Pubdate: Thu, 26 Oct 2000
Source: Guardian, The (UK)
Copyright: 2000 Guardian Newspapers Limited
Page: 15
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Author:  (Rev) Maggie Stringer

ECHOES OF CHILE IN COCA LEAF BATTLE

Thank you for the excellent feature on the campesinos' fight against the 
total eradication of the coca leaf in Bolivia's Chapare region (Caught in 
the eye of the leaf storm, October 5). I have lived and worked in the 
tropical plains region of Bolivia for six years. In the past two years 
United States foreign policy towards Bolivia in collusion with World Bank 
and International Monetary Fund policies has resulted in a rapid increase 
in unemployment, poverty and hunger for the vast majority of the 
population. Bolivia's government, under US pressure to eradicate all coca 
growing, is engaging daily in human rights violations against Chapare 
campesinos, who have been growing coca for thousands of years.

Eva Morales, the leader of the cocaleros, and a deputy in the parliament, 
is trying to get the government to agree that each Chapare family can grow 
a fixed amount of coca, nothing like enough to feed the US drug market. But 
the US won't agree, and so the burning of not just coca crops but homes 
continues.

Over recent weeks a bitter confrontation has been occurring in the Chapare. 
The military has now sealed it off and sent in ground troops along with US 
helicopters to crush the cocaleros. Instead of giving money for the 
operations to burn coca plants in Bolivia, thereby justifying the killing 
of peasants by President Hugo Banzar's military, why not use the money to 
break the "bankers" of the cocaine industry, who operate from the US?

Yet again it seems that Washington is intent on following an old policy - 
to support a political leader who has a history of human rights abuses like 
his friend Augusto Pinochet. When will the US stop exporting its problems? 
Attacking the cocaleros in Bolivia is an easy target. Cleaning up the 
lucrative drug market in the US is much harder.

Perhaps some heavy sanctions, such as capping the profits of large US-based 
pharmaceutical companies that export the chemicals needed to make the 
cocaine paste might be a better place to start. And that money could be 
directly invested in educational and health projects in Bolivia.

(Rev) Maggie Stringer Montero, Bolivia
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