Coca Licensing Is a Weapon in Bolivia’s Drug War
Meridith Kohut for The New York Times
Augustine Calicho, 45, separating the seeds from dried coca leaves in Villa Tunari in the Chapare region of Bolivia. More Photos »
By WILLIAM NEUMAN
The New York Times, December 26, 2012
TODOS SANTOS, Bolivia — There is nothing clandestine about Julián
Rojas’s coca plot, which is tucked deep within acres of banana groves.
It has been mapped with satellite imagery, cataloged in a government
database, cross-referenced with his personal information and checked and
rechecked by the local coca growers’ union. The same goes for the plots
worked by Mr. Rojas’s neighbors and thousands of other farmers in this
torrid region east of the Andes who are licensed by the Bolivian
government to grow coca, the plant used to make cocaine.
Multimedia
Meridith Kohut for The New York Times
Meri Pintas, 30, center, harvesting coca leaves with
her children in the Yungas region of Bolivia. Thousands of legal coca
patches are intended to produce coca leaf for traditional uses.
More Photos »
Meridith Kohut for The New York Times
A counternarcotics agent explained the eradication
process to coca growers whose patch was two rows over the legal limit.
More Photos »
President Evo Morales, who first came to prominence as a leader of coca
growers, kicked out the Drug Enforcement Administration in 2009. That
ouster, together with events like the arrest last year of the former
head of the Bolivian anti-narcotics police on trafficking charges, led
Washington to conclude that Bolivia was not meeting its global
obligations to fight narcotics.
But despite the rift with the United States, Bolivia, the world’s
third-largest cocaine producer, has advanced its own unorthodox approach
toward controlling the growing of coca, which veers markedly from the
wider war on drugs and includes high-tech monitoring of thousands of
legal coca patches intended to produce coca leaf for traditional uses.
To the surprise of many, this experiment has now led to a significant
drop in coca plantings in Mr. Morales’s Bolivia, an accomplishment that
has largely occurred without the murders and other violence that have
become the bloody byproduct of American-led measures to control
trafficking in Colombia, Mexico and other parts of the region.
Yet there are also worrisome signs that such gains are being undercut as
traffickers use more efficient methods to produce cocaine and
outmaneuver Bolivian law enforcement to keep drugs flowing out of the
country.
In one key sign of progress in Bolivia’s approach toward coca, the total
acres planted with coca dropped 12 to 13 percent last year, according
to separate reports by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.
At the same time, the Bolivian government stepped up efforts to rip out
unauthorized coca plantings and reported an increase in seizures of
cocaine and cocaine base.
“It’s fascinating to look at a country that kicked out the United States
ambassador and the D.E.A., and the expectation on the part of the
United States is that drug war efforts would fall apart,” said Kathryn
Ledebur, director of the Andean Information Network, a Bolivian research group. Instead, she said, Bolivia’s approach is “showing results.”
Still, there is skepticism. “Our perspective is they’ve made real
advances, and they’re a long way from where we’d like to see them,” said
Larry Memmott, chargé d’affaires of the American Embassy in La Paz. “In
terms of law enforcement, a lot remains to be done.”
Although Bolivia outlaws cocaine, it permits the growing of coca for
traditional uses. Bolivians chew coca leaf as a mild stimulant and use
it as a medicine, as a tea and, particularly among the majority
indigenous population, in religious rituals.
On a recent afternoon, Mr. Rojas placed a few dried leaves into his
mouth and watched the sun set over his coca field, slightly less than
two-fifths of an acre, the maximum allowed per farmer here in this
region, known as the Chapare.
“This is a way to keep it under control,” he said, spitting a stream of
green juice. “Everyone should have the same amount.”
Mr. Rojas is a face of a changing region. He makes far more money
growing bananas for export on about 74 acres than he does growing coca.
But he has no intention of giving up his tiny coca plot. “What happens
if a disease attacks the bananas?” he asked. “Then we still have the
coca to save us.”
The Bolivian government has persuaded growers that by limiting the
amount of plantings, coca prices will remain high. And it has largely
focused eradication efforts, of the kind that once spurred strong
popular resistance, outside the areas controlled by growers’ unions,
like in national parks.
The registration of thousands of Chapare growers, completed this year,
is part of an enforcement system that relies on growers to police one
another. If registered growers are found to have plantings above the
maximum allowed, soldiers are called in to remove the excess. If growers
violate the limit a second time, their entire crop is cut down and they
lose the right to grow coca.
Growers’ unions can also be punished if there are multiple violations among their members.
“We have to be constantly vigilant,” said Nelson Sejas, a Chapare grower
who was part of a team that checked coca plots to make sure they did
not exceed the limit.
But there is still plenty of cheating. Officials say they are going over
the registry of about 43,000 Chapare growers to find those who may have
multiple plots or who may violate other rules.
“The results speak for themselves,” said Carlos Romero, the minister of
government. “We have demonstrated that you can objectively do
eradication work without violating human rights, without polemicizing
the topic and with clear results.”
He said that the government was on pace to eradicate more acres of coca
this year than it did last year, without the violence of years past. A
government report said 60 people were killed and more than 700 were
wounded in the Chapare from 1998 to 2002 in violence related to
eradication.
But even as Bolivia shows progress, grave concerns remain.
The White House drug office estimated that despite the decrease in total
coca acreage last year, the amount of cocaine that could potentially be
produced from the coca grown in Bolivia jumped by more than a quarter.
That is because a large amount of recent plantings began to mature and
reach higher yields; new plantings with higher yields replaced older,
less productive fields; and traffickers switched to more efficient
processing methods.
Yet the glaring paradox of Bolivia’s monitoring program is that vast
amounts of the legally grown coca ultimately wind up in the hands of
drug traffickers and are converted into cocaine and other drugs. Most of
those drugs go to Brazil, considered the world’s second-largest cocaine
market. Virtually no Bolivian cocaine ends up in the United States.
César Guedes, the representative in Bolivia of the United Nations drugs
office, said that roughly half of the country’s coca acreage produces
coca that goes to the drug trade. By some estimates, more than 90
percent of the coca in Chapare, one of two main producing regions, goes
to drugs.
Two Chapare farmers explained that they generally sell one 50-pound bag
of coca leaf from each harvest to the government-regulated market. The
rest, often 200 pounds or more, is sold to buyers who work with
traffickers and pay a premium over the government-authorized price. One
of the growers said he recently delivered coca leaf directly to a lab
where it would be turned into drugs.
The central question is how much coca is needed to supply traditional
needs. Current government policy permits about 50,000 acres of legal
coca plantings, although the actual area in cultivation is much higher.
The United Nations estimated there were 67,000 acres of coca last year.
Whatever the exact figure, most analysts agree that far more is produced
than is needed to supply the traditional market.
The European Union financed a study several years ago to estimate how
much coca was needed for traditional uses, but the Bolivian government
has refused to release it, saying that more research is needed.
The push to reduce coca acreage comes as the Morales government is
lobbying other countries to amend a United Nations convention on
narcotics to recognize the legality of traditional uses of coca leaf in
Bolivia. A decision is expected in January.
On a recent morning just after dawn, a squad of uniformed soldiers used
machetes to cut down a plot of coca plants near the town of Ivirgarzama.
They had come to chop down an old coca patch that had passed its prime
and measure a replacement plot planted by the farmer. The soldiers
determined that the new plot was slightly over the limit and removed
about two rows of plants before going on their way.
“Before, there was more tension, more conflict, more people injured,”
Lt. Col. Willy Pozo said. “This is no longer a war.”
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