DRUG ERADICATION EFFORT WORSENS POVERTY AMONG BOLIVIAN FARMERS

Standing in the pouring rain looking at his devastated
fields, Jacinto Sanchez could not hide his tears.

"There is nothing, not a single plant. They razed everything," said
Sanchez, a peasant farmer in Bolivia's Chapare region. The raid on
Sanchez's farm last month was not led by bandits, but by a brigade of
nearly 500 Bolivian soldiers. Sanchez lost yucca, rice and pineapple
crops, as well as what the soldiers were looking for -- coca.

Sanchez is a casualty of the Bolivian government's five-year "Dignity
Plan," which aims to eradicate coca, from whose leaves cocaine is
extracted. One year into the plan, government troops have eradicated
more than 4,000 acres of coca plants. The 6,000 soldiers in the
Chapare, in the Bolivia jungle region between the departments of
Cochabamba and Santa Cruz, will remain until all coca plants are gone,
President Hugo Banzer said.

"No government before mine tried to get Bolivia out of the drug
trafficking circuit or eradicate all excess coca. We lived a big lie
for many years. The government paid about $1,000 for each acre of coca
eradicated, but for each acre they eradicated the coca growers just
planted another one deeper into the jungle. By 2002 there will be no
excessive coca grown in Bolivia," Banzer said in an interview with The
Herald.

In Bolivia, like in neighboring Peru, areas are designated for the
legal production of coca, which is also used in tea and chewed by
peasants living at high altitudes as a remedy for altitude sickness
and hunger. The legal area in Bolivia is in the Yungas, north of La
Paz. For peasant farmers like Sanchez, coca is not about drugs, but
about economics.

Rolando Vargas, a coca-growers' leader in Sinahota, where Sanchez's
farm is located, says that the forced eradication will push the nearly
5,000 families dependent on coca in the Chapare further into poverty.
The average yearly income in the area is below Bolivia's national per
capita income, which is $900.

"Instead of fighting against poverty, this so-called `Dignity Plan' is
making poverty worse. ... Our only crime is being poor, and because of
our poverty we defend our right to grow coca," Vargas said.

Since the 1980s, the U.S. government, European Community governments
and a host of multilateral agencies have invested well over $1 billion
in trying to find alternatives to coca.

Positive results, however, have been elusive. Since 1993, the U.S.
government has invested more than $280 million in Bolivia in
anti-narcotic and alternative development programs, with nearly $100
million of this money earmarked for the Chapare.

Alternative crops as a replacement for coca range from macadamia nuts
to coffee to the pineapples Sanchez lost in the recent eradication
raid, but none has come close to offering the profits made from coca
leaves. In early November, a 100-pound bag of coca leaves brought
farmers roughly $40, while a box of 10 pineapples sold for 50 cents.

While coca represents 12,000 acres in the Chapare, it continues to
bring farmers more money than the 45,000 acres of alternative crops
that have been planted since the mid-1980s.

Several new products, however, may finally break the Chapare's
coca-dominated economy. The production of palm hearts, black pepper
and bananas for export is increasing and promises to bring farmers
income they never received from other alternative crops. By 2000,
farmers in the Chapare will be producing 190 tons of bananas, 5.3 tons
of palm hearts and 120 tons of black pepper, according to U.S.
government estimates. Cocoa may also be a possible crop next year.

Vargas says that while farmers are interested in these new crops, they
worry that over time the market will become saturated, which is what
happened when pineapples were introduced to the area.

"We don't need a five-year plan, like the government proposes, but a
long-term strategy to eradicate poverty. Poverty, not coca, is the
enemy," he says.