COLLATERAL DAMAGE IN BOLIVIA

Coca: The La Paz Government And The Nation's Rural Poor Are Caught In The
Middle As The United States Fights A Global War On Drugs.

CHAPARE, Bolivia - For more than a month, about 200 Bolivian soldiers have
been living in Victor Franco's back yard.

The soldiers, trained and financed by the United States to eradicate coca in
this jungle basin, arrived in helicopters, setting up camp a stone's throw
from Franco's house, a dirt-floored structure made of unevenly cut wooden
planks and a rusted sheet metal roof.

They pitched tents on his small yucca plantation, and chopped down his
pineapple plants and mandarin tree to clear a helicopter landing pad. At
first they left Franco's coca plants alone, instead eradicating the crops of
other families in the area. Twice, Franco says, soldiers came to him asking
for a small amount of coca, a mild stimulant, which is a staple among
Bolivia's rural poor and indigenous people.

Then, with harvest a few days away, the soldiers cut down Franco's coca
plants.

Franco is one of the many small combatants in a larger war: The United
States wants Bolivia to eradicate coca fields, saying that cocaine produced
from the plant's leaves is feeding a huge, illegal industry and habit in
America. But farmers such as Franco say that growing coca is one of their
few means of survival. Feeling threatened, they are growing radicalized and
have been fighting back.

This is the fourth time his crop has been eradicated, says Franco, 42, his
cheek bulging with coca leaves, as he squats with family and neighbors in
the shade of a mango tree.

"How can they cut down all our plants?" sobs his wife, Gomercinda Franco, in
her native language of Quechua, wiping away tears with her arm. "I have
eight children. What are we going to live on? All our coca is gone."

>From 1995 to 2001, U.S.-financed Bolivian anti-narcotics forces wiped out 70
percent of the nation's illegal coca fields, nearly all of them in Chapare,
winning praise from the State Department as "the model for the region in
coca eradication." Bolivia, which had been supplying enough coca for as much
as half of the cocaine production in the United States, was exporting very
little. Most of the coca was being used domestically, with people chewing
the leaves.

But even as the U.S.-led war against drugs was gaining ground, it was
creating enemies among tens of thousands of defiant, sandal-wearing coca
growers, called cocaleros.

While they can do little to stop the destruction of their crops, cocaleros
such as Franco have doggedly replanted their fields after anti-narcotics
troops leave. As a result, though coca production in the Chapare jungle had
been reduced to 1,400 acres, it increased to 13,000 acres from 2000 to 2002,
according to U.S. government figures.

Meanwhile, the cocaleros were retaliating against the Bolivian government,
blockading the nation's most important highway with logs, rocks and curved,
tire-shredding nails called miguelitos. The highway, which connects Santa
Cruz with Cochabamba and La Paz, the country's three largest cities, is a
conduit for an estimated 60 percent of the nation's economic activity. The
disruptions cost the economy millions of dollars a day.

The Bolivian government has had limited success dispersing the cocaleros,
who defend the highway and their coca fields with sticks, slings, dynamite
booby traps and pre-World War II Mauser rifles. In January, 11 people were
killed in violent confrontations between cocaleros and police and soldiers,
armed with tear gas and M-16s.

Battle-worn and fiercely anti-American, the cocaleros might represent the
single greatest threat to the fragile mandate of President Gonzalo Sanchez
de Lozada, who was badly weakened by the violence in Chapare and a clash
between police and soldiers in La Paz in February that resulted in 33
casualties.

"There is no other force in the country that has the coherence, the
discipline and the ability to mobilize like the cocaleros," says Ana Maria
Romero de Campero, the nation's ombudswoman, who has helped mediate
negotiations between the government and cocaleros. "Not giving the
government some room to maneuver with the cocaleros is tantamount to causing
its downfall."

Caught between cocalero ultimatums for legalization and U.S. insistence on
eradication, the Bolivian government seemed to be looking for a way out.
Ernesto Justiniano, Bolivia's anti-drug czar, says the government was
considering allowing Chapare's cocaleros to cultivate a limited amount of
coca for six months. During that time, a study would be conducted to
determine domestic demand for the coca leaf, which is considered sacred by
indigenous peoples in Bolivia and has been consumed for thousands of years.

Bolivian law allows for cultivation of 26,000 acres of coca in the rugged
region of Los Yungas, northeast of La Paz, while mandating a U.S.-promoted
policy of "zero coca" in Chapare.

If the study showed that domestic demand exceeded the amount allowed in Los
Yungas, it could open the door to legislation allowing for the legalization
of coca in Chapare.

But negotiations have been stalled since March 20, tensions have risen and
the government has begun considering eradicating coca in Los Yungas.

For its part, the United States continues to oppose any pause in the battle,
fearing that even limited cultivation would quickly spiral out of control.

For the Bolivian government, any decision is influenced by the prospect of
jeopardizing nearly $200 million in U.S. aid and the sway the United States
holds in international lending organizations.

The United States contends that all of the coca produced in Chapare is used
to make cocaine. But the Chapare cocaleros, most of whom consume leaves from
their own harvest on a daily basis, insist that much of their crop is for
poor people who cannot afford the more-expensive leaf from Los Yungas.

The Chapare leaf is larger, has a higher alkaloid content and is more bitter
than that produced in Los Yungas, making it less desirable for chewing and
more suitable for conversion into cocaine, they say.

For the vast majority of families in Chapare, growing coca is not a fast
track to riches but a means of survival. Often, coca is their only
nonsubsistence crop, and the earnings go toward food, clothing and other
necessities.

A U.S.-financed alternative rural development program known as PDAR has won
relatively few converts.

"We haven't been successful in putting money in people's pockets," says PDAR
spokeswoman Claudia Vargas. "Coca is much more profitable than other crops,
and people here have no conception of its illegality."

According to Vargas, more than half of the 12,000 families participating in
the alternative development program grow coca anyway.

And while the cocaleros have angered much of the Bolivian middle and upper
classes with the inconveniences caused by their traffic-blocking protests,
they have won sympathy among the nation's majority poor and indigenous
population in this landlocked nation of 8.4 million.

In July, that sympathy propelled cocalero leader Evo Morales to within
42,000 votes of winning the presidential election, despite a warning by
then-U.S. Ambassador Manuel Rocha that his victory could threaten U.S. aid
to Bolivia.

Morales' Movement Toward Socialism has made little headway pushing through
reforms in the Bolivian parliament. With about 35,000 cocalero families
demanding the right to grow coca, protests have again taken center stage.

"The war on drugs is failing," says Morales, 42, an Aymara Indian who grew
up tending llamas on a wind-swept high desert plain. "The United States
thinks it can spend billions of dollars to reach zero coca, but this isn't a
solution. All this social and political revolt is thanks to the coca leaf.
The coca leaf is what is giving people consciousness."