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In These Times, April 13, 2002

Who's Counting?

U.S. plan to eradicate coca crops in Bolivia fails miserably

By Benjamin Kunkel and Lisa Kunkel

COCHABAMBA, BOLIVIA–The lush, rugged Chapare region is home to some 35,000
families engaged in growing coca, a plant that has been cultivated since
human settlement here. Over the past 14 years, the Chapare has also been
the site of U.S-sponsored efforts by the Bolivian government to eradicate
coca. The campaign, now called Plan Dignity, intensified in 1998 and seemed
successful in December 2000, when the Bolivian government announced the
total eradication of coca in the region.

But that was only if you didn't look too closely. A month later, officials
stated that 1,400 acres of coca had been missed. Nine months later, the
number of acres under cultivation was estimated at 9,900, and the potential
Bolivian contribution to the world cocaine market was placed at 66 tons, or
6 million grams.

The other apparent success on this front of the Andean drug war has been,
in the words of the State Department, to “enable farmers to support
themselves and their families without the need to cultivate coca.” The
State Department's annual International Narcotics Control Strategy Report
claims that 16,167 families have received American assistance to grow
alternative crops, such as bananas, macadamia nuts and oranges. But the
Bolivian government gives the number as 12,000 and many families growing
other crops have preserved their coca as well. As farmer Jorge Cala Tito
says, 'Surely I'm among the 12,000 beneficiaries the minister has
indicated, but I can tell you that I still have coca because that is our
only source of survival.”

Coca is a hearty plant, resistant to rotting and disease. Its use and sale
as a dried leaf is traditional and legal in Bolivia; refined into cocaine,
it has proved an enduringly popular product, particularly in the United
States. Coca thrives and so do its markets–advantages not enjoyed by
anything else Chapare farmers might grow.

In December, when growers' unions set up roadblocks to protest the
elimination of their coca and therefore their livelihood, they also dumped
rotting pineapples, bananas and other fruits by the roadside. These crops
may be legal, but Bolivia lacks the infrastructure to transport them
reliably, and the international economy–with its mixture of agricultural
protectionism and unstable commodity prices–can't ensure regular access to
markets at a decent price.

As in the past, the roadblocks and other protests led to bloody clashes
between farmers and security forces. Tensions increased when the government
issued a decree banning the cultivation of all Chapare coca. In the past
six months, 10 coca growers and four soldiers have been killed, and more
than 350 protesters have been injured or detained. Six deaths came over
three days in January with the closure of the Sacaba coca market, one of 16
markets the United States would like to see closed. In a measure of the
farmers' desperation, many of the wounded were found to be suffering from
acute malnutrition.

At least three protesters were shot and killed by members of the
Expeditionary Task Force, an irregular group of 1,500 soldiers devoted to
coca eradication, under Bolivian command but receiving their salaries from
the Narcotics Affairs Section of the local U.S. Embassy. These deaths are
being investigated, not by a civilian court and in accordance with Bolivian
law, but by a military tribunal. Such tribunals have yet to find any
soldier responsible for the use of excessive force or to discover a single
instance of the widespread use of torture noted by Amnesty International in
2001.

Yet the Bolivian government may have less tolerance for carnage than the
State Department does. On February 9, the coca growers' unions and the
government of President Jorge Quiroga reached an uneasy peace agreement.
The coca-growing ban has been suspended, allowing farmers to grow some coca
legally, and the families of injured or killed farmers are to be
compensated. Despite American displeasure, Quiroga's government may not
attempt to close more coca markets before elections in June.

Still, the peace is fragile. The U.S. interest in the elimination of coca
and the farmers' need to subsist can't currently be reconciled, and the
Bolivian government sits anxiously in the middle, always betraying either
its people or its patron. The drug war continues to torment Bolivia while
retaining, for the American government, its ritual character.

All efforts to eliminate coca in the Andean region thus far have failed
miserably. When asked about the supply of cocaine to the United States,
Randy Beers, assistant secretary for international narcotics and law
enforcement, says: “I cannot tell you at this point in time, based on
available information, that the amount of cocaine that comes into the
United States is less.”


Lisa Kunkel works with the Andean Information Network in Cochabamba,
Bolivia.
Benjamin Kunkel is a freelance journalist and novelist in New York.

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