Pubdate: Sun,  4 Aug 2002
Source: Lexington Herald-Leader (KY)
Copyright: 2002 Lexington Herald-Leader
Contact:  http://www.kentucky.com/mld/heraldleader/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/240
Author: Kevin G. Hall, Knight Ridder Washington Bureau

ANTI-COCA PLAN FAILING IN BOLIVIA

$300 Million In U.S. Funds Can't Persuade Farmers

ENTRE RIOS, Bolivia - The United States has spent some $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 hasn't worked.

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 take much more work, require up-front investment 
and don't 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 
in the tropical lowlands near Entre Rios, in the Chapare (pronounced 
chah-PAH-reh) region where coca grows. Like other farmers in the New 
Jersey-size area, he didn't want to be identified, fearing Bolivian 
authorities.

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

That means Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, Bolivia's newly elected president, 
who takes office Tuesday, will have to find a way to encourage farmers to 
stay away from coca. The 72-year-old mining tycoon campaigned by promising 
to create jobs, ignoring the coca issue. He almost lost the election to 
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 Chapare 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 Chapare, 
but the U.S. government now estimates that 296,000 acres are used for legal 
crops.

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

Coca generated employment and income in a country whose per capita income 
hovers around $1,000 a year and where 70 percent of its 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. drug official called "a 
mini-war of attrition."

Landlocked Bolivia has all the geographical cards stacked against it. It 
has no seaports from which to export products, and it's too far away to be 
competitive in U.S. and European markets. Argentina was Bolivia's top 
export market because the peso was pegged on par with the dollar. But 
Argentina devalued the peso in January, and now it's barely worth more than 
a U.S. quarter.

In the 1970s and '80s, laid-off Andean mountain workers, who knew nothing 
about farming, flocked to these muggy lowlands to grow coca when Bolivia 
was the world's cocaine capital.

"The guy who produces coca is a collector. It is a crop that needs almost 
no care," said Carlos Sarabia Blanco, head of alternative development in 
Chapare for the Bolivian government.

To help them find other work, 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 at using a portable sawmill. Under a joint U.N.-U.S. 
program, he and 12 workers collectively earn about $9,000 during a 
three-month rotation by felling trees under a forest management plan.

Juan Cancio switched from coca to bananas. He said he tired of the violence 
among rival coca-growing groups and the nuisance of Bolivia's armed forces 
campaign to eradicate coca. "It doesn't pay as well as coca, but we are 
paid weekly," said Cancio, a member of the AVICT growers' cooperative, 
which receives U.S. and other development aid.

Don't mention alternative development to Victoria Duran. She walks nearly 
15 miles to the nearest road to catch a ride to Chimore every three months, 
lugging sacks of coca leaves for sale in an illegal market. She can't carry 
bananas or pineapples that far, and she said her soil wouldn't support 
black pepper, the alternative crop offered to remote farmers.

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

"Put yourself in our situation," Duran said. "What else are we supposed to 
feed our children with?"
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom