BOLIVIAN COCAINE FARMERS ARE GOING BANANAS -- AND STRAIGHT

CHIMORE, Bolivia -- Claudio Beltran used to grow coca plants, but now
he oversees dozens of other Quechua Indian farmers as they pick and
process bananas for export.

He says he's happy with the changes brought by a government campaign
to wipe out production of the raw material for cocaine, and not only
because he makes more money.

"The situation in the region is much more peaceful since coca farming
disappeared," he says.

In the 1980s, the Chapare region around Chimore was a no-man's land
where cocaine gangs and coca-leaf farming unions held sway over as
many as 250,000 people who depended on the trade for their
livelihoods.

But in recent years, the Bolivian government has campaigned
aggressively to convert the region's coca leaf plantations to other
crops, first with financial incentives for farmers and lately with the
coercive power of the army.

Beltran came to Chapare, a lush tropical region in the heart of
Bolivia, in 1982 during the heyday of coca leaf cultivation and
cocaine production and became a coca grower.

Today, he works for Chapare Export, a pioneering banana company that
exemplifies the new, coca-free Chapare pursued by President Hugo
Banzer's government.

Banzer has vowed to get all of Bolivia out of illegal coca leaf
growing and cocaine production before his five-year term ends in 2002.

The government says its agents have destroyed at least half the
estimated 100,000 acres of coca that were grown in Chapare since
Banzer took office two years ago. A record 35,000 acres were
eradicated this year alone.

At first, the government paid farming communities $1,000 for every
acre of coca plants they voluntarily destroyed. But now, with soldiers
and police presiding over the campaign, coca plantations and nurseries
are being cut down without compensation.

Some farmers are known to have moved their coca fields deeper into the
forests and away from roads and airfields used by authorities.

Others, however, are accepting the government's policy -- and
discovering some advantages.

"We realize we have no choice but to get out of coca farming and find
other sources of income," said Seferino Yucra, 37.

He now earns the equivalent of $150 a month harvesting bananas,
compared to $100 from growing coca. And, he adds, he no longer risks
arrest or harassment by anti-drug police.

The United States government and the United Nations are investing tens
of millions of dollars in the development of alternative crops to
replace coca and fight the illegal drug industry.

Miguel Zambrana, owner of Chapare Export, began experimenting with
banana plantations nine years ago, backed by $500,000 in seed money
provided by the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Assisted by Ecuadoran agricultural experts and additional loans from
the World Bank-financed Bolivian Export Foundation, Zambrana has built
up a highly successful operation. He employs 200 men and women, most
of them former coca leaf growers, and produces bananas for the
Argentine and Uruguayan markets.

While preparing the fields, he found the remains of dozens of cocaine
paste maceration pits that were only a few hundred yards from the
highway that crosses Chapare, the main road linking eastern and
western Bolivia.

The most successful crops in Chapare are bananas and palm
hearts.

Private investors are beginning to move into Chapare, too, attracted
by the agriculture changes and a growing tourism business.

Increasing numbers of tourists from Bolivia and other countries are
visiting Chapare for its diverse wildlife and scenery, and modern
hotels are going up across the region.

"Driving through the Chapare today evokes images of eco-tourism,
tropical fruits and wildlife and moneymaking ventures, images every
day more powerful than the region's past association with the
seediness of drug trafficking," U.S. Ambassador Donna Hrinak said
after visiting the area.