In Bolivia, a $100 Million Question

Santiago Ureña, drying coca leaves, said he hoped Evo Morales, a former coca farmer, would raise cultivation limits.
Santiago Ureña, drying coca leaves, said he hoped Evo Morales, a former coca farmer, would raise cultivation limits. (By Monte Reel -- The Washington Post)
By Monte Reel
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, January 21, 2006

ETERAZAMA, Bolivia -- At a muddy camp in the vast tropical lowlands known as the Chapare, about 150 Bolivian soldiers and policemen responsible for destroying the area's illegal coca plants have done little in recent weeks but kill time. They chat outside crude tents built of tree limbs and sagging tarps, haul water from a nearby river and sweat through the fatigues the U.S. government bought for them.

"We're not doing anything these days," one soldier said, ignoring the mosquitoes alighting on his exposed forearms. "We're just waiting to hear what's going to happen next."

It's the $100 million question in Bolivia: What will become of the U.S.-financed program to eradicate coca, the plant used to make cocaine, now that the longtime head of the coca growers' union, Evo Morales, is about to become the country's president?

Morales, 46, who will be inaugurated Sunday, said during his campaign that he might withdraw Bolivia's support for the eradication program, a keystone of the U.S.-backed anti-drug and alternative crop development campaign here. He has hinted at decriminalizing the cultivation of coca, which is legally chewed as a stimulant and used in traditional medicines, and he has criticized regional U.S. anti-drug programs as false pretexts for establishing a military presence.


That ambiguity leaves the door open to continuing cooperation with U.S. counter-narcotics authorities, while feeding an unprecedented optimism among Morales supporters who would like to create an international industry of legalized coca. Those cocaleros envision a country where their crop, instead of being associated with crime, is a key ingredient in exports from soft drinks to shampoo.

Morales's announcement Thursday that he would appoint a coca farmer to head the ministry responsible for fighting drugs was a signal to coca farmers that pressure might shift away from growers toward those who process the leaf into cocaine.

"A lot of people completely changed their attitudes after the election, because finally we're in power -- it's our country now," said Apolonia Sanchez, 42, a coca farmer who tends her plants just a few miles from the eradication camp. "There's a feeling of happiness and optimism right now."

The Chapare is one of two coca-producing regions in Bolivia. Under an agreement with the government, farmers in the Yungas region are allowed to grow 29,600 acres of coca in areas where it has been a traditional crop for centuries. However, the U.S. government estimates another 31,100 acres were grown illegally in the Chapare and the Yungas in 2004. Altogether, a little over 60,000 acres of coca leaf were grown that year.

After clashes between farmers and eradication troops in the Chapare, the government made a truce in 2004, exempting 7,900 acres from eradication. That allotment is split among about 26,000 households, and it has eased much of the tension associated with eradication in the region.

The villages around Sanchez's farm and the eradication camp are considered Morales's home base, the place where he launched his career as a coca farmer after an impoverished youth. In an interview before the election, he said his political sensibility was formed when he witnessed an innocent coca farmer burned to death on the street by police.

Later he became the leader of the coca growers' federation, openly advocating legalization, rebutting charges of links between farmers and drug dealers and criticizing U.S. intervention.

CONTINUED     1        >

© 2006 The Washington Post Company