Pubdate: Wed, 25 Oct 2000 Source: Minneapolis Star-Tribune (MN) Copyright: 2000 Star Tribune Contact: 425 Portland Ave., Minneapolis MN 55488 Fax: 612-673-4359 Feedback: http://www.startribune.com/stonline/html/userguide/letform.html Website: http://www.startribune.com/ Forum: http://talk.startribune.com/cgi-bin/WebX.cgi Author: Clifford Krauss, New York Times BOLIVIA WINNING DRUG FIGHT, BUT AT A PRICE Leonardo Marca is down to his last acre of coca, and he has no intention of giving it up without a fight. When soldiers took machetes to his fields in Chipiriri, Bolivia, two years ago, he begged them to leave him something to support his family. Perhaps it was the big military tattoo on one arm, left over from his army days, that persuaded them to spare him a single patch covered by a thick jungle canopy. "I know they are coming back," said Marca, 43, a man of sheepish manner but fiery words. "The government says it will take our land and send us to jail if we persist in growing coca. We will have no alternative but to defend ourselves, like in Colombia." The coca farmers of the Chapare region of central Bolivia are down to what amounts to their last few acres after an aggressive campaign, financed mostly by the United States, to eradicate what was once the world's largest coca-growing area. In the last three years, thousands of families who once grew coca have fled the Chapare and thousands of others have grudgingly given up coca to cultivate legal crops. President Hugo Banzer is equally determined. "We are not going to retreat one centimeter," he said in a speech last week. "Our firm commitment is to leave Bolivia without drugs by 2002, totally outside the drug circuit." U.S. and Bolivian officials say Banzer is nearer than ever to making Bolivia the first country in the history of the modern drug wars to effectively eliminate itself as a producer. But that victory has been won at a steep cost in Bolivia. Banzer's government has been rattled by explosive protests and simmering small-scale insurrections, and the effect on the overall supply of cocaine reaching street corners in the United States, the main consumer of the drug, has been virtually nil. The resistance of a hard core of about 2,000 families has grown more fierce. Coca farmer union leaders have stepped up threats to farmers who have chosen to switch to other crops. Coca growers have set booby traps in the remaining coca fields and even ambushes. One anti-narcotics policeman was found buried with acid poured on his face, and four members of the security forces and the wife of an anti-narcotics policeman have been missing for two weeks and are presumed dead. About 25 coca growers have been arrested in recent weeks. Hoarding Seeds A blockade by the coca growers that ended last week did serious harm to U.S. and Bolivian efforts to encourage alternative agricultural development. Losses to alternative development projects came to $1.25 million, according to the U.S. Embassy in La Paz, the capital. Meanwhile, Chapare coca growers have been hoarding coca seeds, which can sprout into flowering bushes in just 2 1/2 years, with an eye toward returning to cultivation at the earliest opportunity. What the coca growers are waiting for, they say, is a change of government in 2002. One leading candidate, former President Jaime Paz Zamora, used to wear a pin on his lapel showing a coca leaf as a sign of resistance to Washington. Several major leaders of the coca growers are threatening armed conflict if they are not permitted to grow at least small amounts of coca. Most military experts do not believe the coca growers can put up serious resistance, and they point to a small rebellion in 1998 that was easily put down. But with other Aymara-speaking Indian peasant groups becoming increasingly militant over a variety of land issues, Bolivian officials express concerns about a string of pocket-size rebellions. Only three years ago, coca fields were as plentiful in the sweltering mountain valleys of the Chapare as cornfields in Kansas. Those days are over. But many of the coca farmers show no interest in giving up coca for good and cultivating alternatives such as black pepper, pineapple and heart of palm. The coca growers are primarily former miners who lost their jobs 25 years ago when the government privatized the mines. They have little farming experience. The other coca farmers are peasants who fled the highlands because of drought and soil erosion. There, they raised corn and potatoes - -- far easier crops to grow than the tropical fruits that have been promoted as alternatives. Lucrative Crop The transition from cultivating coca, which needs almost no tending, to learning how to deal with fertilizers and pesticides is daunting for many. Coca is also far more lucrative than fruits and vegetables, and waiting for traffickers to come by and transport their coca harvest is a lot easier than finding credits and ways to get legitimate crops to markets. The downside is that coca strips the soil of nutrients. The land of the Chapare, never that fertile to begin with, is so poor from years of coca growing that the farmers have a tough time competing with farmers from other areas. "After coca comes what?" asked Carlos Toranzo Roca, a Bolivian economist at the Latin American Institute of Social Investigations in La Paz. "To sustain zero coca, you need an economic plan. And we still haven't seen that plan." Nevertheless, of the 78,400 acres in the region under coca cultivation at the beginning of 1998, the aggressive eradication campaign has left only about 4,000 today, according to the U.S. Embassy. Even those are due to be eliminated soon. Despite the costs to the Chapare region and even Bolivia as a whole, the shift has had little or no effect on the overall supply of cocaine being brought to markets, as traffickers have nimbly shifted growing and production to Colombia in the last five years. - --- MAP posted-by: Eric Ernst