Thank you for the excellent feature on the campesinos' fight against
the total eradication of the coca leaf in Bolivia's Chapare region
(Caught in the eye of the leaf storm, October 5). I have lived and
worked in the tropical plains region of Bolivia for six years.

In the past two years United States foreign policy towards Bolivia in
collusion with World Bank and International Monetary Fund policies has
resulted in a rapid increase in unemployment, poverty and hunger for
the vast majority of the population. Bolivia's government, under US
pressure to eradicate all coca growing, is engaging daily in human
rights violations against Chapare campesinos, who have been growing
coca for thousands of years.

Eva Morales, the leader of the cocaleros, and a deputy in the
parliament, is trying to get the government to agree that each Chapare
family can grow a fixed amount of coca, nothing like enough to feed
the US drug market.

But the US won't agree, and so the burning of not just coca crops but
homes continues.

Over recent weeks a bitter confrontation has been occurring in the
Chapare. The military has now sealed it off and sent in ground troops
along with US helicopters to crush the cocaleros.

Instead of giving money for the operations to burn coca plants in
Bolivia, thereby justifying the killing of peasants by President Hugo
Banzar's military, why not use the money to break the "bankers" of the
cocaine industry, who operate from the US?

Yet again it seems that Washington is intent on following an old
policy - to support a political leader who has a history of human
rights abuses like his friend Augusto Pinochet. When will the US stop
exporting its problems? Attacking the cocaleros in Bolivia is an easy
target.

Cleaning up the lucrative drug market in the US is much
harder.

Perhaps some heavy sanctions, such as capping the profits of large
US-based pharmaceutical companies that export the chemicals needed to
make the cocaine paste might be a better place to start.

And that money could be directly invested in educational and health
projects in Bolivia.

(Rev) Maggie Stringer,
Montero, Bolivia