THE WORLD - WHERE A LITTLE COCA IS AS GOOD AS GOLD

The drug center, the only pharmacy in the stiflingly hot jungle
town of Camelias, deep in southern Colombia, looks ordinary, with wide
glass counters and shelves stacked high with medicines. Then the
customer pays the bill.

The customer produces one of the clear plastic bags in which people
here carry around coca paste. The pharmacist, Socrates Solis, scoops
out a bit of the paste, weighs it on a digital scale and gives back
change -- the excess he had ladled out.

Welcome to the Caguan River valley, a swath of jungle towns and coca
fields in far-flung Caqueta province, a part of Colombia with no
government presence, only guerrillas. The economy is built on coca
production, and coca paste has become a main currency.

In the pharmacy, for example, everything is priced in grams. Expensive
antibiotics retail for 45 grams, worth roughly $36; a bottle of
aspirin costs a little more than a gram, or $1; medical exams are
given to prostitutes for 12 grams, or $10.

"I was speechless when people would drop by the pharmacy and pay for
the doctor's bills or their medicines with coca instead of money," Mr.
Solis, 35, told the photographer Carlos Villalon when he visited the
town. "The first three months I worked here we collected six and a
half kilos of base."

In this part of Colombia, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
run things, patrolling roads, punishing law breakers, even building
bridges over creek beds. Perhaps most controversially, the rebels
regulate and tax a thriving trade in coca leaves and coca paste.
Traffickers buy the paste, process it into cocaine and ship it by the
ton to quench the United States' insatiable appetite for the drug. It
is a business that President Andres Pastrana's government says
fortifies the rebel army and helps fuel Colombia's brutal civil conflict.

But in a dozen towns in the region, coca paste is seen in much less
nefarious terms. Paper money is in short supply, since conventional
businesses are few. Instead, everything revolves around coca, as
evidenced by thousands of acres of coca fields and the coca-processing
laboratories in the jungles.

It is not unusual for people to be paid for their work in coca. They,
in turn, pay for necessities with the paste, which is soft and powdery
like flour. Need a pair of shoes for the little one? El Combate
general store in Sante Fe takes coca paste.

Groceries at Los Helechos in the village of Penas Coloradas? Just drop
the powder on the scale, the merchant says with a smile.

It feels quite normal for Wilber Rozas, 34, of Peas Coloradas to spend
1.08 grams (worth 90 cents), for a large glass of juice at the Penas
Juicery. Or for villagers at the annual festival in Santa Fe to lug
bags of coca paste to buy clothing from traveling salesmen or to bet
in the cock fights. "I would like to always take cash, but if I do not
receive coca base I might as well shut down my restaurant," said
Selmira Vasquez, who owns the Buenos Aires restaurant in Penas Coloradas.

As a currency, the coca paste is as good as gold. When traffickers
arrive every few weeks to buy coca paste, they pay with a wad of bills
- -- and soon money is flowing again. The merchants have cash. So do
workers. The value of the paste, however, is unpredictable.

"The price of paste can go up or down, like having money in the bank,"
explained Ms. Vasquez. "When the dealers show up, the prices could be
lower or higher than when I bought, so it is like gambling."

The region's bartering system does not mean the inhabitants themselves
are cocaine addicts or gang members. The rebels keep the peace by
prohibiting drug consumption. Those who violate the ban end up on
road-paving or bridge-building duty.

The guerrillas also forbid those most susceptible to drug use -- the
young, single men who have come from across Colombia to pick coca
leaves -- to be paid in coca paste. They receive coupons they can cash
once the traffickers arrive with money.

"That is the way it works in the Caguan river region," explained Jose
Sosias, 28, a villager. "We are a coca culture. Our money, some times
during the year, is coca base but we just use it as currency. No one
here consumes the drug."