and thought that with him, in the same way, she could achieve all her goals. She was a radio host and had the goal of reaching television sets.
A short time later, instead of being a support, Carlos became his main executioner. According to Diana’s family and friends, before being murdered, the young woman was the victim of constant violence by her partner. On February 5, the radio host was found dead. He said that she took her own life, but the victim’s body had obvious signs of violence, the family denounced.
“My daughter was a young woman who wanted to fulfill many dreams,” Diana’s father, René Porcel, told Página Siete.
He said that the young woman went to Argentina to study and live with her brother. “She then returned to Bolivia to finish her high school,” she said.
Upon returning to the country, according to her father, Diana already had the decision to be a journalist. For this reason, she studied Social Communication and came to work as a radio announcer. “His next dream of hers was to get on television,” she said.
“She always told me: ‘Dad, I’m going to get to work on television’, and I told her to make her want to. I was sure that she did that every time, she did everything with a lot of effort and with a lot of joy, ”he recounted.
Diana’s smile faded each time, according to her dad. “That happened since she started living with this guy (Carlos),” she said.
Although he did not like his daughter’s relationship with Carlos, the father decided not to move away from Diana. For him, her daughter was like the “apple of her eye” and to maintain contact, she invited the couple to her house for lunch or to go for a walk.
Don René looked at his daughter and realized that something was wrong. “Each time she came home with bruises. I asked her what happened to her wound and she replied: ‘I fell’ or ‘I accidentally hit myself’, among other excuses, ”she recalled.
He said that the last time he met his daughter was on January 16 to celebrate Diana’s birthday. “She arrived with her lip busted. I asked her what had happened and she replied: ‘I was bitten by a sama’, a bug that exists in the east to which some conditions are attributed, ”she said.
The girl’s father indicated that he had suspicions that something was not right with Carlos. He reported that he began to discover various lies, for example when they asked him about his work, he gave different versions.
Diana and Carlos lived together for almost five years in one room. They did not allow the girl’s parents to visit them at her house. “They could never receive me, they always had something,” she recounted. “When I asked her to take me to her house, she told me: ‘no, daddy, I can’t because I have two more hours on the radio.’ I unfortunately accepted, ”she maintained.
On February 5, Don René learned that his daughter was dead. “This guy told me that he had killed himself,” he said.
Don René realized that this was a simple excuse and that he wanted everyone to believe that “that extreme happened”, but when he picked up his daughter’s body he noticed that she had bruises. “Everything pointed to Diana being murdered,” said the announcer’s father.
Recently, Don René retired from the Police. He worked for several years in the Homicide Division of the Special Force to Fight Crime (Felcc). With the experience acquired in skills, he realized that something was not clear in the death of his daughter.
Although the investigator, the forensic doctor and the first prosecutor of the case agreed with Carlos’s statements, for Don René something was not right in the case. He started to find out what happened. It was during this time that he found out that Carlos was married and had a son. He realized that Diana’s partner lied all along.
Upon entering the couple’s room, he saw that there was not even a television. “Her neighbors told me that my daughter went to the house of one of them to watch TV, although he wouldn’t let her,” she said.
They told him that Diana couldn’t even go out to the patio and the only thing she went out was to wash clothes. “When a friend asked her to go to her house for lunch, she told her: ‘better not, because Carlos would be angry’”.
She recounted that once the young woman went out to a party and when one of her friends came to the door, Carlos mistook her for Diana and pulled her hair. “He told her to excuse her and that she was mistaken for Diana.”
The young woman was found dead more than a month ago. It was only recently that the case took a turn. The departmental prosecutor, Roger Mariaca, decided to open the case and after finding contradictions in Carlos’ statements, he authorized the autopsy of Diana’s body. This fact changed and was typified as femicide. On Thursday, Carlos was sent to the Palmasola prison with preventive detention for six months.
According to prosecutor Winston Ortiz, the expert report indicates that Diana’s death was not a self-inflicted death, “but was caused by the external force of a third party.”
The family’s lawyer, Javier Murillo, indicated that Diana was hanged with a belt and that the buckle of that implement caused three inlays on her neck. “That is not done with her own body,” he added.
In addition, the prosecutor Ortiz said that the skills indicate that there are other elements that confirm the femicide. For example -according to the representative of the Public Ministry-, there are excerpts of calls and messages that possess the accused at the scene of the event. They identified messages indicating that the victim left her house, but according to the cameras that never happened. “That supports the hypothesis that he left her dead and faked suicide,” he explained.
Don René finds no consolation. He assured that he and his family feel a lot of pain knowing that his daughter was murdered. “She dreamed of traveling to Spain, she wanted to study and come back with more experience to do television,” he said.
