President Evo Morales Accuses Ambassador Philip Goldberg of Fostering Divisions in the Fractured Andean Nation.

BUENOS AIRES -- Bolivian President Evo Morales ordered the expulsion Wednesday of the U.S. ambassador to his country, accusing him of fostering divisions in the deeply fractured Andean nation.

The move comes as tensions rise and violence increases in states opposed to the leftist policies of Morales. The president has regularly accused Washington and its ambassador of plotting against him.

"The one who conspires against democracy and above all seeks the division of Bolivia is the ambassador of the United States," Morales said during a speech at the presidential palace.

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CHIMORE, Bolivia -- The refrain here in the Chapare jungle about Americans is short but powerful: "Long Live Coca, Death to the Yanquis!"

So when President Evo Morales recently came to the area, raising his fist and shouting those words before his supporters, the irony was not lost on an elite wing of the Bolivian military that survives on American support.

"We depend on the Americans for everything: our bonuses, our training, our vehicles, even our boots," Lt. Col. Jose German Cuevas, the commander of a Bolivian special forces unit that hunts down cocaine traffickers, said at a military base here in central Bolivia.

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There hasn't yet been a tin or copper war, but there once was a nitrate war, and in the past decade Bolivia has seen both a water war and a gas war-the latest struggles over the nation's only real riches, the lucrative resources granted by God and geology.

In this country nearly twice the size of France, where Amazonian jungles butt against 12,000-foot plateaus, the winners have always come from elsewhere.

The Inca royalty of Cuzco (in modern-day Peru) took power from the local Aymara; the Spanish took gold and silver; the British took tin; recently, multinationals Bechtel and Suez tried to privatize the water supplies of Cochabamba and El Alto, while other foreign companies fought for control of Bolivia's prodigious supply of natural gas; cartels continue to take the coca and its profits.

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NS marks Indigenous Resistance Day with an article from Bolivian Campaigner Amancay Colque, who explains why the Evo Morales government is in confrontation with the 'establishment'

October 12th traditionally was celebrated as the anniversary of Columbus' "discovery" of the Americas. For the indigenous peoples of the continent, this "discovery" meant hundreds of years of genocide and misery. Now the day has been reclaimed as the "Day of Indigenous Resistance" in Venezuela and Bolivia, two countries with presidents of indigenous descent who are refusing to toe Washington's line.

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Government Says Most of the Crop Being Used Legally

Farmers Hope They Have a Friend in President, Who Was Once a Grower

SHINAHOTA, Bolivia -- Vitalia Merida grows as much coca as Bolivian law allows -- four-tenths of an acre, or a "cato," as the measure is known here.

And that's the problem. Because she obeys the legal limit, she's stuck in dire poverty. The average yield from her field, hidden far back from a direct road, brings in $70 to $100 a month.

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Bolivia Says the Crop Has Cultural Roots. The U.S. Sees a Drug Boom.

CARANAVI, BOLIVIA -- In the past, Bolivian cocaine labs tended to be primitive, makeshift affairs where peasants known as pisa-cocas stomped on coca leaves to produce coca paste.

But recent busts of relatively sophisticated cocaine-refining laboratories in the country's jungles have set off alarms about rising drug production here. Many of the labs have links to Colombian narcotics traffickers, officials say.

"We're seeing more Colombian and other international traffickers turning up in Bolivia, and that's troubling," said Brad Hittle, an official with the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. "These are people with a lot of experience, money, connections and know-how."

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LA PAZ, Bolivia --Always Coca-Cola? Not if Bolivia's coca growers have their way. The farmers want the word "Coca" dropped by the U.S. soft drink company, arguing that the potent shrub belongs to the cultural heritage of this Andean nation, where the coca leaf infuses everyday life and is sacred to many.

A commission of coca industry representatives advising an assembly rewriting Bolivia's constitution passed a resolution Wednesday calling on the Atlanta, Ga.-based company to take "Coca" out of its name and asking the United Nations to decriminalize the leaf.

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SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia -- President Bush's new budget calls for deep cuts in the leading U.S. program to fight drug trafficking in the Andean region, amid growing clashes over drug policy between Washington and leftist governments in Venezuela and Bolivia.

The cuts to the Andean Counterdrug Initiative (ACI) affect every country in the region except Colombia. They have been criticized by governments in the area, as well as by U.S. counternarcotics officials and some lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

"It would be the largest across-the-board reduction in aid since the war on drugs began," said one U.S. diplomatic official, who asked not to be named. The ACI was designed to help local efforts to reduce the flow of illegal drugs, which surged in the late 1980s when cocaine production skyrocketed and powerful drug cartels emerged.

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The Aid Will Boost Efforts To Develop Legal Commercial Products From The Crop Used To Make Cocaine

CARACAS, VENEZUELA -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has found a novel way to dispense foreign aid: by promising to underwrite coca production in Bolivia.

Officials here confirmed Wednesday that Venezuela would buy whatever legal products Bolivia could make from coca leaf, as part of that central Andean nation's attempt to wean farmers from the cocaine industry.

Chavez's promise could finance the production of about 4,000 tons of coca in Bolivia, Venezuelan officials say.

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Friction Between Morales and Washington Threatens Program That Aids Farmers

TOMOYO, Bolivia -- When Jacinto Garnica talks about farm management, Spanish creeps into his native Quechua language. The Bolivian Indian is dealing with new concepts for which his ancient Inca vocabulary has no words: "credit," "financing," "marketing."

He and his neighbors don't just talk the talk. Their community has embraced an innovative U.S.-backed aid program that tutors the farmers in free-market capitalism -- and is greatly improving their living standards. But politics could keep the experiment from spreading to other desperately poor regions of Bolivia: Socialist President Evo Morales is determined to centralize control of the country's economic activity, making Washington reluctant to keep sending aid to a nation that is embracing policies at odds with U.S. policy.

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SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia -- Indigenous coca farmers who helped put President Evo Morales in power are violently resisting even the token eradication efforts demanded by the United States to avoid Bolivia's decertification as a country cooperating against drug trafficking.

Dissatisfied with new laws permitting peasant farmers to grow up to half an acre of coca for traditional use, the farmers are backing demands for increased acreage with road blocks and gunfights that so far have killed two growers and wounded two police officers.

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It took Bolivia 470 years after the Spanish conquest for an indigenous person to return to govern its territory.

In that period of nearly five centuries, what has happened in this country and in this continent?

What is happening now? The answer to the latter question is that something has awoken, something that resembles the light of a new dawn.

For many people in the continents of the Americas the election of Evo Morales as president of Bolivia represents further testimony that the geopolitical development of Latin America is heading in a new direction.

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SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia -- Counternarcotics officials say the number of cocaine laboratories in Bolivia has almost doubled in the seven months since Evo Morales, a former coca grower and organizer of coca-farming syndicates, was elected president. Mr. Morales, whose country faces sharp economic penalties if the United States does not recertify it as a fully cooperating partner in the war on drugs next year, insists Bolivia is committed to battling the international traffic in narcotics. Critics say new programs allowing farmers to cultivate small plots of coca are contributing to the rise in cocaine production. Coca production is a traditional way of life for Bolivia's Indian peasantry, who chew the raw leaves as a mild stimulant. Legal analysts say the government has violated international agreements with decrees that allow the free sale of coca and the auction of confiscated leaf shipments. "Evo has democratized narco-traffic," said Omar Barrientos, a Bolivian lawyer and consultant to the U.S. State Department on drug policy. "He has taken it from the big mafias and placed it with small producers, which makes it more difficult to control." The CIA's counternarcotics center estimates that Bolivian coca plantations have grown 8 percent in the past year. More disturbing are reports from Bolivia's U.S.-sponsored counternarcotics force that cocaine laboratory activity has almost doubled since Mr. Morales took office. The Special Force to Fight Crime and Narcotraffic (FELCN) said more than 2,000 cocaine laboratories making paste or refined powder were uncovered during the first half of this year. A total of 2,575 laboratories were discovered during all of last year. Bolivian authorities downplay the figures.

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President Focuses on Eradicating Means of Making Drug, and Not on Coca Farming

Puerto Villarroel, Bolivia -- As Bolivian soldiers torch a pit filled with chemicals and coca leaves used to make cocaine, a fireball shoots toward a jungle canopy. The anti-narcotic task force destroys seven such holes daily in a region known as the Chapare.

Since Bolivia's new president, Evo Morales, assumed power in January, he has continued his nation's war on drugs in the Chapare near Bolivia's third-largest city, Cochabamba. But he also has antagonized the United States by shifting the focus away from the subsistence farmers who grow coca leaf -- the raw ingredient of cocaine -- to destroying pits and laboratories and confiscating chemicals needed to manufacture cocaine. Coca has been the lifeline for many Chapare farmers, many of whom had been tin miners until the collapse of metal prices in the 1980s.

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Under New President, Coca Eradication In Bolivia Is Cut Back

LA PAZ, Bolivia - The smell filling the grimy whitewashed rooms of the market in the Villa Fatima district overlooking this Andean capital evokes the sweetness of cut grass, only it's more pungent, nearly intoxicating.

Sacks of freshly harvested coca leaves are stacked all around, awaiting buyers. It's all legal, this trade in the leaves that produce cocaine.

There's lots more coca leaf around than there has been in years, no surprise given that new President Evo Morales was recently re-elected head of Bolivia's coca growers' federation.

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The smell permeating the grimy whitewashed rooms of the market in the Villa Fatima district overlooking this Andean capital evokes the sweetness of cut grass -- only it's more pungent, nearly intoxicating.

Sacks of freshly harvested coca leaves are stacked all around, awaiting buyers. It's all legal -- this trade in the leaves that produce cocaine.

There's lots more coca leaf around than there has been in years, no surprise given that fledgling President Evo Morales was recently re-elected head of Bolivia's coca growers' federation.

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Is Coca the New Hemp?

The wine, a bit on the sweet side, is supposedly a remedy against Parkinson's disease and impotence and, according to the label, it is especially suitable for "athletes and singers." In small doses, that is, because the wine is pressed from coca leaves, enhancing the effect of the alcohol. If you get drunk, you don't have to worry about how you're going to feel the next day because "coca wine doesn't cause a hangover," says Melby Paz.

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Bolivia is leading a Latin American campaign to legalise coca plants despite them being vilified by the United States as the source of the world's cocaine industry.

Under the slogan "coca is not cocaine", politicians, consumers and growers across the Andes are promoting the leaf's qualities and calling for coca-based tea, yoghurt, bread, toothpaste, shampoo and soap to be mass produced and exported.

Its fans claim it helps digestion, provides more vital vitamins, nutrients and fibre than most vegetables and can even combat obesity.

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Bolivia stepped up a long-running battle with Washington this week by taking its campaign to legalise coca plants to the United Nations in a bid to persuade the international community that the leaf should no longer be banned because of its links to the illegal drugs trade.

The tiny Andean nation, headed by newly elected populist President Evo Morales, is determined to prove that coca can be the source of legitimate products for export and not just the raw material for cocaine.

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VALPARAISO, Chile - Condoleezza Rice knew coca would top the agenda in her meeting with Bolivia's new president, but she likely wasn't expecting to get the real thing.

At the end of their 25-minute meeting, President Evo Morales presented the US secretary of state with an Andean guitar that bore a coca-leaf inlay.

"The gift was well received. We will just have to check with our customs to see what rules apply. We certainly hope we can bring it back (to Washington)," said a senior State Department official who attended the meeting.

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