Republican News · Thursday 6 February 2002

Bolivian coca farmers fight back

At the beginning of February, the US administration announced the names of the 23 countries that have been afforded US certification for their fight against drugs trafficking. Afghanistan, Bahamas, Bolivia, Brazil, Birmania, China, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Haiti, India, Jamaica, Laos, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Thailand, Venezuela and Vietnam will now become beneficiaries of US aid (military and/or otherwise).

However, the question remains as to how successful this policy has been in eradicating illegal crops or fighting against drug trafficking.

In the case of Afghanistan, there was plenty of news referring to the fight against the Taliban and Al-Qaida, although not a word about the eradication of the poppy fields that supply Europe's heroin addicts.

It was only a few weeks ago that Bertie Ahern travelled to Mexico and came back pointing out that cocaine traffickers were using that north-American country to send their cargo to Ireland. And the infamous US-funded Plan Colombia - supposedly aimed at the eradication of coca crops through fumigation - has actually achieved an increase in the production of coca leaves. The UN and US believe that the eradication of illegal crops is the solution to drug trafficking. In reality, geographical eradication means that traffickers take their business to some other country where the crop is still being produced.

Now that the fight against drugs is targeting the producers of coca - who only receive a meagre 1% of the total income generated by the trafficking of cocaine - the coca farmers and indigenous peoples see one of their sources of income and their traditions coming under threat.

Throughout South America, the opposition to the eradication of the coca plant - from which cocaine is extracted - has grown steadily. A clear example of that resistance is evident in Bolivia.

With the financial aid of the US Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bolivian government has choked coca plantations with toxic herbicides, which poison the land for growing other crops. The eradication programme has left thousands of families with no livelihood.

But for the indigenous peoples of Colombia, Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador, coca leaves are not the origin of a drug of choice. For thousands of years, they have used coca in a religious context, and coca leaves have proved to be of great use in traditional medicine.

Farmers in Bolivia cultivate coca to use it in the traditional ways. Obviously, coca is also cultivated as a cash crop by Latin American farmers, even more so since the plunge in the prices of other cash crops like coffee or cacao.

d coca farmers have been making the news in Bolivia for the last few months. During last year's presidential elections, itheir concerns were evidenced through the increased support for Evo Morales, the chosen candidate of coca producers and indigenous people. His popularity went through the roof after the US issued a warning against his election as president. In the end, he made it to the second round of the election, and though he did not become president - Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada was elected - he is now the central figure for opposition forces in Bolivia.

This year, a fresh revolt by coca farmers and pensioners in January has forced the government to sit down and negotiate its economic policies. Around 25 people died during the road blockades and demonstrations, and more that 700 protesters were arrested by the army and police. Fifteen demands are on the table and representatives of the Bolivian government are currently negotiating with the leaders of the strike - which involves coca producers' organisations, the Water Co-ordinating Committee, indigenous and farmers' groups, miners, factory workers, landless farmers, senior citizens, and many others.

Their wide-ranging demands for social change are are centred around the nationalisation of public resources, including those public businesses that have been privatised.

They also want the rejection of the US-proposed Free Trade Agreement for the Americas. Their agenda also encompasses opposition to the sale of gas reserves to corporations; agrarian reform; an end to labour instability; pension security; authorisation to allow every farming family to cultivate half a hectare of coca; increased education and health budgets; legislation to protect the rights of workers and former political prisoners; the creation of a health fund; and an end to the US military presence in the country.

The government's plan is to divide and conquer by negotiating with each social sector individually. Bolivia's administration seems willing to reach agreement with everyone but the coca producers. In fact, in mid-January, the government agreed to all the demands of the country's pensioners. It also offered 1,000 tractors to the Bolivian Congress of Farming Workers' Unions, and even proposed to increase the $60 monthly minimum wage to $160.

The Bolivian government, however, refuses to even negotiate a level of coca production that will only serve the local market, providing enough leaves to satisfy the traditional use of the coca leave. Surprisingly, the UN is supporting the government's refusalto negotiate the terms of coca eradication. Antonio Maria Costa, the director of the UN Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention, recommended that the Bolivian administration continue with the eradication plan, ignoring the Bolivian tradition of "masca de coca" - traditional coca chewing.

Costa met the Bolivian PM on the 25 January, the day before the negotiations between protesters and the government started. He opposes the idea of a pause to coca eradication, as do US Secretary of State Paul Simons and the US Ambassador to Bolivia, David Greenlee, who stated that the continuity of the eradication plan will translate into development for Bolivia (ie. US money).

Greenlee became a public figure in Bolivia in 1988, when he took over the US embassy after a few years working in it with responsibility for political affairs - in fact, head of the CIA in the country. He is a specialist in undercover operations. His role was to implement the direct action policies proposed by the Reagan administration, which involved military intervention against coca production and repression and prosecution of coca producers.

On 8 July 1988 and against this background, the Bolivian parliament passed an act of legiclation on Controlled Substances, which penalises equally the cultivation of coca - without considering that it may be directed to a traditional use - and the trafficking of cocaine.

However, the repression in turn brought the reaction. It was at the end of the 1980s and as consequence of the increasing pressure by US' Drugs Enforcement Agency for eradication that the coca farmers got together and organised.

In 1994 and 1995, indigenous peoples, small farmers and coca producers organised two national marches to Bolivia's capital, La Paz, to defend the production of coca leaves and highlight the difficult living conditions of the coca producers.

What is different about these latest protests is that the producers now have the backing of many other organisations in the country and while the negotiations are underway, the coca producers keep vigil by the main roads in the Cochabamba region. They are threatening to resume their road blockades if the government does not agree to postpone its eradication scheme pending market research into coca consumption in Bolivia.

The coca leaf is a powerful symbol of Andean identity: their religion, culture, health and work. The effects of taking away coca from the indigenous Bolivians and pharmaceutically isolating cocaine has turned these same indigenous populations into addicts