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."