CHEWING COCA IN A BOLIVIAN JAIL

Dr Alison Spedding fears she was arrested for political reasons, although
the excuse was possession of marijuana.

Dr Alison Spedding sat cross-legged on the patio of the Miraflores Women's
Penitentiary, wrapped in several layers of alpaca wool sweaters against the
chill. Her thin pigtails were intertwined, local-style, with black woollen
braids. On her head was a black felt, peasant sombrero. In her right cheek,
giving her a slightly grotesque look, was a bulging wad of coca which she
constantly replenished with fresh leaves to chew, turning her teeth a
greenish-black.

But for the Derbyshire woman's build - lanky and, at 5ft 10ins, a head
taller than most locals - she could have passed for many of the Bolivian
Aymara Indian peasants she has studied and whose traditions she has
defended. She speaks Aymara fluently, as well as Spanish, and has written
books on the threat to their traditional lifestyle.

Chewing coca - the base for cocaine - or drinking it as tea is perfectly
legal in Bolivia, even in prison. Possessing marijuana, which is what got
the 36-year-old English anthropologist into jail and could keep her there
until she is over 60, is not.

Dr Spedding, who has anthropology degrees from King's College, Cambridge,
and the London School of Economics, and has lived in Bolivia for a decade,
was arrested on 30 March for having 2kg (4.4lb) of marijuana in her
apartment in La Paz. Because of the amount, which she does not dispute, and
the fact that she was with a friend at the time, she was charged with drug
trafficking, inducement to consume and criminal association, each with a
potential maximum penalty of 25 years. She hopes to get less and be out
within a few years with good behaviour, but admits that if she were given 25
years, "either one would try to escape or set up a prisoner exchange between
England and Bolivia.

"Under Bolivian law, they distinguish between possession and trafficking
according to what you might reasonably consume in 48 hours, generally taken
to be about five grams in the case of marijuana," Dr Spedding told me when I
visited her in jail last week.

Even after an initial 18 days in what she describes as the "hell-hole" of
the headquarters of Bolivia's dreaded FELCN (Special Forces for the Battle
Against Narcotics, pronounced Felk) police and three months in the women's
jail, her trial has not yet begun. Her local lawyer, Leonardo Arteaga, is
hoping for a first hearing by next month but suspects have been known to
spend many months, even years, in pre-trial detention.

The police claimed she was selling baya ("berry," the local nickname for
cannabis) to students at La Paz San Andres University, where she lectured in
anthropology and sociology. Dr Spedding denies the charges, though admits
she might have passed on marijuana to fellow lecturers for nothing. A legal
coca leaf field she herself owns and cultivates for chewing and tea near
Chulumani, in the Yunkas de la Paz region east of the capital, was
confiscated after her arrest. Coca fields in the Yunkas are permitted by the
Bolivian government, while the fields in the nearby Chapare region, almost
all destined for the refined cocaine industry here or in Colombia, are
illegal. They have become the target of a United States and United
Nations-backed eradication and crop substitution programme. When I asked her
if she took cocaine, she replied: "Nah, it's crap. You can get a gram for 20
Bolivianos (UKP2.50) but it's like coffee; all the good stuff goes for export."

She believes she was "grassed up" by a 45-year old Argentinian man who sold
her the marijuana, but that the police may have been more interested in her
left-wing political leanings, including alleged contacts with Bolivian and
Peruvian Marxist guerrillas.

"It was unsaleable trash. I couldn't have dealt it even if I'd wanted to,"
she told me beneath the barbed wire and guard towers of the maximum security
jail in the shadow of the snow-clad Illimani mountain outside La Paz. "I'd
had an operation a week earlier for an ectopic pregnancy, which I think was
from using an IUD," she said, adding that the father was an Argentinian
student. "I'd just got out of hospital two days before my arrest and I was
feeling pretty naff."

Milling around the patio were the prison's other 60 women inmates, washing
or drying clothes, some of them tending to children as young as seven months
old. Bolivia allows women who have no close family, even those on drug
charges, to keep children up to the age of five in jail with them, sharing
their bunks and prison food.

Her father, Kenneth Spedding, lives in Cookham, Berkshire; her mother,
Maureen Raybould, in Windlesham, Surrey. She has two younger sisters in
England. She said her father knew she smoked pot but probably not her
mother, who is due to visit her here for the first time this week. "She was
shocked, horrified when she heard. I told her not to come out here. I don't
see the point, at least until the trial starts.

"My friend, Lora, and I were just sitting around chewing coca as usual. I
answered a knock at my door to find two women, who asked me about doing a
translation. It occurred to me that people would normally have rung me up
first. Then 10 policemen barged in, all plain-clothes. They were more
obnoxious than aggressive. They turned everything over in my flat but didn't
really have to. Most of the baya was in a bag on my bed."

Her friend, Flora, a 45-year-old mother of 10, was also arrested, charged
with possession, and awaits trial in the same jail. "She's not too happy
with me. She doesn't smoke marijuana," Dr Spedding admitted. "Personally, I
think it should be legalised. I think everything should be legalised.
Marijuana's much less harmful than alcohol, valium and lots of other stuff."

She said the nature of her arrest and the confiscation of her diskettes and
several Marxist books suggested the authorities suspected her of links with
underground Marxist groups, notably the Tupac Katari Revolutionary Movement
(named after an 18th century anti-colonialist Bolivian Indian hero). Once a
guerrilla group like the Tupac Amaru in neighbouring Peru, they are now
active only as a clandestine movement, mostly on university campuses. "I
think the Interior Ministry had their eye on me for some time."

She said she had given sociology courses to jailed former guerrillas,
including Bolivians and members of the Peruvian Tupac Amaru - best-known for
their holding of the Japanese ambassador's residence in Lima in late 1996
and early 1997 - at the top-security Chonchocoro prison outside La Paz.

She also admits having been in Peru in 1986 when the government declared
martial law against the Shining Path guerrillas. "When I first cultivated my
own coca, people tended to think I was some kid of narco-guerrilla," she said.

"There were always rumours that Alison was close to the Tupac Katari," said
a Bolivian author and intellectual, Luis Apia, when I met him at a student
bookshop outside San Andres University. "Her sociology courses were a magnet
for these people." Some of her student friends discreetly said the same,
asking not to be named or quoted. "Anyway, it's got no bearing on the
charges against her," said one young woman.

One of Dr Spedding's books, in Spanish, entitled Wachu Wachu: Cultivation of
Coca and Identity in the Yunkas de La Paz, supported the right of Indian
peasants to continue their centuries-old tradition of growing coca, despite
international efforts, mostly pushed by the US, to crush the industry in the
hope of cutting off the cocaine trade.

She has also written several novels in English, including a cultish trilogy
of the Magic Realism school known as the A Walk In The Dark trilogy. Her
latest novel, Manuel y Fortunato, was written and published in Spanish and
is due to appear in English translation as Money Like Water, published by
HarperCollins.

After her arrest, Dr Spedding was held for 18 days in the FELCN
headquarters, where she shared an unheated, bedless cell with six other
women and was regularly interrogated by Bolivia's political police. "The
bastards confiscated my two computers, diskettes and other documents and
froze my bank accounts with a total of $20,000," she said.

The British consul, Debbie Aliaga, makes regular visits to bring the English
prisoner soap, shampoo and any food she asks for. "But she doesn't ask for
much."

More important for Dr Spedding is her beloved coca leaf, sold for about UKP2
a pound by one of the prisoners allowed by the guards to have it brought in
from outside.

Checked-by: Melodi Cornett