Pubdate: Sun, 30 Dec 2012
Source: Houston Chronicle (TX)
Copyright: 2012 Houston Chronicle Publishing Company Division, Hearst Newspaper
Contact:  http://www.chron.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/198

NEW YORK TIMES

EXPERIMENT YIELDS FEWER COCA CROPS

TODOS SANTOS, Bolivia- There is nothing clandestine about Julian
Rojas' coca plot, which is tucked deep within acres of banana groves.

It has been mapped with satellite imagery, cataloged in a government
database, cross-referenced with his personal information, and checked
and rechecked by the local coca growers' union.

The same goes for the plots worked by Rojas' neighbors and thousands
of other farmers in this torrid region east of the Andes who are
licensed by the Bolivian government to grow coca, the plant used to
make cocaine.

President EvoMorales, who first came to prominence as a leader of coca
growers, kicked out the Drug Enforcement Administration in 2009. That
ouster, together with events such as the arrest last year of the
former head of the Bolivian anti-narcotics police on trafficking
charges, led Washington to conclude that Bolivia was not meeting its
international obligations to fight narcotics.

But despite the rift with the United States, Bolivia, the world's
third-largest cocaine producer, has advanced its own unorthodox
approach toward controlling the growing of coca, which veers markedly
from the wider war on drugs and includes high-tech monitoring of
thousands of legal coca patches intended to produce coca leaf for
traditional uses.

Worrisome signs

To the surprise of many, this experiment has led to a significant drop
in coca plantings inMorales' Bolivia, an accomplishment that has
largely occurred without themurders and other violence that have
become the bloody byproduct of American-led measures to control
trafficking in Colombia, Mexico and other parts of the region.

Yet there also are worrisome signs that such gains are being undercut
as traffickers use more efficientmethods to produce cocaine and
outmaneuver Bolivian law enforcement to keep drugs flowing out of the
country.

In one key sign of progress in Bolivia's approach toward coca, the
total acres planted with coca dropped 12 percent to 13 percent last
year, according to separate reports by the United Nations Office on
Drugs and Crime and theWhite House Office of National Drug Control
Policy.

At the same time, the Bolivian government stepped up efforts to rip
out unauthorized coca plantings and reported an increase in seizures
of cocaine and cocaine base.

"It's fascinating to look at a country that kicked out the United
States ambassador and the DEA, and the expectation on the part of the
United States is that drug war efforts would fall apart," said Kathryn
Ledebur, director of the Andean Information Network, a Bolivian
research group. Instead, she said, Bolivia is "showing results."

Registered growers

Still, there is skepticism.

"Our perspective is they've made real advances, and they're a long way
from where we'd like to see them," said Larry Memmott, charge
d'affaires of the U. S. Embassy in La Paz. "In terms of law
enforcement, a lot remains to be done."

Although Bolivia outlaws cocaine, it permits the growing of coca for
traditional uses. Bolivians chew coca leaf as a mild stimulant and use
it as amedicine, a tea and, particularly among the indigenous
population, in religious rituals.

The registration of thousands of growers, completed this year, is part
of an enforcement system that relies on growers to police one another.

If registered growers are found to have plantings above the maximum
allowed, soldiers are called in to remove the excess. If growers
violate the limit a second time, their entire crop is cut down and
they lose the right to grow coca.

Growers' unions can also be punished if there are multiple violations
among their members. 
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