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Bolivia Moves Toward New Coca Policy By Ronald J. Morgan The water fall glanced off the top of the mini bus. The narrow dirt tracks were just barely holding out against the advance of crumbling jungle hills and rainy season runoff. Some travel guide writer once declared Bolvia to have the most dangerous roads in Latin America and that assertion seemed valid after hours of creeping along the edge of one mountain abyss and river canyon after another. Brown buzzards floating deftly in goups on the mountain breeze framed the entrance to Bolvia's major legal coca leaf growing zone, Los Yungas. It is a subtropical area wedged between the higlands of La Paz and the start of the Amazon in the Bolivian department of Beni. While often denigrated as a crop that takes little effort to grow, the coca leaf of Los Yungas seems tended with an expert horticulturalists care. The dedicated coca growers of Coripata have ringed the city with terraced coca fields cut into the sides of steep hills in carefully formed mud ledged rows. Motorcycles, the preferred transportation to the cocales, are parked here and there along the dirt road into town. Coca is being both planted and harvested in January and indigenous women can be seen working on the slopes, filling white bags with the green leaves known for their special flavor and appropriateness for chewing. Coripata sits atop a hill like most of the towns in Los Yungas. A tour guide in Coroico -- a tourist village quilted by hotel swimming pools and steets lined with small restaurants and trekker tour offices -- said it has to do with colonial era violence in the region. The hilltop locations provide for spectacular panaramic views of the surrounding mountain slopes and jungle rivers. The biking, and trekker groups have by-passed Coripata. The adobe and cement buildings that line its hilly cobble-stoned streets have the look of bland unpainted two-story wharehouses. There's a quiet in Coripata, a feeling that the whole town is part of one big farm. After working in the fields during the day cocaleros tend to congregate around a single plaza for a rest, fried chicken, a look at television. Few in Coripata are not coca growers. Father Wigner Cando, the town's Catholic priest, said the coca grower enjoys a life a bit better than the indigenous of the Bolivian highlands. "Its a simple life. It's enough to live," he said. But it still falls short of what he considers a dignified life. Earnings range from 1,000 ($US127) to 1,500 ($US189) Bolivianos per month which is derived from three to four harvests of coca per year. The earnings will probably not be enough to afford a college education for the children or will there be money for a health emergency. And malnutrition afflicts about 70% of the children of the Los Yungas. It is a meager but steady existence that some in Bolivia have called the option for survival. It has been centered in Los Yungas for centuries. The region is divided into Nor and Sud Yungas and includes more than 40,000 persons who are dependent on coca for their livlihood. Most of Bolivia's 30,000 Afro-Bolivian population also live in the region. The area is a stronghold of the Movement Toward Socialism Party. Six Yungas coca grower federations along with six more in the Chapare region form the primary support base for Bolivia's growing left party. In Bolivia coca still has a special indigenous mystique. It has supplied the extra energy for thousands of Indian slaves toiling in colonial mines and on colonial agricultural estates. And it has accompanied the Bolivian indigenous through all of their social struggles. Now it's at the center of the biggest political movement since miners and Bolivian military veterans overthrew the government in a 1952 revolution. It can be said that the U.S.-sponsored Plan Dignity coca erradication program never reached into Los Yungas. A secretive effort to infiltrate military coca erradication squads into the zone in June, 2001, was sent into retreat in a matter of days by the rapid mobalization of thousands of coca growers in the region. Since then Bolivia and U.S. efforts have been directed toward alternative development and enforcement of anti-drug trafficking laws. The United States Agency for International Development has been building bridges and improving roads. It has also been providing university scholarships, and carrying out health and farm science training. Health programs are attempting to attack problems of tuberculosis and leishmanis disease which are widespread in the region. About 6,000 Yungas residents are involved in alternative development projects. These include specialty coffee, banana and cacao production and various technical assistance efforts carried out by AID and the Organization of American States. But after more than two years of relative coexistance with Yungas cocaleros the United States returned the anti-narcotics spotlight to the area by declaring there had been a dramatic 26% increase in Yungas coca leaf production. "The principal challenge facing Bolivia is the unconstrained growth of coca cultivation in the Yungas;" declared the 2003 International Narcotics Control Report section for Bolivia. The United States has for years had its eye on reducing the allowed 12,000 hectares of legal coca grown in Los Yungas to about 5,500 hectares. Almost as soon as satellite imagery calculations, last fall, showed the coca increase, which pushed Yungas production to over 23,000 hectares, uncertaintly and tensions began mounting over a possible new U.S.