COCA PRODUCTION, ONCE LARGELY CURBED IN BOLIVIA, IS RISING AGAIN

LA ASUNTA, Bolivia - (KRT) - The Shangri-La of coca growing lies in
Bolivia's remote and mountainous Yungas region east of La Paz, where
lush, bright green coca plants spill down mountainside terraces
unchanged since the Incas ruled.

Farmers and impenetrably rugged terrain keep outsiders and government
coca eradicators from the terraces and tiny villages carpeted in the
drying coca leaves from which cocaine is made.

Elsewhere in Bolivia, nearly 300,000 acres of coca have been uprooted
since the late 1980s. But the country's 15 percent share of world
production is expected to soar due to new plantings and a protracted
domestic political crisis that's weakened drug enforcement efforts. By
next year, Bolivia is expected to pass Peru as the world's
second-biggest coca grower after Colombia.

Virtually all of the growth comes from the Yungas, especially around
La Asunta, where no other crop is grown in quantity. United Nations
drug monitors say the acreage under cultivation in the region soared
more than 30 percent last year, rising with an influx of coca farmers
from other regions of Bolivia where the plant has been eradicated.

Some of the Yungas production is legal, to meet the appetites of
Bolivians who for millennia have chewed coca leaves for stamina. But
much goes to illicit markets.

In the Yungas, many towns have chained or gated entrances so locals
can decide who passes through them. Precarious footbridges across
rivers also have locked gates to keep out soldiers, anti-drug forces
and rival growers.

There's no hotel in La Asunta, only one barely working rural phone
line and lots of young, drunken men. The acrid odor of coca hangs in
the air and seems to seep like campfire smoke into every pore.

No police were visible during a three-day tour of the remote region.
Communication is largely via farmer-run radio stations. They reported
regularly that Knight Ridder journalists, vouched for by a local
lawmaker, were in the area.

"We have much to worry about in La Asunta because there is no presence
of the state - the cocaleros (farmers) don't allow the state to be
there," said Col. Luis Caballero, head of Bolivia's special anti-drug
forces. He calls La Asunta "the red zone," where coca production leads
to cocaine processing. "Our sources are in the place and they say
there are (drug) factories there," he said.

La Asunta's mayor, Julio Zambrana Rodriguez, responded obliquely:
"Here in the Yungas, we don't do drugs. We just grow coca. We have no
intention of doing anything but sustaining our families."

Many families, he said, depend almost entirely on the equivalent of
$100 they make quarterly by selling a 50-pound bag of coca leaves.

Zambrana acknowledged the influx of coca growers and buyers from
outside the region.

"People with money come to make money with coca," he said. "They have
somewhere to go when it doesn't work out" for them in regions of
Bolivia where coca has been eradicated.

Under Bolivian law, up to 30,000 acres of coca cultivation is
permitted in the Yungas so peasants can suck on its leaves to ward off
hunger and fatigue and gain stamina at high altitudes.

Suck on just a few of the uniquely bitter Yungas coca leaves and your
tongue goes numb. But the altitude - a mile or higher - suddenly is
less staggering, less likely to induce nausea.

Yungas coca has a higher alkaloid content than coca grown elsewhere.
Hence it fetches a higher price on the legal market and from the drug
trade. Native peoples from as far away as the Argentine provinces of
Salta and Tucuman pay premium prices for Yungas coca.

Bolivian and U.S. authorities, along with U.N. monitors, estimate that
more than 58,000 acres of coca were grown in Yungas last year, twice
the legal limit. Much of the coca is new planting, not yet at maximum
yields.

Cocalero leaders don't dispute the growth, but they say it's because
the new plantings simply offset lower yields.

"They don't have the production of the past," said Dionicio Nunez, a
first-term congressman from La Asunta and a leader of coca-growing
federation. "This just supports falling production."

A U.S. official involved in the Andean drug war, speaking on the
condition of anonymity, disagreed. The official attributed much of the
growth to "growing demand from drug traffickers."

Knight Ridder visited La Asunta with Nunez's approval but found
farmers reluctant to talk.

"The land is good and we can produce anything but there is no market"
for products other than coca, said grower Dario Pattzi Garcez. "We
could achieve a lot but only if there is a market."

Earlier this month, Bolivian President Carlos Mesa outlined a new
anti-drug strategy, the first in Bolivia to favor development of
alternative crops rather than forced eradication of coca by soldiers.
The shift concedes that forced eradication won't work in the Yungas.

One problem is that the region is too high for helicopters to deliver
and re-supply troops. Also, its roads are perilous and easy to sabotage.

Coffee is the logical substitute crop, but local experts aren't
optimistic.

"If the government tries forced eradication or something that directly
affects the producers, who knows what will happen," said Federico
Magueno, a leader of the Cencoop coffee cooperative in Coroico.

"When you talk of eradication, whether it is forced or voluntary, it
raises doubts. Why not instead commercialize coca?"

Cocalero leaders are preparing a petition to decriminalize trade in
coca to allow the leaves to be sold around the world for teas and
natural soap products. The proposal will be presented during the next
U.N. narcotics convention in 2008.

Mario Quiroz, the general manager of the Coraca coffee cooperative in
the town of Irupana, recalled the failure in the 1980s of efforts to
replace shade-grown Yungas coffee with Brazilian sun-grown varieties.

"It was a failure and it is why producers here do not trust
alternative development," Quiroz said. "Coca is part of the ecosystem.
What coffee needs is markets. And not just markets but markets with
good prices. The producers won't do it unless they can make money."

Wilfredo Tellez, 41, welcomes Mesa's aid plan, seeing it as a way to
help him raise cattle and swine in Charrobamba, near La Asunta. His
five skinny cows walk along a dry river bed, grazing on grass so
sparse it looks like dying hair implants.

"We hear about alternative development, but where is it?" complained
Tellez, his cheek plugged with coca leaves.