COCA USED AS CURRENCY IN COCAINE COUNTRY

The drug center, the only pharmacy in the stiflingly hot jungle town of
Camelias, deep in southern Colombia, looks ordinary. 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 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 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, 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.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia run this part of Colombia,
patrolling roads, punishing lawbreakers, even building bridges. 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 the United States.

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 common 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.

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 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; violators are assigned road-paving or bridge-building duty.

The guerrillas also forbid those most susceptible to drug use - 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 after 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, sometimes during
the year, is coca base, but we just use it as currency. No one here
consumes the drug."