THE COCA WARS

Bolivia's Women Farmers Refuse To Pay The Price For U.S. Drug Policies

IN NOVEMBER 2000, BOLIVIA'S RURAL poor came by the hundreds to the city
of Cochabamba, in the center of the country. Most were from the
Chapare-the tropical region surrounding the city where the coca plant is
grown-and had come primarily to protest the arrest of women leaders who
were also coca farmers. Women marched at the front of the
demonstrations, babies on their backs. Many carried signs: ENOUGH
MILITARIZATION; COCA FOREVER; and LET THEM PUT ALL CHAPARE WOMEN IN
JAIL. For 17 days, up to five hundred farmers wove through Cochabamba's
colonial center, from the police station to San Sebastian Plaza, where
the city's two main jails sit; one for women, the other for men. Both
jails are full, but the women's is especially overcrowded because, along
with the 320 prisoners, there are 250 children who have no one to care
for them but their mothers. Nine out of ten women are there because they
were caught up in the wide and often arbitrary police and military
sweeps that have become the norm since Bolivia decided to wipe out coca,
the plant used to make cocaine.

For two decades, the United States has been waging its war on drugs in
Bolivia as well as other South American countries, claiming that this
will stop the use of drugs at home. The impact of this policy on poor
women who depend on coca to earn a living has rarely been the concern of
bureaucrats and drug "czars." But for the primarily indigenous people
who grow and use coca for spiritual, medicinal, and social reasons, the
drug wars have led to the destruction of a traditional crop and
subjected coca farmers to draconian anti-drug laws.

"Coca is a sacred symbol of the mother earth," says Leonilda Zurita, who
leads the women farmers' unions in the region. "We don't make cocaine
and don't consume it. We are not to blame for the illegal drug trade.
Coca is our economy. The leaf knows our hunger, our thirst, our lack of
clothing, and our need for education. If I sell coca, I can go to the
hospital. If I sell coca, I can buy school supplies for my children. If
I sell coca, I can buy food." Although most of the local people do not
make or use cocaine, as Zurita says, it is true that when coca became
part of the international drug network, the lives of Chapare farmers
initially improved.

Massive migration to the Chapare began in the 1980s, driven by drought
in the highlands and economic chaos. For families grappling with weak
soil, floods, and a near total lack of roads and markets in their new
homes, growing coca was one of the only viable economic alternatives. At
least three times a year, the hardy bush is covered in oval leaves that
can be turned into medicines as well as drugs.

Until the 1980s, coca was sold mainly in local markets, for local use.
But when illegal cocaine use soared in industrialized nations, farmers
started to grow "excess coca." And the Bolivian government started to
cut it down. Using money from international donors, the government
promised to teach farmers how to grow alternative crops. But the poorly
designed programs were overrun with corruption, and the money allocated
for them has disappeared, with almost nothing to show for it.

For years, farmers simply replanted coca after government troops
destroyed the plants. Then, in 1997, Hugo Banzer Suarez, military ruler
of Bolivia from 1971 to 1978, became president. With U.S. support, he
introduced Plan Dignidad, a five-year effort to get rid of illegal coca
(some was supposed to be allowed to remain, but in fact, almost all of
it has been wiped out). According to the Permanent Assembly of Human
Rights of Cochabamba, 1,500 troops descended on the Chapare in 1998. "At
night," says Zurita, "Jeeps with sirens blaring, full of soldiers, sweep
into communities. If the troops find $100, a ring, or a new bicycle,
they will accuse a woman of being a narcotrafficker."

With the arrival of the troops, locals started to disappear. Epifania
Mamani, a farmer and union activist, says that her husband was assaulted
by troops, fled from them, and was later found shot dead in the
mountains. "They say that it is the fight against narcotrafficking,"
says Mamani. "But I say that it is a murder that should not have taken
place." Many men have fled the area since the troops arrived, either to
find work or to avoid military sweeps.

Last year, Banzer announced that .zero coca" had been achieved in the
Chapare, but Plan Dignidad continues. Some of the money for it has been
diverted from the $1.3 billion the U.S. has allocated for Plan Colombia,
the controversial effort to stop drugs by sending U.S. military advisers
to Colombia. Supporters of both plans argue that the success of zero
coca proves that military measures will work in Colombia, too. Others
say that Bolivia's effort has only succeeded in pushing coca production
into Colombia. There has been a 150 percent increase in coca
cultivation, says Gina Amatangelo, drug policy expert at the Washington
Office on Latin America, a nongovernmental organization that monitors
U.S. policy. Amanda Romero, a human rights specialist in Bogota,
predicts that the effect of increasing the military presence in the
Colombian countryside is likely to be much more lethal than in Bolivia.
"To the complexity of an internal armed conflict that has lasted for 40
years, the U.S. decided to bring an aggressive counter-narcotics
campaign," says Romero. "This will only worsen deteriorating conditions
in Colombia."

It already has in Bolivia. "There is a great deal of death," says
Teofila Mollo, a coca farmer and community leader. "There is death from
malnutrition and illness. Women can't take their children to the
hospital for lack of money." There is also a permanent, undeclared state
of siege, says Veronica Ramos, a Bolivian human rights worker with the
Andean Information Network, which documents the impact of the drug wars.
And "it is women who suffer the most aggression from troops." Chapare
residents have accused troops of everything from beating women to raping
them. "The armed forces feel the need to control the population through
women," says Ramos. "After all, the women are a real political force."

In 1995, women farmers organized into unions parallel to the men's. The
women became bold campaigners; they met for literacy classes and
seminars on the law; they learned leadership skills and began speaking
out, through demonstrations and blockades, against government repression
and the eradication of their crops. Felipa Mamani, one of the early
organizers, was shot by government troops when she led a march in 1995.
"They shot directly at my leg," she says. Mamani lost her leg, but not
her determination: she led the November 2000 demonstrations in a
wheelchair.

Those demonstrations were among several the farmers organized that year.
Two months earlier, they had blocked Bolivia's major east-west highway
for 27 days, calling for a halt to zero coca and starting what became a
nationwide protest. The government response was fierce: in the Chapare,
two civilians were killed, 78 wounded, 48 illegally detained, and 16
tortured, according to the Andean Information Network. (Later, five
uniformed men and one soldier's wife were also found dead in the rain
forest; coca farmers are on trial for the killings.)

The impact of Plan Dignidad is also felt in the prisons. In 1997, the
Commission of Andean Jurists published a study showing that from 1985 to
1995 female prison populations rose, with increasing numbers being
arrested for so-called drug crimes. In Cochabamba alone, from 1995 to
2000, the female inmate population doubled; almost all of the women are
there for drug-related offenses, many of them false, few of them
seriously investigated. The women are put there under Law 1008, an
anti-narcotics code that was signed in 1988 after the Reagan
administration put pressure on the Bolivian government. The U.S.
government continues to have a heavy hand in Bolivian jurisprudence:
Bolivian prosecutors and drug police issue reports showing increased
arrests in order to maintain and get more foreign aid.

Law 1008 would be unconstitutional in the U.S. It assumes the accused
are guilty until proven innocent, allows no right to a speedy trial, and
greatly restricts the right to bail. It also allows for the increased
police and military powers that have led to more violence. Many of the
women in prison are innocent, says Edwin Claros, vice president of the
Permanent Assembly of Human Rights. "There are hundreds of arrests in
which the people had nothing to do with the crime," he says.

Take the case of Adela Rojas, a 35-- year-old mother of five, who was
picked up in 1999. Rojas had been visiting her mother when a cousin
dropped by to pick up some bags he had left there. A few hours later,
the police showed up. "I had just put a cake in the oven for my mother's
birthday," says Rojas. "They asked me to come and identify my cousin.
`Don't worry, you'll be back in a minute,' they said. In the car, they
chatted to me about my children. We stopped at a house with patios-no
one would think there were prisoners inside. They took me to a room,
threw me in, and locked the door. Later, I found out my cousin had been
storing marijuana at my mother's house." Rojas served 20 months in
Cochabamba's women's prison before obtaining pretrial release in
February. But within a few months her trial was held, and she was
convicted and sent back to prison for five years.

