A POLITICAL DRUG WAR IN BOLIVIA

Is Coca the New Hemp?

The wine, a bit on the sweet side, is supposedly a remedy against
Parkinson's disease and impotence and, according to the label, it is
especially suitable for "athletes and singers." In small doses, that
is, because the wine is pressed from coca leaves, enhancing the
effect of the alcohol. If you get drunk, you don't have to worry
about how you're going to feel the next day because "coca wine
doesn't cause a hangover," says Melby Paz.

Paz, a businesswoman from Bolivia's coca production center,
Cochabamba, bottles a few hundred liters of her coca wine each month.
The ink-colored beverage is the top-selling product for her company,
Coincoca. She also sells soap, shampoo, toothpaste and cookies made
with coca, and she has plans to develop instant soups and muesli in
the future. Indeed, Paz is serious when she says "coca is an
incredible valuable food and medicine."

Once people disparaged Paz as "La Loca de la Coca," or "the crazy
coca woman." For years, she has been developing coca-based products,
which she sells in her shop in downtown Cochabamba. Business was
mediocre until a South American Indian and representative of coca
farmers -- Evo Morales -- was elected president. Now Bolivia's new
president plans to use government aid to promote the sale of coca products.

"Coca si, Cocaina no" -- yes to coca, no to cocaine -- was one of
Morales' campaign slogans. The goal of his new program is to
disassociate the plant that provides the substance used to make
cocaine from the drug stigma. In the Andes, the coca plant has been
used as a medicine for thousands of years, and the wonder plant was
even farmed by the Incas. Millions of poor Bolivians chew the leaves
because they dull the sensation of hunger and make backbreaking labor
more bearable. Bolivian officials are even considering adding coca to
school meals.

Morales plans to build a state-owned coca factory, a venture in which
Paz is his biggest ally. She has been hired to conduct a study on
industrial-scale coca production. Her company processes 350 kilograms
of the plant each month, but, as she complains, "it could be more if
the leaves weren't so expensive." Until Morales took office in late
January, the army systematically destroyed coca plantations, making
coca, a staple food for Bolivians, scarcer and more costly.

Now that the new president has put a stop to the destruction of
plantations, coca farmers are hoping for a new boom. Experts believe
that the 3,200 hectares (7,907 acres) of legal coca plantations in
the Chapare region -- a major coca farming area at the base of the
Andes -- could triple under the new policy. But they also fear that
the drug mafia will be the biggest beneficiary of the official
about-face. "Bolivia will flood neighboring countries with cocaine,"
warns the newspaper Los Tiempos.

Military experts in Washington are already predicting a nightmarish
scenario, the emergence of a socialist "narco-state" under populist
farming leader Morales. They believe that Morales, with the help of
his friends, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Cuban dictator
Fidel Castro, could destabilize the entire Andes region.

Ironically, Washington itself is partly responsible for the rise of
the man once vilified as a "narco terrorist." In the 1990s, when the
Andean country had become one of Latin America's biggest coca
producers, the Americans experimented with a new approach to the drug
war in Chapare, promising the government generous development aid in
return for its agreement to eradicate the coca plantations. The aid
was intended to encourage the farming of alternative products, such
as pineapples, bananas, coffee and oranges. Washington was so pleased
with the program that it held up its alliance with La Paz as a global model.

Since then, American and European aid organizations have injected
about $700 million in development aid into Chapare. But the
development projects failed when it became apparent that the region's
remoteness makes shipping pineapples and bananas too expensive, and
that prices for the crops can't compete with coca. The drug war
brought nothing but violence and poverty to farmers in the region,
fueling animosity toward the gringos -- US drug enforcement and
military experts who consult with Bolivian security forces on
eradicating the coca plantations. Indeed, government forces even used
torture in their campaigns against coca farmers, with dozens of the
campesinos disappearing without a trace. This brutal treatment almost
triggered a revolt in Chapare, where the resistance movement against
the government was led by a cunning union organizer: Evo Morales.

Morales had hardly been inaugurated before he had himself reappointed
chairman of the powerful umbrella organization of coca farmers, a
conflict of interest the president apparently feels is no cause for
concern. "I will continue to be your leader," he innocently
announced, "so that I don't lose touch with the people." It was as if
the president were the godfather of the poor.

Each coca farmer is allotted one cato, or about 1,600 square meters
(a little under half an acre), to plant coca. The military no longer
destroys excess coca shrubs, because "we ourselves make sure that no
one exceeds the quota," explains union leader Asterio Romero.
Experts, however, doubt that fighting a drug war on the basis of
voluntary self-monitoring can work. Washington is already threatening
to cut financial aid to Bolivia.

A Booming Drug Trade

Morales' predecessors were consistently unsuccessful in their
attempts to regulate the coca trade. The government agency that
issues shipping licenses for "legal" coca, for example, is considered
corrupt. Only a fraction of the Chapare harvest makes it to the
state-run coca market in Cochabamba, says development expert Oscar
Coca, who calls Chapare a "Bermuda triangle." Police-confiscated coca
leaves, which are supposed to be burned, are often resold to the drug mafia.

Meanwhile, the drug trade continues to boom. Since the beginning of
the year, the drug police have discovered 339 cocaine laboratories in
Chapare and confiscated 250 kilograms of illicit drugs. "The couriers
hardly even resist when they're arrested," says police chief Rene
Salazar. "They know that in most cases they'll quickly be released."
The courts are slow in prosecuting cases, and drug smuggling is
treated as a minor offence.

Couriers are willing to transport the coca -- by bus, bicycle or taxi
- -- for a handful of dollars. The work is far more lucrative than
farming fruit or coffee. Signs of the failed development policies are
everywhere: dilapidated structures originally intended as vegetable
markets and funded by the European Union, or highly subsidized
pineapple plantations where the fruit often rots in the fields
because farmers are unable to find buyers.

Foreign aid workers, many of whom earned princely salaries, elicited
nothing but envy and rage among the farmers. "The gringos gorged
themselves with the aid money," complains coca farmer Juana Quispe,
"but we never got it." Quispe, a living legend in Bolivia, often
joined Evo Morales during demonstrations and road blockades to
protest raids by the drug police. She and Morales have been friends
for the past 14 years.

Soldiers stormed Quispe's hut in the small town of Chimore two years
ago. They tore up coca bushes in her garden, stole chickens and
oranges and molested Quispe's daughter. A fellow activist, union
leader Feliciano Mamani, was tortured at the Chimore military base
for allegedly stirring up anti-military sentiment among the farmers.
During a demonstration four years earlier, Mamani was shot at and his
shinbone was shattered. He claims that "American drug enforcement
agents" led the attacks.

Now the former victims of persecution are in power in Bolivia. Quispe
represents the socialist governing party, MAS, in the Bolivian
congress. Mamani was elected mayor of Villa Tunari, a city in
Chapare. The foreign aid workers have been driven out, and local
municipalities are now administering the foreign aid money. As a next
step, former activists Mamani and Quispe want to see the American
drug enforcement agents pull out.

But it's a radical step that even President Morales isn't quite
willing to take. As president of a poor Andean country dependent on
foreign aid, Morales would be unlikely to survive a confrontation
with the powerful Americans. To avoid alienating the US, Morales has
publicly vowed to respect all international agreements over battling
the drug trade. He has even demonstratively attempted to convince US
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice of his peaceful plans for the
coca plant. At a meeting in the Chilean city of Valparaiso, Morales
gave Rice a guitar decorated with coca leaves.

So far, his strategy seems to be working. More than 70 percent of
Bolivians stand behind their new president. In early March, the
congress gave its blessing to Morales's most important political
project, a new constitution. An influential group of business leaders
in the country's Santa Cruz province, a group that had bitterly
opposed Morales during the election campaign, is now assiduously
courting the popular hero.

His campaign against corruption has been especially popular among the
ordinary people. Morales cut his presidential salary in half and
managed to push through a reduction in lawmakers' salaries. Several
high-ranking officials Morales accused of corruptibility were fired.

These days, life in Bolivia's presidential palace resembles life in a
commune. The president, his vice president and several ministers all
live in the building, and cabinet meetings often begin as early as 5
a.m. Although Morales has several children, he is unmarried, and his
sister usually accompanies him at official events.

Coca entrepreneur Melby Paz has also capitalized on the new
president's popularity, displaying an oversized photograph of Morales
in her shop in Cochabamba. Apparently it works. "Ever since Evo has
been in office," she says, "my sales of coca products have doubled."