Pubdate: Sat, 11 Mar 2006
Source: Miami Herald (FL)
Copyright: 2006 The Miami Herald
Contact:  http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/262
Author: Tyler Bridges
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Evo+Morales
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Bolivia
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/coca
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)

NO.1 CASH CROP PUTS PRESIDENT ON HOT SEAT

Bolivian President Evo Morales Faces a Difficult Balancing Act As He
Tries to Satisfy the Demands of Coca Growers and U.S.-Led Countries
That Want to Reduce Production

CHIPIRIRI, Bolivia - Desiderio Merida stopped drying a pile of green
coca leaves as he expressed concern about Bolivia's new President Evo
Morales.

"I can't explain why Evo has asked them to remain," said Merida,
referring to the recent decisions by Morales, a former coca growers'
leader, to reject calls for the expulsion of U.S. antidrug agents from
this region and to oppose a change that would increase legal
production of the leaf.

The answer, experts say, is that Morales, inaugurated as president
only six weeks ago, is trying to pursue a delicate balancing act when
it comes to coca farming in Bolivia, the world's third-biggest
producer of cocaine after Colombia and Peru.

"Evo is caught between a rock and a hard place. He wants to listen to
the coca growers, but he doesn't want to damage relations with the
international community," which wants a cut in coca farming, said
Egberto Chipana, manager of the coca growers' radio station here in
the Chapare, one of Bolivia's two main coca-farming zones.

Morales is calling on growers to voluntarily limit their plantings and
to agree to begin eradicating coca fields in the Chapare national
parks while he is promising to step up policing of cocaine
traffickers.

U.S. officials note privately, however, that the Morales government
has yet to launch its promised eradication program in parks or crack
down on cocaine traffickers.

"We might have problems" keeping a lid on overall production, Vice
President Alvaro Garcia acknowledged in an interview with The Miami
Herald. But he predicted that the strong organization of the coca
unions in the Chapare would allow the groups to police themselves.

In the meantime, Morales has begun a campaign to lift a 1961 U.N. ban
on the export of coca leaves in what analysts see as an effort to
create new legal markets for coca and provide additional income to its
farmers, most of them poor indigenous families.

Study Pending

Lifting the U.N. ban also would change the debate over coca in advance
of a European Union study, requested by Morales and expected by the
end of this year, to determine the size of Bolivia's legal coca market
and actual production. The study is widely expected to show that
Bolivia grows about twice as much coca as it needs for legal
traditional uses like tea and chewing -- and prove that the rest is
going into cocaine production.

The report poses political risks for Morales since it would put him
squarely in the sights of demands by the United States and especially
Brazil and the European Union -- where nearly all of Bolivia's cocaine
ends up -- that his government reduce the excess production and
override the farmers' opposition.

Nearly all the cocaine that ends up on U.S. streets is refined in
Colombia and Peru. U.S. officials fear, however, that any rise in
Bolivian coca production could produce more cocaine for the United
States.

Morales took office on Jan. 22 calling for two seemingly
irreconcilable goals: an end to the crackdown against coca growers but
also a stepped-up effort against cocaine traffickers -- "no to no
coca, and no to cocaine," as he has put it.

Central to Morales' policy is his October 2004 agreement with then-
President Carlos Mesa that legalized coca growing in the Chapare
region in central Bolivia but limited it to 7,907 acres. That
agreement is supposed to limit each of the 40,000 members of the coca
growing unions to one cato, a plot of land roughly 43 yards by 43 yards.

That deal ended years of conflict in the Chapare that have left 72
people dead since 1998, according to Godofredo Reinicke, who stepped
down recently as the public defender in the Chapare.

But the agreement also loosened controls on coca farming. The U.N.
Office on Drugs and Crime reported that coca fields covered 25,000
acres in the Chapare in 2004 -- three times the limit under the
Morales- Mesa agreement.

17 Percent Jump

In all, coca was grown on nearly 70,000 acres in Bolivia in 2004,
mostly in the Chapare and Yungas regions, up 17 percent from 2003. In
all, Bolivians currently can legally farm up to a total of about
30,000 acres of coca.

International observers doubt that coca growers will fully obey
Morales' plea that they voluntarily limit their current level of
plantings, which are still more than double the amount allowed today.

But even if they do, the European Union study is expected to show that
Bolivia's current legal coca market requires only about 30,000 acres.

This would put Morales on the spot.

Coca growers, who typically earn $70 to $110 per month have begun
sending coca to friends and family in other communities as a way of
expanding consumption in advance of the EU's upcoming estimates on the
legal market, said Felipe Cruz, a coca union leader in Shinaota, a
town in the heart of the Chapare.

"There's definitely pressure in the Chapare to expand production,"
said Jim Shultz, a U.S. citizen who heads the Democracy Center, a
nonprofit group that studies the impact of globalization on Bolivia
and who supports the Morales government.

'It would appear that Morales' current policy is to get his
constituency [of coca growers] not to increase production, so he won't
have to do forced eradication, while he develops alternative markets"
abroad, he added.

But Shultz questioned whether Morales can keep the lid on coca
production, and others note that one recent effort to eradicate coca
bushes in a Chapare national park led to a stand-off with farmers.

Felipe Caceres, who founded one of the coca growers' unions in the
Chapare 24 years ago and is now the country's anti-drug czar,
expressed optimism that Morales would satisfy all.

"Now our job is to carry out state policies against drug trafficking
and for alternative development [of coca]," Caceres said.

But in a reflection of the challenge that Morales faces, coca growers
favored another coca official for the job who they believed would more
faithfully represent their interests: Desiderio Merida, a coca grower
since 1995.

Merida said he doesn't get too caught up in the politics of coca but
can't make a living planting other crops like oranges.

"This is how we survive," he said.
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake