Indian leader Evo Morales said he would reject Washington's policy of eradicating much of Bolivia's coca crop if elected president and pledged he would work to legalize the leaf used to make cocaine. Morales, a front-runner in this Andean nation's Dec. 4 election, is an Aymara Indian who led protests that helped oust President Carlos Mesa in June and led to the calling of the December vote. He rose to power 10 years ago as the leader of the coca growers of the Chapare region, where U.S.-backed eradication efforts are focused. [continues 70 words]
Bolivia's Candidates Take On Issue As Deal For Limited Cultivation Is Set To Expire Oct. 1 From his quiet corner of Bolivia's Chapare region, Egberto Chipana recalled the day three years ago when government soldiers invaded the radio station he manages because it was championing the cause of farmers who grow coca, the plant whose leaves are the raw material for cocaine. On that Tuesday, with battles raging between growers and troops, the soldiers seized the station's transmitter, and its directors were threatened with prosecution for instigating unrest. Growers responded by blocking roads and staging protests, demanding that the station be reopened. [continues 698 words]
LA ASUNTA, Bolivia - (KRT) - The Shangri-La of coca growing lies in Bolivia's remote and mountainous Yungas region east of La Paz, where lush, bright green coca plants spill down mountainside terraces unchanged since the Incas ruled. Farmers and impenetrably rugged terrain keep outsiders and government coca eradicators from the terraces and tiny villages carpeted in the drying coca leaves from which cocaine is made. Elsewhere in Bolivia, nearly 300,000 acres of coca have been uprooted since the late 1980s. But the country's 15 percent share of world production is expected to soar due to new plantings and a protracted domestic political crisis that's weakened drug enforcement efforts. By next year, Bolivia is expected to pass Peru as the world's second-biggest coca grower after Colombia. [continues 980 words]
LA PAZ, Bolivia - After nearly a decade of forced eradication of coca, the plant from which cocaine is made, Bolivia wants instead to try to persuade poor farmers to abandon illicit crops in favor of coffee and cocoa. The strategy shift, outlined in a government report, is tacit acknowledgment that unpopular forced eradication has come with too high a social and political cost for Bolivia, which once was hailed as the Andean leader in the U.S.-backed drug war. The United States and Europe, which will be asked to pay for most of President Carlos Mesa's new $969 million, five-year antidrug plan, are grudgingly sympathetic. Successful past eradication efforts, in which troops uprooted coca plants, have taken an estimated $400 million out of Bolivia's small economy in recent years, causing scattered violence, disruptive roadblocks, and political and social unrest. [continues 497 words]
VILLA TUNARI, Bolivia - U.S.-trained Bolivian anti-drug troops are sustaining heavy casualties from bombs, booby traps and ambushes as they attempt to uproot coca, the plant from which cocaine is made. The battleground is the Chapare, a New Jersey-sized swath of steamy tropical lowlands in south central Bolivia where most illicit coca is grown. Since 1997, soldiers have uprooted 85 percent of the Chapare's coca, about 90,000 acres. But coca growers, called cocaleros, are fighting back now. Their success threatens U.S. anti-drug programs in the Andes, credited with cutting cocaine's availability on American streets. [continues 1083 words]
"They are going to have to learn to live with us," Morales boasted in a recent interview. He was just back from Cuba, having defied a State Department official's warning that it was "provocative" for Cuban leader Fidel Castro to be working opposition leaders such as Morales "to destabilize democratically elected governments." Morales almost captured Bolivia's presidency in 2002, propelled by ill-timed remarks by the U.S. ambassador, who warned days before the election that a vote for the Indian leader was a vote to cut off U.S. aid. The Movement to Socialism party, which Morales founded in 1995, is now the second largest bloc in Bolivia's Congress. It's known by its Spanish initials, MAS. [continues 963 words]
LA PAZ, Bolivia -- The U.S. hasn't fairly compensated Bolivia for the economic loss suffered as a result of its coca-eradication program, complained the country's new president, who issued an appeal for stepped-up aid from the international community. "Coca production has fallen, but Bolivia's income has fallen as well and we haven't received the equivalent compensation," said President Carlos Mesa, in an interview at his ornate office. Mr. Mesa assumed the presidency of this poor, landlocked country last month after violent protests, including demonstrations by angry coca growers, forced the resignation of President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada. [continues 743 words]
BOLIVIA is a perfect democracy: it fully respects two fundamental human rights: freedom of the press and political freedom. That the rights to work, housing. health, education, food and many others have been systematically eroded seemingly does not diminish its democratic perfection. Bolivia has around 8.5 ffillion people and is blessed with some of the most fertile subsoil on Earth. For 200 years a tiny, moneyed minority has hogged its wealth and dominated its politics while 60% of Bolivians live below the poverty line. There is discrimination against the Amerindian majority, child mortality is at frightening levels, unemployment is endemic, illiteracy the norm and 51% of the people do not have electricity. But none of that detracts from the important fact that Bolivia is thought of as a democracy. [continues 565 words]
Washington Wants New Bolivian President Carlos Mesa to Push For Continued Eradication of Coca Crops, but Traditional Growers Are Demanding More Legal Acreage LA PAZ, Bolivia - Coca grower Jacobo Aliago gives Bolivia's new president six months. Max. "The government gives us lots of problems, licenses, controls," he said as he packed green leaves into a 50-pound bag. "They treat us like narco-traffickers. What do we want from President [Carlos] Mesa? We want our coca." Aliago and thousands of other coca growers joined miners, students, teachers and peasants to topple Bolivia's former president this month. And now, emboldened by their clout, the coca growers are looking to roll back a government eradication program they claim was dictated by Washington. [continues 942 words]
US Dismayed As Socialist Becomes Nation's Power Broker He has been described as the new Simon Bolivar, the visionary soldier who tried to unite the South American continent. His own model, judging by the poster fixed to the wall of his office in the parliament building of the Bolivian capital of La Paz, is more recent: Che Guevara. Whatever happens in Bolivia in the near future, it will not be without the say-so of Evo Morales: champion of cocaine producers and indigenous peoples; socialist, anti-imperialist and America's declared enemy. [continues 815 words]
LA PAZ, Bolivia -- On a visit to the White House last year, President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada told President Bush that he would push ahead with a plan to eradicate coca but that he needed more money to ease the impact on farmers. Otherwise, the Bolivian president's advisers recalled him as saying, "I may be back here in a year, this time seeking political asylum." Mr. Bush was amused, Bolivian officials recounted, told his visitor that all heads of state had tough problems and wished him good luck. [continues 1126 words]
(New York Times) L A PAZ, Bolivia---On a visit to the White House last year, President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada told President Bush that he would push ahead with a plan to eradicate coca but that he needed more money to ease the impact on farmers. Otherwise, the Bolivian president's advisers recalled him as saying, "I may be back here in a year, this time seeking political asylum." Mr. Bush was amused, Bolivian officials recounted, told his visitor that all heads of state had tough problems and wished him good luck. [continues 281 words]
Without a truce, or at least a temporary reprieve from all sides, Carlos Mesa, who was sworn in on Friday night, may go down as the one of Bolivia's shortest-lived presidents. To achieve a lasting truce all sides will have to at least temporarily forgo demands for any type of action by the Bolivian government. The likelihood of achieving this kind of respite is slim despite the claims by the social groups that brought down the government of President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada that they will allow President Mesa to govern. Several reasons explain why the kind of truce that Bolivia is currently experiencing following the four-week-long bloody confrontations between strikers and the military will not last. [continues 686 words]
DOW JONES NEWSWIRES NEW YORK -- As La Paz burned last week, Carlos Mesa, Bolivia's new president, publicly broke ranks with his former boss, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, who had ordered troops to put a stop to violent demonstrations. After at least 65 deaths, the demonstrators won, Sanchez de Lozada went into exile and Mesa, who previously served as vice-president, took over. He now faces a baptism by fire. A political independent with no power base, Mesa will have to balance competing demands from powerful, polarized sectors, both domestic and foreign, amid a tremendous public financing crunch. [continues 894 words]
LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) - The leader of Bolivia's coca leaf farmers has thrown his support behind the nation's new president but warned a lack of quick progress in reducing overwhelming poverty in the nation could lead to a resumption of the protests that ousted the previous government. Coca farmer Evo Morales, an opposition congressman, says President Carlos Mesa's philosophy is very similar to the socialist thinking behind his own political party. But Mesa, a former journalist, has yet to state publicly his position on the issue of coca leaf, the base ingredient of cocaine. [continues 456 words]
WASHINGTON - It's becoming a habit for Latin American countries: Elect a president, then drive him from office. The latest example is Bolivia, where President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada was sent packing last Friday just 15 months after he was elected, a victim largely of an uprising led by the country's newly empowered indigenous population. Sanchez de Lozada joins presidents from Argentina, Ecuador and Paraguay who were forced from office in recent years. But the unrest extends well beyond these few countries. [continues 564 words]
Bolivians Oust Their Millionaire President, And The Continent Considers Taking Another Step To The Left They were the kind of ugly street scenes that few presidencies survive. All last week, thousands of poverty-stricken Bolivians protested in the capital, La Paz, and around the country, railing at President Gonzalo S=E1nchez de Lozada. S=E1nchez - or Goni, as he is called - sent the army to restore order. As Bolivian soldiers fired on demonstrators, impoverished Indian mine workers used crude slingshots to hurl lighted sticks of dynamite back at them. But they were no match for the army's tear gas and bullets, and the clashes left as many as 80 people dead. [continues 637 words]
Coca Culture COCHABAMBA, Bolivia There has been rioting in Bolivia for nearly four weeks now. News reports say that the riots have been over the construction of a pipeline to ship natural gas to the United States. That's true, but there's a deeper anger at work: anger toward the United States and its war against a traditional Bolivian crop, coca. You see, because of the American drug problem, we can no longer grow coca, which was part of our life and our culture long before the United States was a country. This is why many of the people protesting in La Paz and other cities are peasants whose families have cultivated coca for generations. [continues 470 words]
MIAMI - In November last year the president of Bolivia, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, visited Washington to ask for assistance. In a meeting with President Bush he pleaded for a pause in the eradication of Bolivia's coca crops, the plant used to process cocaine. He also asked for extra financial aid. His country was in dire straits, he warned. Without urgent help his government would collapse. "We are not discussing that," Bush told Sanchez de Lozada, according to someone who was in the room. [continues 1087 words]
Strikes, Blockades, Mass Marches, Dozens Killed as US-Backed Administration Teeters The administration of Bolivian President Gonzalo "Goni" Sanchez de Lozada is on the verge of collapse after a week of social and political chaos that has left dozens of people dead and brought the country to a virtual standstill. Sanchez de Lozada, elected with 22% of the popular vote last year, has seen his popularity plummet to single digits in recent weeks as widespread discontent over government policies grew into a storm. [continues 1773 words]
Inside Bolivia