-sponsored enforcement strategy for the region. Robert Charles, Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics Affairs and Law Enforcement told Bolivian journalists during a March 11 news conference that there were no such plans for a U.S. strategy to eliminate excess coca production in Los Yungas but declared excess coca to be cocaine production related. "The production of excess coca is illegal and the excess coca has no other use but the production of drugs." Nevertheless Charles stressed that United States sees the Yungas region as being a special case. "We recognize that the subject of coca excess cultivation in the Yungas is complex and there are no simple solutions." That caveat did not satisfy Yungas coca growers, however. The tensions unleashed by the U.S. coca Statistics and the International Narcotics report came to a head in early April. Fearing an escalation of military presence cocaleros began to focus their efforts toward stopping construction of what they charge was going to be a new military base at La Riconada. Some 3,000 cocaleros briefly blocked off the Yungas to demand closure of the base. Three persons were injured in clashes with police, marking the first political protest casualties under the Meza government. The mobalization came despite the Meza government assurances that the Yungas was not about to be the target of an erradication offensive and concessions, which included firing the Director of Alternative Development Marco Antonio Oviedo. Cocaleros met with Bolivian Minister of Government Alfonso Ferrufino at the Los Yungas town of Unduavi the first week of April but found his statements not to be enough of a guarantee and decided to shut down the Yungas until the government signed a written agreement ending construction of the Riconada base. Tensions have also risen between the United States and cocaleros over the bombing of an alternative development office in Carnanavi which is located in an area on the edge of the official Yungas legal coca growing area. Charles accused cocaleros of formenting violence against alternative development projects and threatening to expel from the region those who choose not to grow coca. "This does not seem to me to be something democratic." He called for the governent to respond with increased military protection for those living in cocalero zones and military security for shipments of alternative development products. But cocaleros are likely to see any increase in military presence as a provocation. The narcotics report moved attention away from Bolivia's usual coca conflict zone in the Chapare. It declared that the lowland jungle area with about 30,000 coca growers was no longer part of the "cocaine, drug trafficking circuit." It also said that export of alternative development crops was up due to economic improvement in Argentina. The forced coca erradication and militarization of the Chapare region is counted as one of the few drug war victories. In 1989 Bolivia was the principal exporter of cocaine to the United States and produced over $500 million in drug related export earnings a year. Various anti-narcotics measures, among them, a harsh anti-drug trafficking law known as 1008, which was enacted in 1988, and the 1997, U.S. supported and designed Plan Dignity launched under President Hugo Banzer have reduced drug trafficking and coca production. Bolivia coca leaf plantings have fallen from a peak in 1989 of 52,900 hectares to 28,450 in 2003, according to U.S. satellite measurements. Of that 4,600 are in the Chapare and 23,550 in Los Yungas. Another 300 hectares are grown in the Apolo area of La Paz department. Bolivian drug trafficking now consists primarily of smuggling Peruvian coca across Bolivia into the Brazil for processing and onward shipment to the Brazilian favelas or to Europe. Brazil recently opened a new airbase near the Paraguayan border at Campo Grande in the state of Mato Gross Sul to halt the flow of drug flights into the Bolivian--Brazil border area. Some cocaine is also smuggled into Argentina. The Bolivian drug business is not what it once was. But the accompanying political and social costs of erradication and drug enforcement have been high. U.S. designed neoliberal economic policies have also failed to replace the $500 million in lost earnings. Unemployment, which surged with the 1980s closing of government-owned tin mines, has remained enormously high due to slow economic growth through most of the 1990s and early 2000s. While coca erradication has reduced coca leaf production it has also spawned a powerful political movement which argues that the United States does not have the right to dictate Bolivia's government policy. Whether the United States can adapt to this new reality will be a crucial test for the future. The ousting of President Gonzalo Sanchez Lozada, last October, as a result of violence that occurred against protesters who were objecting to the export of natural gas to California, marks the end of an era for U.S. policy in Bolivia. The ability to implement U.S. designed policies has been reduced by the shift in political power away from Bolivia's traditional political parties toward its mass social organizations, including coca growers and the indigenous. Local elections scheduled for December will be a barometer of how thoroughly Bolivia's traditional political forces have been discredited. Few doubt that U.S. drug policies, which were often accompanied by ugly american style bromides from a string of ambassadors, are partly to blame for the loss of legitimacy of Bolvia's post dictatorship democracy which began in 1985. Deaths caused by U.S.-trained police and military units and a policy of impunity for the security forces also undermined the U.S.-back governments. Since the fall of the Gonzalez Lozada admiministration there has been a swelling of political support for coca grower power and pro coca projects. Coca Grower Leader Evo Morales has become the chief interlocutor between the goverment of President Carlos Meza and union, indigenous, campensino and neighborhood groups which partiicpated in the gas revolt. And Morales has achieved sufficient power in congress to force Meza to negotiate passage of major legislation. The United States has spent years maligning Morales as a narcoterrorist. But the effort has backfired by reinforcing the public perception that the United States feels it runs Bolivia. Former U.S. Ambassador Manuel Rocha may have inadvertantly helped Morales come in a close second in the 2002 presidentional elections by urging Bolivians not to vote for him. Increasingly the U.S. government's ability to dictate policy toward the cocaleros seems in doubt. Even before the October social uprising pressure was building for a new coca and alternative development strategy. And with the Chapare region declared out of the drug trafficking circuit by the latest International Narcotics report the Banzer Zero Coca policy looks obsolete. Talks between cocaleros and the government began under Gonzalez Lozada in early 2003 and have opened again with the Meza administration. The cocaleros would like to increase the legal amount of coca production in the Yungas and for the first time allow legal coca growing in the Chapare. Their proposals also call for expansion of the markets for legal coca and development of more nondrug coca leaf products. Some estimates argue that export of coca products to countries such as China Japan, Argentina and Peru could result in earnings of $135 million. Chapare Cocalero Leader Feliciano Mamani has been directing the talks with the government. Cocaleros want the forced erradication and the militarization of the Chapare to be brought to an end. "We don't want more conflict, more deaths," he said. So far the government has refused their request for an intitial pause in erradication. But it is putting a few slightly different proposals foreward. The Meza administration is putting more emphasis on alternative development. It is also considering an independent satellite measurement of coca leaf plantations. Cocaleros have charged that U.S. satellite measurements may be off due to inclusion of vacant coca leaf plots which still show up in the satellite pictures. The government also may advocate reforms to the United Nations Drug Control Convention which currently bans coca leaf exports. Mamani said cocaleros have agreed to participate in a new alternative development policy which will be run in a neutral manner by the government in each county-like municipio. But they are also demanding the right to grow 1/2 hectare of coca legally and are proposing a study of possible new legal coca products. The opening of the Chapare to some legal coca growing has been a longstanding demand that could move the region from conflict to coexistance. Mamani also is putting forth a proposal to have cocaleros and the governemnt work together to police drug trafficking and therefore end the need for erradication. "We want to participate in the fight against drug trafficking," he said. "Militarization of the Cochabamba area has imposed conflict and misery. The politicians are most involved in drug trafficking. It's the millionaires that have encouraged drug trafficking. But the U.S. embassy doesn't understand that." Theo Roncken, a coca and drug war specialist based in Cochabamba has been observing the conflict for years. "I think Dignity, it depends what you are evaluating. If it's coca eliminated in a certain time then some progress has been made. In the longer run nothing has changed. What's not being taken into account are the social consequences of erradication which have been very bad." Roncken predicted, however, that a new approach will not be easy to implement and that pressure for erradication will remain strong at least for another five to ten years. "The government is clearly not able to quit erradication as part of the agenda. The policy as such is being developed in the United States. This is the reality." Roncken theorized recent talks between the government and coca growers are aimed primarily at keeping tensions under control. "They want to develop their regions with coca for without coca nothing will be able to develop. I think it's the only realistic stance but it's not going to be accepted by the United States." The Yungas region will be either the role model for legal coca growing policy or a new focus of contention and perhaps violence. Swiss Human Rights Activist Maya Graf is the Yungas representative for the Permanent Assembly of Human Rights of Bolivia. Her territory covers about 100,000 square miles. In the event of trouble Graf is an independent specialist with the job of investigating and verifying the truth of what has happened. A decade ago she was in Rwanda where she produced a report on the massacres there. Her feeling is that the Gas War violence in October pushed Bolivia close to the point of no return. "We avoided a civil war at the last moment together with the international organizations,” Graf said. "We knew that one or two days more eveyone was going to take out their guns. Every group is armed if it's needed." Graf, during a February interview in Coroico, expresed concern that Los Yungas would produce yet another violent conflict. "We can't risk a second conflict and it’s really not necessary." One of the sources of concern and uncertainty in the area are government charges that the cocaleros have dabbled in formation of a guerrilla movement and are guilty of murders of police and army personnel through sniping and planting booby traps in coca erradication zones. Three police and one soldier were killed in the Chapare region last fall. Tensions grew in the Los Yungas with the bombing of the alternative development office in nearby Caranavi. The Permanent Assembly for Human Rights of Bolivia has taken the view that there is no evidence of a guerrilla organization. "Up to now we have no knowledge of terrorist groups existing in Bolivia." Graf said. "A terrorist is armed. He has grenades. He has sophisticated weapons." The current situation, she stressed, is more one of social mobalization. Graf sees international perception of the situation in Bolivia as likely to determine whether the Yungas stays peaceful. Comments by former President Gonzalo Sanchez Lozada shortly after leaving Bolivia that Bolivia could become a another Afganistan point up the gap between those favoring coexistance and those who see a need for military occupation and counterinsurgency. "We have heard at the international level these opinions that Bolivia needs an international military intervention. Why do we need that? We don't need that. The coca leaf is not going to go away. The problem in the Yungas is not drug trafficking. There's very little cocaine production." One of the capitals of cocalero power is the town of Chulamani. It is a bit livelier than Coripata. Trekkers, rafters, bikers and fisherman have found a natural jumping off point. A disco in the town square captures the fusion of coca and tourism with a light show. White coca leaf designs revolve around the room while other strobe lights create a pink colored trout that repeatedly jumps into a lake of light at the front of the dance floor. Friday night visitors are adept at indigenous Tikun style dancing. And lyrics to a popular song seem to capture the uncertainty of post October Bolivia. "If I have failed you I ask forgivenes in the only way I know." Chulamani is famous for two historic events in the Yungas region. In October, 1982 coca growers who were infuriated by alleged abuses involving anti-drug police lynched six antinarcotic agents. And in June 2001, the town was the center of the mobalization to stop the entrance of military coca erradicators. The first is a reminder of the violence that accompanied Bolvia in the 1980s and is credited with having been partially responsible for creating a special status for the Yungas as a legal coca growing area in the 1008 drug control law. The second, has become known as the Rebellion of Chulamani and put an end to efforts to transfer Zero Coca to the region. Coca activist, and film maker Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui made a movie about the 2001 standoff with troops in Los Yungas. She grows her own coca in the Chulamani area and is a force behind efforts to build a successful legal coca industry that will provide an alternative to current coca erradication conflict. This year she cosponsored with Yungas Congressional Deputy and Cocalero leader Dionisio Nunez the Coca and Sovereignty manifesto. The document, which is being ciruculated for signatures throughout the country, calls for Bolivia to adopt a pro coca policy and charges that U.S. drug policy in Bolivia is "inefficient, inhumane and irrational." At her home in La Paz, Rivera keeps a bag of coca leaf next to her computer terminal while she works on a new fictional drama dealing with the conflict between cocaleros and erradication forces. "In Los Yungas it’s not possible to survive without cultivating coca. The people are ready to fight and die to stop erradication," she stresed. Rivera's proposed program bucks the assertion that less coca produces less drug trafficking. The way out of the coca-cocaine drug war impasse is in fact more production for legal uses and opening the way to exports to other countries where coca medicinal and tea products could find a market. Demand for coca actually outstrips current coca supply, Rivera asserted while chewing a coca leaf bunch known as a bola. "We are going to make various presentations in Bolivia, Argentina and Peru. We are going to make a very big campaign in El Alto, (Bolivia's largest indigenous city) because we want to finish up with a congress of producers, consumers and sellers of coca which will propose a new general law governing coca." Rivera and other proponents of development of the legal coca market said there have to be more products such as the coca extract flavoring used in Coca Cola that can be produced. A sign in Chulamani says 89 kilometers to La Asunta. It is an obscure town that has suddenly strayed onto the drug war map. First, with the April, 2003 arrest of former cocalero leader and La Asunta councilman Claudio Ramirez on charges of terrorism, and armed rebellion. Then, last fall, U.S. satellite measurements showed most of the incease in coca growing in the Yungas was in the La Asunta area. Bolivian anti-narcotics police have alleged that people have begun to move to La Asunta to grow coca and then smuggled it to the Chapare area where clandestine labs turn it into cocaine. They have also reported finding some coca maceration sites and drug labs in the area. Ramirez was arrested at his home in the highland city of El Alto on April 10 of last year. Also arrested with Ramirez was Colombian human rights activist and agrarian leader Francisco Cortez. The arrest was a heavily publicized anti-terrorist operation dubbed Early Alert. Bolivian prosecutors alleged that Ramirez, Cochabamba cocalero Carmelo Peñaranda and Cortez, were establishing a Bolivian version of the Colombian National Liberation Army. They in turn charge that the prosecution is a government conspiracy to discredit the cocalero movement. A year after the arrest prosecutors have yet to file formal charges. Rogelio Mayta, attorney for Francisco Cortez, said the evidence is flimsy; that there have been anomolies in the handling of the case; and that his client has been treated as guilty even though the case is still in the investigative phase. "Like no other case in Bolivia there's been a campaign of disparagement against Francisco Cortez," Mayta said. "What they want is to arrive at a judgement and for the public to condemn him." Mayta was particularly piqued about a November paid publicity insert in the Bolvian Newspaper La Razon which described the alleged ELN-B and a similar paid program on a Bolivian television station. Cartoon leaflets depictng the three as captured terrorists have also appeared throughout the country. Prosecutors have refused to investigate who is behind the effort, Mayta said. Charges in the case must be brought by October or Cortez and the others will have to be released. Heavy rains in February have the Yungas road system collapsing. The road to La Asunta is a sea of mud and barely passable even with the help of a bull dozer. Dozens of vehicles are trapped just a half kilometer outside of Chulamani but are now beginning to move across a sunken gap that the tractor has attempted to smooth over. It’s several hours moving along the one lane tracks that follow the edge of a river canyon. Coca fields are now as familiar a sight as banana plants are in other tropical areas. Hopes for success are rising until the pickup truck must halt for a landslide blockage, known in Bolivian Spanish as a trancado. The land of Los Yungas includes a lot of rocks. The passengers and the driver, Don Lucho, spend an hour digging with sticks and tossing bolders. Eventually the landslide is leveled into a passable hill. There's a sense of accomplishment and Don Lucho pushes on to a river junction. But its only to find the area has been blocked for three days. Several passengers who know the area embark on foot. They likely will make up part of the crowd of people the television news will show trapped outside of La Asunta the next day. La Asunta can not be reached. But in a bit of journalistic luck several La Asunta residents are riding in another pickup heading back to Chulamani. Enrique Marca, his wife and two young children have been walking along the road through knee high mud for more than a day -- caught up in a national rain emergency that engulfed the region in