NO END SEEN FOR FARMERS-GOVERNMENT COCA WAR IN BOLIVIA

COCHABAMBA, Bolivia (AP) - At 45, Maximo Rivero looks like he could turn 65
tomorrow.

Cancer gnawing away at his cheek, the coca farmer wept as he described his
plight - no money and in yet another hospital, this time with a broken leg
crushed during hours of interrogation by police searching for farmers who
killed five military men.

Rivero joins a growing number of victims in the latest chapter of the
battle over coca that has plagued Bolivia since 1997 when the government
launched a U.S.-backed campaign to eradicate the Andean crop, used as the
base ingredient of cocaine.

With just 9,900 acres (4,000 hectares) of coca to go, the government has
already declared success for wiping out more than 108,500 acres (43,900
hectares) in central Bolivia's Chapare, once one of the world's largest
coca-growing hotspots.

But the battle is far from over. Coca farmers pledge to fight to the death
to prevent further eradication of the lucrative crop. Their attitude was
summed up this way by Rivero: "If there is no more coca, my people have
nothing. Everybody has a cause to die for - this is ours."

The government is just as resolute. "Bolivia chose a road in 1997, and we
are going to keep following it. We have no time for complacency," Foreign
Minister Gustavo Fernandez told a conference this month, assuring anti-drug
officials from 58 nations that coca eradication would continue.

The government's progress in the campaign has already come at a price, the
lives of 39 coca farmers and uniformed men.

The battles have gotten rougher since President Jorge Quiroga took office
last August - 14 of the deaths have occurred since then.

Most confrontations have been in the tropical Chapare region where a
predictable cycle of violence has developed - combined military-police
units are sent to pull up coca crops, farmers blockade roads to protect
their fields, soldiers and police fight to open highways.

In the resulting clashes, farmers are killed by guns or rifle-fired tear
gas canisters, and military men are shot down by snipers or captured and
beaten.

In January, the conflict spread beyond the Chapare, with waves of
anti-government protests throughout the country.

After a new government decree prohibited the commercialization of coca,
thousands of Chapare farmers stormed into the small town of Sacaba outside
Cochabamba and try to reopen a market shut down for allegedly selling
illegal coca.

Four days of chaos and bloodshed ensued, resulting in the deaths of three
coca farmers and five members of the military-police forces.

The government responded fiercely.

The coca farmers' radio station was shut down, and dozens of farmers in
Cochabamba were taken into custody.

The cancer-stricken Rivero - who has been avoiding the coca wars because of
his health - wound up in the middle of the chaos one night when he stopped
on his way home from cancer treatments to spend a night at the coca
farmers' federation in Cochabamba.

He said he was seized in a raid on the guest house, taken to police
headquarters and beaten until officers conceded he knew nothing about the
Sacaba slayings. Finally he was thrown out _ with a broken leg and various
injuries to his head and torso.

Health workers said police later raided hospitals and clinics seeking those
who escaped the melee. Dozens of coca farmers, mainly federation officers,
were imprisoned. Eventually the coca farmers' main leader, Evo Morales, was
accused of organizing the attacks in Sacaba and expelled from the Bolivian
Congress.

Irate coca farmers marched in Cochabamba to demand Morales' reinstatement,
the freeing of all jailed farmers and the reopening of their radio station.
"You are not alone, brother Evo," Morales' supporters shouted in marches
that often turned violent when police and protesters came face-to-face.

The confrontations have resulted in growing anger at the United States as
the force behind coca eradication - demonstrators chanted they won't be
"slaves of the Yankees" - and at Quiroga, whom the farmers accuse of being
a puppet of Washington.

The program of eradication is up against both tradition and economics. Coca
has been grown for centuries in Latin America, and the leaves have been
used in religious ceremonies or smoked and chewed, especially by indigenous
people in the Andes Mountains, as a medicine and mild narcotic.

In fact, the law still allows small amounts of coca to be grown in the
Yungas region in eastern Bolivia for traditional purposes, and farmers'
leader Morales says the leaf has many legal uses, even as an ingredient in
toothpaste.

"The peasants in the Chapare do not defend drug trafficking, but we also do
not accept that the coca leaf should be criminalized," Morales said.

In sponsoring Bolivia's anti-coca effort, the United States has spent some
dlrs 50 million since 1997 to develop alternative crops, build roads and
health care facillities, and improve electricity in the Chapare.

Despite more alternative production, farmers complain that crops such as
black pepper aren't as lucrative as coca and that often their bananas
attract no buyers and must be left to rot.

According to official calculations, 60 percent of Chapare farmers have
converted to licit crops. But thousands of others are still planting coca -
sometimes clandestinely, blurring government statistics on fields wiped out
- - and getting tear gassed at protests.

Some downtrodden groups united with the coca farmers in protests last
month. Amid a rash of road blockades launched throughout the country,
Quiroga's government finally began to negotiate with Morales.

Officials agreed to suspend for 90 days the decree prohibiting the
commercialization of coca and to put Morales' expulsion in before the
nation's Constitutional Tribunal.

Most of the jailed farmers also were released. In return, Chapare coca
farmers halted their road blockades.

The goverrnment concessions drew sharp criticism from the U.S. State
Department in a March report that said Bolivia was falling behind in
eradicating the coca leaf since Quiroga took officel.

Quiroga called the report "unacceptable and unjust," and Bolivia's
anti-drug czar, Oswaldo Antezana, asserted that Bolivia is still on
schedule with coca eradication.

U.S. officials needn't worry, however, as agreements between the government
and coca farmers usually are short-lived. In the end, both sides remain
committed to their mutually exclusive demands.

The government insists it will completely wipe out coca, and farmers vow
they will protect their right to harvest the crop at all costs.

"There are only two escapes from this situation," said Sacha Llorentty,
representative of the Permanent Assembly of Human Rights in Bolivia.
"Either the government starts truly negotiating with the coca farmers, or
the conflict gets more and more violent. - AP