Evo Morales

Evo Morales, December 2009.

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Evo Morales Ayma (1959–), is the former president of Bolivia, having been forced to stepped down in November 2019 due to protests and allegations that he won the October election fraudulently. However other analyses pointed out there was no election fraud. Although Morales was problematic, his replacement, right-wing nutjob Jeanine Añez, is a literal Christian supremacist and anti-indigenous bigot. A year after leaving power, a new election was held in which his party's candidate, Luis Arce, comfortably won, returning to the pre-2019 status quo and causing Morales to return to the country after being in exile in Mexico and Argentina.

He was democratically elected on December 18, 2005, as candidate of the Movement towards Socialism (MAS). Morales was known as a member of what had been called "Latin America's new left axis" or "Pink Tide", along with Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, Ecuador's Rafael Correa, Brazil's Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Uruguay's Tabaré Vázquez, Chile's Michelle Bachelet, Paraguay's Fernando Lugo, and Argentina's Néstor Kirchner. Most of these countries have rolled back the Pink Tide, replacing it with a variety of more conservative or even far-right governments.

Overview

Morales, the son of poor indigenous peasants, is a long time defender of the Aymara people. He began his rise to power in 2001, with his leadership of the coca growers' union and his high-profile opposition to the U.S.-funded eradication of the coca crop. He helped to lead the street demonstrations by indigenous and union groups that toppled the country’s last two presidents. He has described the "new face of Latin America" as "nationalist, indigenista, and leftist."

President Morales certainly was not well regarded by the Bush administration, with the argument that he is "a drug-funded leftist who has turned the support of coca growers into a political movement that threatens the country's wobbly democracy." Morales has proposed a new Constitution that includes, for the first time since independence, rights for the indigenous people and to enshrine his policies of nationalization and land redistribution.

Some criticize his policies as "unfocused", and in a referendum in July 2006, the MAS failed to win a majority in the Constitutional Assembly. In November, Morales signed into law a land-reform bill that called for the seizure of unproductive lands from absentee owners and their redistribution to the poor.

An unauthorized biography of Evo Morales, published in 2008 as "Jefazo" (meaning "The Big Boss"), describes him as "precarious, pro-Indian, anti-American, stubborn and distrustful whose administration attracts more than one and that challenges the colonial history of Latin America." The book argues that Morales has been forced to make some concessions.

Chicken meat and homosexuality

In 2010, Evo Morales claimed that eating chicken meat makes men bald and gay, saying that poultry is full of female hormones. His statements led to criticism by LGBT communities and scientists. Despite Morales' claims, hormones are not currently used in poultry farming.