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REPORTS: DRUGS - BOLIVIA |
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Coca
Stages a Comeback
Alejandro
Campos
(IPS) - After five years during which
increasingly large areas of coca were
eradicated in Bolivia under United
States pressure and with support from
Washington, the crop is making a
comeback, despite the government's
continuing efforts.
Coca farmers in Bolivia, encouraged by
the strong showing of their leader Evo
Morales in the June 2002 presidential
elections, in which he came in second,
have been planting more and more coca.
The government prefers to talk in terms
of a ''tie'' in the fight against drugs,
because the destruction of coca fields
is basically keeping pace with the
planting of new ones by local peasant
farmers, said President Gonzalo Sánchez
de Lozada's spokesman Mauricio Antezana.
''That means we basically stand zero to
zero: zero eradication, zero new
plantations,'' said Antezana.
However, lawmaker Morales, the head of
the Movement to Socialism (MAS) and the
leading opposition politician, sees
things differently: ''When the
government is losing, it says there's a
tie, and when there's a tie, it says
it's winning.''
A compensated coca elimination programme
replaced an earlier policy based on
forced eradication, which was not only
ineffective, but was marked by fierce
clashes between state agents and coca
growers.
Farmers who agreed to destroy their
illicit crops under the compensation
programme received remuneration as well
as support to help them begin producing
alternative, legal crops.
But that policy came to an end two years
ago, and was replaced once again by
forced eradication, although the most
recent efforts to eliminate coca crops
have not provoked the bloody
confrontations seen in the past.
''The political variable has become a
decisive element in the coca question,''
IPS was told by independent expert
Fernando Mayorga, the director of the
Centre of Higher Studies at the
Universidad Mayor de San Simón, a
university in Cochabamba, the nearest
city to the central coca-producing
region of Chapare.
''If the pro-government parties and
opposition fail to reach a political
agreement on a broad number of issues,
including coca, there is little chance
that the forced eradication policy will
be able to continue without producing
conflicts and confrontations in Chapare,''
he said.
Under pressure from Washington, and
without reaching any agreement with MAS,
the government will be unable to meet
the coca eradication targets that have
been set, and will pay a high political
cost, which will also lead to a
deterioration of the country's
democratic institutions and
governability, Mayorga predicted.
After taking office in August 2002, Sánchez
de Lozada took the initiative of
reviewing the country's drastic
anti-drug law, and a temporary
suspension of eradication efforts would
have been the ideal starting-point for
talks, said Mayorga.
But the gradual weakening of the Sánchez
de Lozada government and Washington's
veto of any possibility of making coca
eradication policy more flexible
destroyed any chance of reaching an
accord, he added.
The government estimates that there are
currently 5,000 to 10,000 hectares of
''surplus'' coca in Chapare -- in other
words, coca that under Bolivian law must
be eradicated, by contrast to the
limited number of hectares of coca
legally grown for ritual, traditional
and medicinal purposes.
But Morales says there are more than
10,000 hectares of surplus or illegal
coca growing in the tropical region of
Chapare.
The latest official report on the area
planted in coca in Chapare was released
in June 2002, based on satellite images
that are taken once a year. At that
time, there were 5,400 hectares of coca
in the region.
The estimates based on the images taken
in recent weeks have not yet been
disclosed.
But things began to change in June 2002,
after Morales garnered a surprising 20.9
percent of the vote, just short of the
22.5 percent taken by Sánchez de Lozada.
That strengthened the position of the
country's coca farmers, and encouraged
them to step up their mobilisations in
defence of their livelihood, while the
planting of new coca fields in Chapare,
Morales' main support base, picked up
speed.
So far this year, only 3,495 hectares of
coca have been eliminated, according to
the statistics provided by Deputy
Minister of Social Defence Ernesto
Justiniano, and there are no estimates
of how many new hectares have been
planted.
The greatest concern over the defeat of
the eradication policy has been voiced
in the United States, the biggest market
for the cocaine and crack produced with
Bolivia's coca.
In the past two weeks, influential
publications like The Wall Street
Journal, The Washington Post and The
Miami Herald have set forth critical and
pessimistic views of Bolivia's fight
against coca.
The newspapers reported that coca
production is growing in Bolivia;
described Morales as a serious threat to
the stability of the Sánchez de Lozada
administration; and warned that the
Bolivian example of demonstrations and
mobilisations by coca farmers has spread
to neighbouring Peru.
Washington has promised 100 million
dollars in anti-drug aid this year, to
go towards crop eradication, the
crackdown on drug trafficking, and
support for the development of
alternative livelihoods for coca
growers.
Half of those funds are to be earmarked
for renewed support for alternative
development, a policy that has been
applied with uneven success in
coca-growing areas of the country since
the mid-1980s.
Alternative development programmes
benefit the nearly 50,000 peasant
families living in the part of Chapare
where coca has traditionally been grown.
But many farmers accept the subsidies,
which have so far been used to plant
some 125,000 hectares of alternative
crops, while they continue to plant coca
in other parts of the region.
According to the director of Alternative
Development, Ruddy Rivera, the
programmes, which are mainly financed by
the United States and several European
countries, have brought about a radical
transformation of Chapare, which now has
more schools and paved roads, and better
overall infrastructure than any other
rural region in the country.
But Morales and the coca producers
complain that the alternative
development schemes, which promote
agricultural production whose potential
returns come nowhere near those offered
by coca, are unprofitable and unfeasible
due to a lack of markets for the
alternative crops.
Many farmers point out that their
bananas, pineapples and citrus fruits
often rot, because they are unable to
sell them.
In other words, nearly 20 years of
efforts to eradicate coca have left a
much improved infrastructure base in
Chapare, while failing to achieve the
main objective.
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