BLAME U.S. DRUG POLICY FOR THE BOLIVIAN UPRISING

Congress did not repeal the 18th amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1933
because it had decided alcohol abuse was passe. It did so because it judged
that the costs of Prohibition were higher than the benefits and that a
regulated market would be a better way to manage a popular but sometimes
harmful depressant drug.

The unintended consequence of Prohibition was the rise of violent organized
crime and the spike in official corruption that accompanied it. After 13
years of Prohibition, most Americans didn't like what Al Capone et al were
doing in the streets and to the country's legal institutions.

That's something to think about in light of the death spiral of democracy
in Latin America's Andean region, the center of gravity for coca growing
and processing and the bull's eye of the U.S. war on drugs.

The poor Andean region, with its young and fragile democracies, is where a
lot of "illegal substances," as currently defined, originate. Criminal
networks trading in drugs burrow into the institutional pillars of these
states and hollow them out. They also exploit down-and-out locals in dire
need of an income by enlisting them to meet the demand for outlawed substances.

The drug lords are becoming ever more sophisticated in fighting their side
of the "war." As they grow frighteningly more powerful in politics, they
threaten to destroy freely elected governments.

Bolivia is the latest victim of this economic reality. In the past two
years, two Bolivian presidents have been forced from office by a violent
minority. Its leader is Evo Morales, who has organized the peasants that
grow a form of coca specifically bred for making cocaine. Elected President
Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada (widely known affectionately as "Goni") fled the
country in October 2003 amid militant violence led by Mr. Morales. Earlier
this month, the vice president who succeeded him also stepped down, again
as a way to appease Mr. Morales and his extremist followers who had
paralyzed the country.

The ostensible purpose of the "Indian" roadblocks, the dynamite and the
marches is to protest private exploration, extraction and distribution of
the country's huge natural gas reserves. The protestors say they want the
gas to be nationalized as the mines were in 1952. But scratch the surface
and one finds that the question of the natural gas reserves merely sparked
the blaze. The tinder box of organized anger already existed, built of
long-simmering resentment against the government's aggressive eradication
of coca crops. It didn't take much imagination for Mr. Morales to blame the
U.S. war on drugs, American "imperialism" and capitalism in general for the
lack of peasant progress. His counter-attack has become a serious threat to
Bolivian democracy.

Political militancy among the coca growers can be traced to the government
of Hugo Banzer. The late President Banzer came to power in 1997 through an
alliance with the left-wing MIR party, whose leadership had been implicated
in the drug trade. To diminish U.S. concerns about that alliance, Banzer
pledged to vigorously prosecute the war on drugs.

Economic need and U.S. demand for cocaine had sent thousands of unemployed
Bolivian miners to the Chapare region years earlier to grow coca for export
to Colombia where it could be processed. Mr. Morales comes from a family
that reportedly did just that.

In 1999, hoping to prove his anti-drug bona fides to the U.S., Banzer
launched an aggressive attack on the Chapare that sent cocaleros scurrying.
Conservative estimates are that some 50,000 Bolivian families were farming
coca in the Chapare at that time. Many ended up in the slums of Cochabamba.

The Bolivian economy was growing at a reasonable 4% to 5% a year at that
time, thanks to market-driven reforms under Goni's first term (1993-1997)
which had brought new investment to the country. But after the
anti-cocalero campaign "you could feel that there was less money, less
economic activity at the grass-roots," a former Bolivian official close to
the situation told me. The reason, he says, was that the eradication had
taken an economic toll. Some 5% to 8% of gross domestic product had been
lost, and not evenly. It had hit the farmers and had had a multiplier
effect on the rest of the lower-income tier of the economy.

In April 2000, the brewing hostility over the economic hardship found an
outlet. Plans to award a water contract in Cochabamba to the U.S. Bechtel
construction firm produced a surprising rebellion in the city, Bolivia's
third largest. Traditional tranquility was disturbed by road and bridge
blockades and other forms of protest.

It is true that the Bechtel project, while offering greater convenience and
sanitation, threatened the livelihood of small water carriers. But the
resistance went way beyond what the "aguateros" or even wealthy special
interests, on their own, could have produced. The real force behind the
rebellion was an uprising of the displaced cocaleros against the legitimate
government. The government backed off the water project and a lesson was
taught. The "War of Water," as it became known, signaled that street
violence could get results.

Mr. Morales's genius has been to forge the coca growers into a broader
political movement. His backers are a worrisome lot. Judging from his many
photo ops with Fidel Castro and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, Mr. Morales now
has friends who can supply tips on revolutionary politics and material aid
as well. Colombia's FARC guerrillas, who profit from their own cocaine
businesses, are rumored to also be interested in Bolivia.

Protesting peasants and paramilitary roadblocks require transportation,
food and logistics. Someone is funding the effort. That could be hostile
tyrants in the region but it could also be the cocaine industry in Bolivia.
On Tuesday the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime reported that while coca
cultivation in Colombia dropped 7% in the last year, it rose in Peru and
Bolivia 14% and 17% respectively and was up 3% in the region overall. There
is new money from the business because Bolivians are now involved not only
in growing but in the more lucrative aspects of processing for export.

The destabilizing effects on the region's political system are at a level
that Americans would not tolerate at home, as they demonstrated when they
voted down Prohibition. It is reasonable to ask whether it is morally
defensible or wise or even pragmatic to expect Latins to carry a similar
burden when there are so many better ways to fight drug use on U.S. soil.