Pubdate: Sun, 16 Mar 2003
Source: Scotland On Sunday (UK)
Copyright: 2003 The Scotsman Publications Ltd.
Contact:  http://www.scotlandonsunday.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/405
Author: Reed Lindsay

COCALEROS REWRITE US DRUGS WAR 'SUCCESS STORY'

PEASANT farmers in Bolivia have brought the country to its knees by 
mounting a ferocious campaign to be allowed to grow coca leaves.

Two years ago, the US State Department praised Bolivia as "the model for 
coca eradication" in South America, but the Bolivian government now appears 
to be losing the war on drugs after tens of thousands of defiant, 
sandal-wearing farmers, known as cocaleros, have taken up arms.

There is talk of allowing the cocaleros to grow coca - traditionally used 
for chewing, in tea and as a medicine - for a limited period, a move which 
would anger the US. In the Chapare jungle, they have doggedly replanted 
fields destroyed by anti-narcotics troops, resulting in an increase of coca 
production from 600 to 5,400 hectares in two years, according to US 
government statistics.

The government has been brought to the brink of collapse by a blockade of 
the nation's most important highway with logs, rocks and curved, 
tire-shredding nails.

Last January, 11 people were killed in violent confrontations between 
cocaleros armed with dynamite booby traps and pre-World War II Mauser 
rifles, and police and soldiers, armed with tear-gas and M-16s.

Fiercely anti-American, the cocaleros might represent the single greatest 
threat to President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, who is clinging to power 
after the recent violence in Chapare and a clash between police and 
soldiers in La Paz last month, which resulted in 33 more casualties.

"The war on drugs is failing," said Aymara cocalero leader Evo Morales, 42, 
who narrowly lost Bolivia's presidential election last July. "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."

For the vast majority of families in Chapare, growing coca is a means of 
survival. Often, it is their only non-subsistence crop, and the earnings go 
toward food, clothing and other necessities.

While they concede that some of the coca they produce is bought by drug 
traffickers, they show little remorse.

"The Americans are the ones who brought this dirty business here in the 
first place," said cocalero Gregorio Caceres, 59, his cheek bulging with 
coca leaves. All we do is plant and harvest."

According to drug tsar Ernesto Justiniano, the Bolivian government may 
consider allowing some cocaleros in Chapare to continue growing a limited 
amount of coca for six months while a study is conducted to measure 
domestic demand for the leaf, a mild stimulant that has been consumed by 
indigenous peoples in Bolivia for hundreds of years.

But the United States continues to make clear it flatly opposes any "pause" 
in coca eradication.

Looming behind any decision the Bolivian government makes are nearly 125m 
dollars in US aid and the sway the United States holds over international 
lending organisations.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens