Voluntary coca control programme puts Bolivia against US

Coca Eradication Way Down Under Morales--
By FRANK BAJAK, Associated Press Writer Thu Mar 30)

LA PAZ, Bolivia - The smell filling the grimy whitewashed rooms of the 
market in the Villa Fatima district overlooking this Andean capital 
evokes the sweetness of cut grass ? only it's more pungent, nearly 
intoxicating.

Sacks of freshly harvested coca leaves are stacked all around, 
awaiting buyers. It's all legal, this trade in the leaves that produce 
cocaine.

There's lots more coca leaf around than there has been in years, no 
surprise given that new President Evo Morales was recently re-elected 
head of Bolivia's coca growers' federation.

Eradication of Bolivian coca leaf, an enterprise underwritten almost 
exclusively with U.S. tax dollars, is down more than 60 percent since 
Morales took office.

The destruction of coca fields is no longer forced, but depends on the 
cooperation of coca growers, said Felipe Caceres, the official in 
charge of the effort and himself a coca grower. Morales has declared 
zero tolerance for cocaine but says he won't discourage coca growing 
for traditional consumption.

To see one such traditional use, look no farther than the bulging 
cheek of Daniel Sonco, a 37-year-old coca trader.

He chews on a ball of coca leaves as he and a colleague repack a 
half-dozen 50-pound sacks of "hoja de coca" in airtight plastic for a 
trip down from Bolivia's high plains to the steamy eastern lowlands, 
where he says he sells them in one-pound lots to agricultural workers.

"If you don't chew down there, you get sleepy," says Sonco, his breath 
emitting a bitter, alkaloid odor. "The people in the east need to chew 
to work because it's so hot there."

There is a traditional mystique to coca-leaf chewing. It was once a 
restricted privilege of Inca royalty before becoming common practice 
among indigenous peoples in the Andes, where the stimulant doesn't 
just suppress the appetite but also helps ward off altitude sickness.

The first thing you're offered at La Paz hotels as you arrive in the 
world's highest capital ? 11,800 feet above sea level ? is a cup of 
"mate de coca," or coca tea. You'll get the same treatment in the 
former Inca capital of Cuzco, Peru.

Another means of coca consumption ? as an all-purpose food supplement 
? has in recent weeks been suggested by politicians in the region.

Bolivia's new foreign minister, David Choquehuanca, said the "sacred 
leaf" is so nutritious it should be on school menus, although 
scientific studies show humans don't easily absorb its nutrients.

A spokesman for Peruvian presidential candidate Ollanta Humala said 
ground coca leaf could be baked into schoolchildren's bread. In 
Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez also embraced the idea of coca bread.

"Coca isn't the same as cocaine," Chavez said. "Coca is tremendously 
nutritional."

Coca recipes notwithstanding, Bolivians have no illusions that a good 
portion of their coca crop is being converted into cocaine.

The question is, how much?

In October 2004, then-President Carlos Mesa ended a tense 
confrontation with coca growers in the Chapare region by agreeing to 
let them cultivate 7,900 acres of the crop while the government 
commissioned a study of Bolivia's legal coca market.

Once that amount was determined, the government would eradicate the
surplus.

The study has yet to be started and Bolivia's coca crop, meanwhile, 
grew to an estimated 65,500 acres last year, according to the U.S. 
State Department. That was an 8 percent increase over 2004 and more 
than twice the 29,652 acres that's permitted under Bolivian law. The 
crop has grown for four years in a row.

This worries U.S. officials, though they've been loathe to discuss the 
issue on the record. U.S. Ambassador David Greenlee has expressed 
concern, nevertheless, that excess coca leaf cultivation fuels the 
cocaine trade.

Of the $150 million in annual U.S. aid to Bolivia, about two-thirds is 
tied to narcotics. The money goes to everything from boots to health 
care and pay supplements for the 1,500 Bolivian conscripts in the 
eradication force.

Unlike in Colombia, where the chief method of coca crop destruction is 
aerial spraying with a herbicide, conscripts in Bolivia do it by hand. 
Last year, they ripped out an average of 1,235 acres of coca bushes 
every month.

In the nine weeks since Morales' Jan. 22 inauguration, however, 
they've destroyed just 1,017 acres ? though nearly one-third of that 
was eradicated in the past week, according to the Vice Ministry of 
Social Defense, which oversees the force.

It's anyone's guess how much more coca is being planted.

Bolivia is the world's third-largest coca producer behind Colombia and 
Peru, and what gets processed into cocaine is smuggled across the 
porous border into Brazil, destined mostly for Europe and the 
Brazilian market, now the world's second-largest after the United 
States.

Alarmed by growing drug-related violence and rising crack cocaine 
addiction, Brazil last week said it would build nine new surveillance 
posts along its 2,100-mile border with Bolivia to combat drug 
trafficking and illegal immigration.

Pressure from neighbors may be tempering the Morales government's 
attitude toward coca.

While Bolivia's "Coca Control" agency has been renamed "Coca 
Development," its chief returned somewhat chastened last week from a 
meeting in Vienna, Austria, of the International Narcotics Control 
Board.

Caceres announced Morales would be delaying his campaign to get coca 
leaf decriminalized and said growers needed to understand that some 
coca destruction would continue.

"We will eradicate, but in a voluntary manner," he said. "We will meet 
our international obligations in a voluntary form."