February. The radio reports that someone has died after falling down a hill and into the river. Hundreds of stranded travelers are hiking out of the rained sogged area. Driver Gustavo Ibanez is also from La Asunta and there's time for conversation as the overloaded pickup creeps toward Chulamani with enough people in the back to easily add to the day's casualty count if there's a mishap on any muddy curves overlooking the river canyon. Marca, in his twenties, said La Asunta is growing not because of drug traffickers but because the sons and daughters of cocaleros can not make a go of it in La Paz and are returning to grow coca. The land around La Asunta is also better than in other areas and provides better soil for growing other crops. There is a need for more coca and changes in the 1008 law which limits it to just 12,000 hectares, Marca asserted. Ibanez said reports of drug trafficking and guerrillas are government fabrications. He and Marca family are more concerned about the over all political situation. The greatest uncertainty hanging over Bolvia, Ibanez said, is whether the governemnt of Carlos Meza will be able to keep the promises he made after the October Gas Revolt. Upon taking office Meza promised to review taxes on petroleum companies, hold a referendum on whether to export natural gas and to call a constitutional convention. So far his plans have moved ahead ever so slowly. "President Meza gives a nice speech." Ibanez said. "But he doesn't have much real political experience." Marca would like to see Moverment Toward Socialism leader Evo Morales become president. "We need a president like Evo Morales," he said. For Marca, Morales is a hope for progress that he doesn't think Meza has the political power to deliver. Marca and his family are typical of young Aymara indigenous who see a need for reforms and progress. Back in La Paz, Rivera had described the Movement Toward Socialism as as both a new cocalero left movement and a movement for indigenous empowerment. "Its an indigenous force with an indigenous conscious. We are the majority not the minority. We have the right to govern over all, not seperately. It's the end of the era of Apartheid,” she said, using the South African analogy – "the end of a colonial elite that has been governing for centuries." The roads form a metaphor for the sense of impasse and stagnation that seems to have angered so many Bolivians. Ibanez bemoans the need for bribes and payoffs when he spots a much needed bulldozer idle at the entrance to Chulamani. The idle tractor will surely be a subject for the emergency meeting that's been called to discuss the road situation. La Asunta continued to pop up in the press as a subject for conflicting analysis and interptation weeks after the trip to Los Yungas. Reporters for the newspaper La Razon toured the town in April and declared it to be lacking any official police or military presence. They also reported that a check point control was being exerted by local residents to keep people out of the city. One of the better known cocaleros from La Asunta is Movement Toward Socialism Deputy Nunez. "La Asunta is not a no man's land or a red zone," he said in response to telephone questions about the town's situation. Nunez said that coca grower unions were policing shipments of coca to make sure that they were being sent to the official Villa Fatima coca market outside La Paz for legal sale. "The cocaleros are the ones most interested in seeing that drug tafficking does not come to the Yungas," he said. Satellite calculations showing an enormous increase in coca production were off, he said, probably because of necessary changes in coca plot locations and over estimate of the productivity of coca plots. "There are more coca plots because of low productivity," Nunez said. He stressed that most cocaleros in Los Yungas were planting only about one 1/4 hectare. In his view establishing a checkpoint at the entrance to La Asunta was necessary. He accused the military of planting a load of dinamite in the city and having constructed coca maceration sites with the aim of discrediting coca growers. Police and military entering the city must be accompanied by a member of coca growers association he said. But access remains open. Tensions over the coca around La Asunta subsided somewhat following the April cocalero movilization. Yungas Coca Leader and congressional Deputy Roberto Calle said concerns touched off by the U.S. satellite measuremnts and the international narcotics report were being resolved in favor of the cocaleros. President Meza agreed to issue a presidential decree which rules out any forced coca leaf erradication in the Yungas during his administration. The move by Meza has reaffirmed the Yungas as a legal coca growing zone which will not be interfered with at this time. But it remains to be whether actions to contain any increase in drug tafficking in the region will cause tensions to flare again. "If they let Bolivians resolve the problems in Los Yungas," Calle said. "A solution will be possible." ### |