MR COCA TAKES ON US IN DRUGS WAR

They call him Mr Coca in Bolivia, and they're not talking about soft
drinks.

He wears blue jeans and sandals, trained as a baker, blows a trumpet
in a native Indian band, chews coca leaf to relax and plays amateur
football in a number 10 shirt because he admires a certain Maradona
from neighbouring Argentina.

Evo Morales, 38, also grows coca leaf, the basis for cocaine, on his
farm.

Like most Bolivian cocaleros, he insists it is strictly for domestic
use - chewing or brewing as medicinal tea.

It helps that he is a member of Bolivia's parliament, with the
accompanying immunity from prosecution that brings, but Mr Morales had
been growing coca for years before he was swept into Congress by
coca-growing supporters last year behind the campaign slogan: "Viva
Coca!"

American diplomats, who still have a tendency to act as though they
run this - and other - Latin American countries, privately call Mr
Morales an outlaw, even "the Devil Himself," accusing him of defending
drug-traffickers. Cocaine is ruining American youth, goes their argument.

Cocaine comes from coca leaf. A quarter of the world's coca leaf is
grown by Bolivian farmers. Mr Morales is their leader. So Mr Morales
is an evil man. "Al contrario," Mr. Morales responded last week. "It's
US-inspired neo-liberal economic policies - putting farmers out of
work - that make the traditional production of coca leaf vital to
their survival. They have no choice."

Because of this tradition, coca fields in parts of Colombia, notably
the Yunkas area east of La Paz, are legal, theoretically for domestic
consumption to chew or brew.

The bigger fields in the Chapare region, around the city of
Cochabamba, where Mr Morales was elected, have been declared illegal
and are earmarked for eradication.

"Banzer (the former dictator Hugo Banzer elected president last year)
has pledged to eradicate illegal coca growing by the year 2002. If he
does so, he wins. If the cocaleros are still growing their crop, I'll
have been proven right."

The chances are he will be.

Under Mr Banzer's "Dignity Plan" to eradicate illegal coca leaf and
halt the growing processing of refined cocaine in Bolivia, more than
4,000 hectares of coca leaf fields have been burnt down or
chemically-destroyed so far this year.

But experts say farmers have been using the $2,500 per hectare they
receive from the government to invest in new, secret fields elsewhere,
instead of planting substitute crops, such as bananas or pineapples.

The US blames Mr Morales, as leader of the main coca growers' unions,
for a series of clashes in the Chapare region earlier this year in
which a dozen people, including farmers and policemen, were killed.
They cite the Congressman's well-known slogan: "Long live Coca, death
to the gringos" as a provocation, urging people to attack Bolivia's
anti-narcotics police and US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)
agents.

As a result of the clashes, and the cocaleros' power, Bolivian
policemen increasingly refuse to serve in the Chapare, known as "la
zona roja" (the red zone, not necessarily for its politics but for its
violence). "Banzer is using the Chapare to distract attention from the
country's real problems, like poverty, hunger, lack of jobs or
education," Mr Morales said.

Like many Bolivians, Mr Morales, who is an Aymara Indian, points out
that Aymara and other Indians, including the Incas, have been growing
coca leaf in the foothills of the Andes for thousands of years.

They use it for medicinal purposes, notably to cope with altitude, and
see it also as a key part of their culture. Backing Mr Morales'
stance, a Dutch human rights group has nominated him for the Nobel
Peace Prize.

The big problem with Mr Morales's argument is that the issue is no
longer one simply of the cultivation of coca leaf.

During the cocaine boom of the Eighties, Bolivia was essentially a
coca leaf grower. The leaf was shipped north to be converted to paste,
and then into cocaine, at laboratories run by the Medellin or Cali
cartels in Colombia.

Now, moving into the gap created by the decline of the Colombian
cartels, Bolivians themselves are turning the leaf into cocaine in
makeshift laboratories.

As a result, cocaine is not only readily available, but dirt cheap and
extremely pure in the capital, La Paz, and in other Bolivian cities.
Bolivian parents are worried. Many young people smoke cigarettes laced
with coca paste.

"Man, the coke here is so pure, pure crystals," Carlos M, a
21-year-old native of Cochabamba, told me in Mongos' Rock Bottom Cafe
in the capital. "It's like, at least 90 per cent pure, man, and it's
cheaper than beer, you know?" He said he could get a gramme for four
dollars (about UKP2.50).

Checked-by: "Rich O'Grady"