IN BOLIVIA, FIGHTING COCAINE AT ITS ROOT

The Coca Plant Remains a Profitable Crop, Hampering Its Eradication.

ENTRE RIOS, Bolivia - The United States has spent $300 million since
2000 trying to persuade Bolivian farmers to stop growing coca, the raw
material of cocaine, and to plant different crops instead. It has made
considerable gains despite resistance.

But many farmers in South America's poorest country are ignoring the
unpopular eradication program and replanting coca bushes. Banana
trees, passion-fruit vines, and small palm trees require more work and
up-front investment, and do not provide as much profit as the illegal
coca bush. Coca needs little attention, it has a guaranteed market,
and its four annual harvests provide quarterly income.

"Our bananas are rotting on the tree. Palm heart pays nothing,"
complained a young farmer stripping leaves off rows of coca bushes in
the blazing sun. Like other farmers in the tropical lowlands in the
Chapare region, he did not want to be identified, fearing Bolivian
authorities.

Stopping the flow of cocaine from Bolivia is vital to U.S. efforts to
stem drug trafficking. U.S. Ambassador Manuel Rocha has warned that
continued aid to Bolivia depended on the eradication of new coca plantings.

That means Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, Bolivia's newly elected
president, who takes office today, will have to find a way to
encourage farmers to stay away from coca.

Election Challenger

The 72-year-old mining tycoon campaigned by promising to create jobs,
and ignored the coca issue. He almost lost the election to an Aymara
Indian, Evo Morales, a leader of the pro-coca movement, who promised
to end coca eradication and kick out the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration.

Bolivia was once the major supplier of cocaine to the United States,
but the country is now largely out of the drug business. The
government has uprooted more than 90,000 acres of coca in the New
Jersey-size Chapare region since 1998. Less than 6,000 acres of the
bush remain.

A decade ago, less than 136,000 acres of legal crops were grown in the
region, but the U.S. government estimates that 296,000 acres are now
used for legal farming.

In 1999, only 3,100 families received alternative-development aid, but
today 20,000 - about half of Chapare-area farmers - receive some sort
of assistance from programs run by the United States, the European
Union, or the United Nations.

'Mini War Of Attrition'

Coca generated employment and income in a country whose per-capita
income hovers around $1,000 a year, a country in which 70 percent of
the 8.3 million people are poor. Before Bolivia's crackdown in 1998,
Chapare farmers who grew coca earned about $2,700 annually. The figure
now stands at less than $900 and is falling, according to U.S. and
Bolivian government estimates.

But farmers are not prosecuted for growing coca, and many simply
replant any crops the government uproots in what one U.S. official
called "a mini war of attrition."

Bolivia has no seaports from which to export products, and it is not
competitive in U.S. and European markets.

To help workers find jobs other than coca-growing, Bolivia's
alternative-development campaign has expanded to include ranching,
animal husbandry, and small lumber operations.

Along the Chimore River, Pedro Tare, 28, oversees operations for his
village's turn to use a portable sawmill. Under a joint U.N.-U.S.
program, he and 12 workers collectively earn about $9,000 during their
three-month rotation by felling trees under a long-term
forest-management plan.

Juan Cancio switchedto bananas. He said he tired of the violence among
rival coca-growing groups and the even greater nuisance of Bolivia's
campaign to eradicate coca. "It doesn't pay as well as coca, but we
are paid weekly," said Cancio, a member of a growers' cooperative that
receives U.S. and other developmental aid.

Victoria Duran walks nearly 15 miles to the nearest road to catch a
ride to the nearest city every three months, lugging sacks of coca
leaves for sale in an illegal market. She cannot carry bananas or
pineapples that far, and said her soil would not support black pepper,
the alternative crop offered to remote farmers.

A 50-pound bag of coca leaves fetches about $35. Duran collects $7 for
a 10-pound bag. She said her meager earnings would help buy cooking
oil and rice to feed her family another three months.

"Put yourself in our situation," Duran said. "What else are we
supposed to feed our children with?"