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News (Media Awareness Project) - Bolivia: Bolivia Wiping Out Coca, At A Price
Title:Bolivia: Bolivia Wiping Out Coca, At A Price
Published On:2000-10-23
Source:New York Times (NY)
Fetched On:2008-09-03 04:40:40
BOLIVIA WIPING OUT COCA, AT A PRICE

CHIPIRIRI, Bolivia, - Leonardo Marca is down to his last acre
of coca, and he has no intention of giving it up without a fight.

When soldiers took machetes to his fields two years ago, he begged
them to leave him something to support his family. Perhaps it was the
big military tattoo on one arm, left over from his army days, that
persuaded the soldiers then to spare him all that is left now, a
single patch covered by a thick jungle canopy.

"I know they are coming back," said Mr. Marca, 43, a man of sheepish
manner but fiery words. "The government says it will take our land and
send us to jail if we persist in growing coca. We will have no
alternative but to defend ourselves, like in Colombia."

The coca farmers of the Chapare region of central Bolivia are down to
what amounts to their last few acres after an aggressive, mostly
American-financed campaign to eradicate what was once the world's
largest coca-growing area. In the last three years, thousands of
families who once grew coca have fled the Chapare and thousands of
others have grudgingly given up coca to cultivate legal crops.

"We are not going to retreat one centimeter," said President Hugo
Banzer in a speech last week. "Our firm commitment is to leave Bolivia
without drugs by 2002, totally outside the drug circuit."

American and Bolivian officials say Mr. Banzer is nearer than ever to
fulfilling that goal, which would make Bolivia the first country in
the history of the modern drug wars to effectively eliminate itself as
a producer. But that victory has brought a steep cost here and few of
the benefits American officials had hoped for.

Mr. Banzer's government has been rattled by explosive protests and
simmering small-scale insurrections, and the effect on the overall
supply of cocaine reaching street corners in the United States, the
main consumer of the drug, has been virtually nil.

As the coca fields have shrunk drastically, the resistance of a hard
core of about 2,000 families has grown more fierce. Coca farmer union
leaders have stepped up threats to farmers who have chosen to switch
to other crops. Coca growers have set booby traps in the remaining
coca fields and even ambushes, arming themselves with old Mauser
rifles left over from the Chaco War of the 1930's in a last-ditch
effort to stop eradication.

One antinarcotics policeman was found buried the other day with acid
poured on his face, and four members of the security forces and the
wife of an antinarcotics policeman have been missing for two weeks and
are presumed dead.

About 25 coca growers have been arrested in recent
weeks.

A three-week-long road blockade by the coca growers that ended last
week did serious harm to American and Bolivian efforts to encourage
alternative agricultural development. Losses to alternative
development projects came to $1.25 million, according to the American
Embassy, and hard-earned relationships with Argentine and Chilean
importers have been badly strained.

Meanwhile, Chapare coca growers have been hoarding coca seeds, which
can sprout into flowering bushes in just two and a half years, with an
eye toward returning to cultivation at the earliest
opportunity.

What the coca growers are waiting for, they say, is a change of
government in 2002. One leading candidates, former President Jaime Paz
Zamora, used to wear a pin on his lapel showing a coca leaf as a sign
of resistance to Washington.

Several major leaders of the coca growers are threatening armed
conflict if they are not permitted to grow at least small amounts of
coca.

Most military experts do not believe the coca growers can put up
serious military resistance, and they point to a small rebellion in
1998 that was easily put down. But with other Aymara-speaking Indian
peasant groups becoming increasingly militant over a variety of land
issues, Bolivian officials express concerns that peasant and labor
turbulence could threaten the country's economic and political stability.

Only three years ago, coca fields were as plentiful in the sweltering
mountain valleys of the Chapare as cornfields in Kansas. So much money
flowed that peasants were buying French perfumes and cognac at the
kiosks that had sprouted up in this farming town and some even sent
their children to private schools.

But those days are over. Now, as the local economy has stumbled,
peasants are once again drinking cheap fermented corn juice as their
beverage of choice and neighborhood stores say sales are off by half.

More important, over the long term, many of the coca farmers show no
interest in giving up coca for good and cultivating alternatives like
black pepper, pineapple and heart of palm.

The coca growers are primarily former miners who lost their jobs 25
years ago when the government privatized the mines. They have little
farming experience. The other coca farmers are peasants who fled the
highlands because of drought and soil erosion. There, they grew corn
and potatoes - far easier crops to grow than the tropical fruits that
have been promoted as alternatives.

The transition from cultivating coca, which needs almost no tending,
to learning how to deal with fertilizers and pesticides is daunting
for many. Coca is also far more lucrative than fruits and vegetables.
Moreover, waiting for traffickers to come by and transport their coca
harvest is a lot easier than finding credits and ways to get
legitimate crops to markets.

Moreover, coca strips the soil of nutrients. The land of the Chapare,
never that fertile to begin with, is so poor from years of coca
growing that the farmers have a tough time competing with farmers from
other areas.

"We lack roads, much of the land isn't good and there isn't enough
financing or government help," said Moises Alguilar, 52, a former coca
leader. "And coca is a tradition. Its part of our culture." As he
spoke, Mr. Alguilar reached into his pocket to pull out a plastic bag
full of coca to chew.

"After coca comes what?" asked Carlos F. Toranzo Roca, a Bolivian
economist at the Latin American Institute of Social Investigations in
La Paz. "To sustain zero coca, you need an economic plan. And we still
haven't seen that plan."

Nevertheless, of the 78,400 acres in the region under coca cultivation
at the beginning of 1998, the aggressive eradication campaign has left
only about 4,000 today, according to the American Embassy. Even those
are due to be eliminated soon. Drug Enforcement Administration agents
have been cut from 35 to 2 as Bolivia, once the second leading
producer after Peru, has become a minor player.

Despite the costs to the Chapare region and even Bolivia as a whole,
the shift has had little or no impact on the overall supply of cocaine
being brought to markets, as traffickers have nimbly shifted growing
and production to Colombia over the last five years.

Bolivian officials promise that virtually no coca will be left in the
Chapare by January and that they will then move on to the Yungas
region outside La Paz, a smaller but more traditional coca-growing
area with 6,125 acres of illegal coca plants in tiny plots.

The Yungas, rugged and rainy, will potentially be more difficult to
denude of coca than the Chapare. The peasants there are very attached
to their crops, which serve traditional medicinal and ceremonial
purposes. And the region is served by a single-lane mountain road
that officials worry will be an easy site for ambushes.
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