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Pubdate: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 Source: Boston Globe (MA) Page: A4 Copyright: 2003 Globe Newspaper Company Contact: http://www.boston.com/globe/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/52 Author: Reed Lindsay, Globe Correspondent Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/area/Bolivia BOLIVIAN COCA FARMERS DEFY US-BOLSTERED BAN ON CROPS HAPARE, Bolivia - Two years ago, the US State Department praised Bolivia as "the model for the region in coca eradication," saying that illicit production of the leaf used to make cocaine had fallen to negligible levels in this jungle basin. US-funded Bolivian antinarcotics forces wiped out 70 percent of the nation's illegal coca fields between 1995 and 2001. But the war on drugs in Bolivia has sparked a backlash: tens of thousands of defiant coca growers who refuse to cooperate. While they can do little to stop the pace of eradication, the coca farmers, called cocaleros, have doggedly replanted fields after antinarcotics troops destroyed them. As a result, coca production in the Chapare jungle of central Bolivia, one of the country's two principal coca-growing areas, has increased from 1,400 to 13,000 acres from 2000 to 2002, according to US government statistics. Meanwhile, the farmers, operating in tight-knit syndicates, have brought the government to its knees by blockading the nation's most important highway with logs, rocks, and arched, tire-popping nails. Authorities have had limited success dispersing the cocaleros, who defend the highway and their coca fields with sticks, slings, dynamite, booby traps, and pre-World War II-vintage Mauser rifles. In January, nine civilians, a police officer, and a soldier were killed in clashes between cocaleros and authorities. Fiercely anti-American, the farmers might represent the greatest threat to the fragile mandate of President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, who is clinging to power after a police strike in La Paz, the capital, last month turned violent and resulted in 33 deaths. "There is no other force in the country that has the coherence, the discipline, and the ability to mobilize like the cocaleros," said Ana Maria Romero de Campero, the nation's ombudswoman, who has mediated negotiations between the government and coca farmers. "Not giving the government some room to maneuver with the cocaleros is tantamount to causing its downfall." Caught between the farmers' ultimatums for partial coca legalization and US insistence on continued eradication, the government appears to be looking for a way out. In recent weeks, authorities have hinted that they may be willing to bend to demands to legalize and regulate the production of coca in Chapare. According to Ernesto Justiniano, vice minister of social defense, the government is considering a proposal that would allow cocaleros in Chapare to continue cultivating a limited amount of coca for six months. During that time, a study would be conducted to determine domestic demand for the coca leaf, a mild stimulant that is a staple among Bolivia's rural poor and indigenous. Bolivian law allows for the cultivation of 29,000 acres in the rugged region of Los Yungas, some 150 miles northeast of La Paz, while mandating a US-promoted policy of "zero coca" in Chapare. If the study showed that domestic demand exceeded the amount cultivated in Los Yungas, it could potentially open the door to legislation allowing for the legalization of coca in Chapare. For its part, the United States continues to oppose any pause in coca eradication. "It clearly sets a bad precedent," said a US Embassy official in La Paz, who asked not to be identified. "Once you permit any legalized coca, it would probably multiply and never stop." Looming behind any decision by the Bolivian government are considerations related to the nearly $200 million in annual counter-narcotics and development aid from the United States and the sway Washington holds in international-lending organizations. The coca farmers, most of whom chew leaves from their harvest daily, insist that much of the coca they grow is not for conversion into cocaine but for traditional use, bought by poor people who cannot afford the more expensive coca from Los Yungas. For the vast majority of families in Chapare, coca is their only nonsubsistence crop, and their earnings go toward food, clothing, and other necessities. A US-financed program called PDAR, for the Bolivia Regional Program for Alternative Development, that encourages coca farmers to grow other crops has had lackluster results. According to the program spokeswoman, Claudia Vargas, more than half of the some 12,000 families participating in the program also grow coca. "We haven't been successful in putting money in people's pockets," Vargas said. "Coca is much more profitable than other crops, and people here have no conception of its illegality." For more than a month, some 200 Bolivian soldiers have been living in Victor Franco's backyard. The soldiers, trained and financed by the United States to eradicate coca in this jungle basin, arrived in helicopters and set up camp a stone's throw from Franco's house, a dirt-floored structure made of weathered wooden planks and a rusted sheet metal roof. At first, they left Franco's coca plants alone, instead eradicating the crops of other families in the area. Then, within a few days of the harvest, the soldiers chopped down Franco's coca. It is the fourth time his crop has been eradicated, said Franco, 42, his cheek bulging with coca as he squatted recently in the shade of a mango tree. "How can they cut down all our plants?" his wife, Gomercinda Franco, sobbed in her native Quechua language, wiping away tears with her arm. "I have eight children. What are we going to live on? All our coca is gone." Experiences like these, shared by many families in Chapare, have served to strengthen the resolve of the cocaleros and to unify the syndicates. Meanwhile, repeated human-rights abuses by police and soldiers have further entrenched the farmers, who have responded to clampdowns by forming self-defense committees and at times with violence of their own. The farmers have won sympathy from the majority poor and indigenous population in this landlocked nation of 8.4 million. Last July that sympathy propelled cocalero leader Evo Morales to within 42,000 votes of the presidency. "The war on drugs is failing," said Morales, an Aymara Indian. "There is a legal market, legal consumption for coca here," Morales said. "It could be industrialized, and this is what the United States doesn't understand. They think they can spend billions of dollars to reach zero coca, but this isn't a solution." - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake