MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Bolivian President Apologizes to Spanish Gay and Lesbian Organizations

Morales linked “hormone injected” chicken to homosexuality and baldness

Bolivian president Evo Morales sent a letter to gay and lesbian organizations in Spain expressing respect for sexual diversity, according to the Executive’s press office and spokesperson Iván Canelas.

“Under no way did it ever cross the mind of President Morales to attack the rights of homosexuals” when he linked hormones and genetically modified crops and its alleged consequences with a diet based on chicken, said Iván Canelas to the La Paz press corps.

“The chicken we eat is full of feminine hormones and that is why when men eat these chickens they undergo deviations from their masculine being”, said Morales last week during the inauguration of an international grass roots alternative climate change forum held in Cochabamba.

Canelas said that President Morales had written a letter to an organization in Spain that brings together lesbians and gays. “We respect their sexual freedom and ratify our respect for what is established in the Bolivian Constitution.”

The Spanish Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Transsexuals and Bisexuals (FELGTB) had expressed its deepest disappointment with President Morales statements in a protest letter addressed to the Bolivian embassy in Madrid. In the letter, FELGTB also emphasized their surprise particularly coming from a leader “who considers himself progressive left and defender of the weaker, excluded groups of society”.

Canelas deplored what the described as “an enormous speculation over the whole issue”, and invited journalists to listen again to the taped speech of President Morales underlining there was “an inadequate misinterpretation of what was said”.

“You well know that sometimes things said in a speech are exaggerated or interpreted as wanted”, argued Canales. Evo Morales also said that European men are mostly bald because of the diet “rich in feminine hormones” and forecasted that in fifty years time all Europeans would be bald.