Some women are involved in the illegal drug trade, but mostly because
they have no other way to support themselves, says Gloria Rose Marie
Acha, a Cochabamba human rights lawyer. "A woman can carry a packet of
drugs in her clothes or in her body. The drug trade allows women to
commit crimes passively-without arms, without force," she says.

Once in jail, it's very difficult to get out, even for minor offenses.
The average drug trial takes five years, during which time most
defendants languish in jail. Prisoners say you must have money or
political pull to save yourself when you are accused. After all, they
point out, it is mainly the poor who are in jail. Joe Caldwell, who
works for a private company contracted by the U.S. Agency for
International Development to foster democracy in Bolivia, says a new
legal code was about to be implemented at press time. The code,
developed with U.S. funding, is meant to "insure that pretrial detention
is the exception and not the rule," and that trials will be more fair,
says Caldwell. For Cochabamba prisoners, the change can't come soon
enough. "I don't know anything about drugs," Rojas says. "Why do so many
women have to be in prison? I believe it is something political between
Bolivia and the United States."

The Cochabamba women's prison, like many in Bolivia, is filled with the
prisoners' youngest children. Mothers and children live often seven or
eight in a small cell meant for one or two. Since the prison is
overcrowded-built to hold 128 people, it now has nearly 600 crammed into
it-cells are a rare and expensive commodity. A woman who has a cell but
can no longer afford it may sell it to someone else and sleep in the
courtyard, where those with little or no money live.

The government officially gives each woman two Bolivianos (about $.30)
per day, which is barely enough to feed one person, and most women say
they never know when or if they will receive the money, anyway. So to
earn money for food and a bed, women cook meals or make sweaters and
vests to sell to people outside the prison. Others have "stores," to
sell necessities to other inmates. And above the central courtyard, wet
laundry drips incessantly. So many women earn money washing the clothes
of townspeople that those with the least seniority have to work during
the night-and even then, they have to take turns at the sinks.

Lidia Mamani was one of the women living in the courtyard last year. She
had a bed at one time, but sold it when she ran out of money to feed her
children. She would wake up at 2:00 A.M. to wash clothes, rest a bit,
wake up again to make and sell rolls, and then either sew or wash some
more. Valentina Avali is currently a prisoner, living in a corner of a
stairwell with two of her daughters. Her greatest worry is her children:
"My baby daughter has anemia, and I have no way to feed her," she says.
Two years ago, Avali was riding on a bus when troops searched it and
found some powdered lime she was carrying. Avali says she intended to
make paint; Law 1008 says the lime could be used to make cocaine, and
therefore is illegal.

To protest horrific conditions, the women have resorted to horrific
demonstrations. In April 1999, ten women tied their hands and feet to
the iron bars of the second-floor balcony and crucified themselves,
hanging in the hot sun, fading in and out of consciousness, for up to
nine days without food. Four more sewed their lips shut, refusing to eat
or drink. In support, the rest of the prisoners joined in a hunger
strike. "We are united!" says Lidia Mamani, one of the protesters. "I
crucified myself for four days, my shoulders and head in pain. We want
justice. We have rights."

But those rights are still hard to come by, despite recent legal
reforms. Los Tiempos, a Bolivian newspaper, has reported that the
minister of national defense says that additional troops will be
deployed to the Chapare to prevent coca replanting. And so far, no one
from the Bolivian government nor from the U.S. has offered a viable
alternative crop. The way the local population sees it, there can be
only one reason for such harshness: "The government wants to get rid of
us, the way it got rid of coca," says Teofila Mollo. A crowd of women
standing around her agrees.