Pubdate: Fri, 17 Jun 2005
Source: Wall Street Journal (US)
Page: A15
Copyright: 2005 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.wsj.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/487
Author: Mary Anastasia O'Grady

BLAME U.S. DRUG POLICY FOR THE BOLIVIAN UPRISING

Congress did not repeal the 18th amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1933 
because it had decided alcohol abuse was passe. It did so because it judged 
that the costs of Prohibition were higher than the benefits and that a 
regulated market would be a better way to manage a popular but sometimes 
harmful depressant drug.

The unintended consequence of Prohibition was the rise of violent organized 
crime and the spike in official corruption that accompanied it. After 13 
years of Prohibition, most Americans didn't like what Al Capone et al were 
doing in the streets and to the country's legal institutions.

That's something to think about in light of the death spiral of democracy 
in Latin America's Andean region, the center of gravity for coca growing 
and processing and the bull's eye of the U.S. war on drugs.

The poor Andean region, with its young and fragile democracies, is where a 
lot of "illegal substances," as currently defined, originate. Criminal 
networks trading in drugs burrow into the institutional pillars of these 
states and hollow them out. They also exploit down-and-out locals in dire 
need of an income by enlisting them to meet the demand for outlawed substances.

The drug lords are becoming ever more sophisticated in fighting their side 
of the "war." As they grow frighteningly more powerful in politics, they 
threaten to destroy freely elected governments.

Bolivia is the latest victim of this economic reality. In the past two 
years, two Bolivian presidents have been forced from office by a violent 
minority. Its leader is Evo Morales, who has organized the peasants that 
grow a form of coca specifically bred for making cocaine. Elected President 
Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada (widely known affectionately as "Goni") fled the 
country in October 2003 amid militant violence led by Mr. Morales. Earlier 
this month, the vice president who succeeded him also stepped down, again 
as a way to appease Mr. Morales and his extremist followers who had 
paralyzed the country.

The ostensible purpose of the "Indian" roadblocks, the dynamite and the 
marches is to protest private exploration, extraction and distribution of 
the country's huge natural gas reserves. The protestors say they want the 
gas to be nationalized as the mines were in 1952. But scratch the surface 
and one finds that the question of the natural gas reserves merely sparked 
the blaze. The tinder box of organized anger already existed, built of 
long-simmering resentment against the government's aggressive eradication 
of coca crops. It didn't take much imagination for Mr. Morales to blame the 
U.S. war on drugs, American "imperialism" and capitalism in general for the 
lack of peasant progress. His counter-attack has become a serious threat to 
Bolivian democracy.

Political militancy among the coca growers can be traced to the government 
of Hugo Banzer. The late President Banzer came to power in 1997 through an 
alliance with the left-wing MIR party, whose leadership had been implicated 
in the drug trade. To diminish U.S. concerns about that alliance, Banzer 
pledged to vigorously prosecute the war on drugs.

Economic need and U.S. demand for cocaine had sent thousands of unemployed 
Bolivian miners to the Chapare region years earlier to grow coca for export 
to Colombia where it could be processed. Mr. Morales comes from a family 
that reportedly did just that.

In 1999, hoping to prove his anti-drug bona fides to the U.S., Banzer 
launched an aggressive attack on the Chapare that sent cocaleros scurrying. 
Conservative estimates are that some 50,000 Bolivian families were farming 
coca in the Chapare at that time. Many ended up in the slums of Cochabamba.

The Bolivian economy was growing at a reasonable 4% to 5% a year at that 
time, thanks to market-driven reforms under Goni's first term (1993-1997) 
which had brought new investment to the country. But after the 
anti-cocalero campaign "you could feel that there was less money, less 
economic activity at the grass-roots," a former Bolivian official close to 
the situation told me. The reason, he says, was that the eradication had 
taken an economic toll. Some 5% to 8% of gross domestic product had been 
lost, and not evenly. It had hit the farmers and had had a multiplier 
effect on the rest of the lower-income tier of the economy.

In April 2000, the brewing hostility over the economic hardship found an 
outlet. Plans to award a water contract in Cochabamba to the U.S. Bechtel 
construction firm produced a surprising rebellion in the city, Bolivia's 
third largest. Traditional tranquility was disturbed by road and bridge 
blockades and other forms of protest.

It is true that the Bechtel project, while offering greater convenience and 
sanitation, threatened the livelihood of small water carriers. But the 
resistance went way beyond what the "aguateros" or even wealthy special 
interests, on their own, could have produced. The real force behind the 
rebellion was an uprising of the displaced cocaleros against the legitimate 
government. The government backed off the water project and a lesson was 
taught. The "War of Water," as it became known, signaled that street 
violence could get results.

Mr. Morales's genius has been to forge the coca growers into a broader 
political movement. His backers are a worrisome lot. Judging from his many 
photo ops with Fidel Castro and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, Mr. Morales now 
has friends who can supply tips on revolutionary politics and material aid 
as well. Colombia's FARC guerrillas, who profit from their own cocaine 
businesses, are rumored to also be interested in Bolivia.

Protesting peasants and paramilitary roadblocks require transportation, 
food and logistics. Someone is funding the effort. That could be hostile 
tyrants in the region but it could also be the cocaine industry in Bolivia. 
On Tuesday the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime reported that while coca 
cultivation in Colombia dropped 7% in the last year, it rose in Peru and 
Bolivia 14% and 17% respectively and was up 3% in the region overall. There 
is new money from the business because Bolivians are now involved not only 
in growing but in the more lucrative aspects of processing for export.

The destabilizing effects on the region's political system are at a level 
that Americans would not tolerate at home, as they demonstrated when they 
voted down Prohibition. It is reasonable to ask whether it is morally 
defensible or wise or even pragmatic to expect Latins to carry a similar 
burden when there are so many better ways to fight drug use on U.S. soil. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake