CONFLICT IN BOLIVIA

To the Editor:

Re "Where the Coca Trade Withers, Tourism Sprouts" (Shinahota Journal, Nov. 2):

The coca-growing Chapare region of Bolivia is severely impoverished and
deeply conflicted. It is disappointing that after a month of fierce
protests and strikes, intense militarization, deadly confrontations and
disappearances - and on the same day that Bolivia's Catholic Church and the
state human rights office denounced torture in the region - your article
turns our attention toward a fledgling resort project.

It is misleading to speak of peace, tranquillity and future golf courses in
a region surrounded by 10,000 troops and home to a radical and organized
peasantry that has nowhere else to go and that continues to replant its
traditional coca crops in the absence of viable alternatives.

NOAH FRIEDMAN-RUDOVSKY Philadelphia, Nov. 3, 2000