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Turbulent bolivia is producing more cocaine UN reports { June 15 2005 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/15/international/americas/15coca.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/15/international/americas/15coca.html
June 15, 2005
Turbulent Bolivia Is Producing More Cocaine, the U.N. Reports
By JUAN FORERO
LA PAZ, Bolivia, June 14 - Cocaine production has shot up in this politically unstable country, the United Nations said Tuesday, warning that international assistance is immediately needed to wean poor farmers from growing drug crops.
Eradication efforts bankrolled by the United States had until recently wiped out much of the coca in Bolivia and Peru, the two countries that in the 1990's supplied much of the raw material used to produce the world's cocaine. But in Bolivia, the eradication has come with a high social cost, with displaced coca farmers joining protests that led two presidents to quit in the past 20 months, including Carlos Mesa last week.
In its annual survey of coca production, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime says the acreage devoted to coca was up 17 percent from 2003 to 2004, while cocaine output rose 35 percent to 107 tons. The numbers raise questions about the effectiveness of antidrug programs, and they suggest a link between the continuing political turbulence and increased coca production.
"We are very concerned about the situation in Bolivia," Antonio María Costa, director of the antidrug office, told reporters in Brussels on Tuesday in releasing the report. "We strongly believe that the international community should engage in massive support to Bolivia."
The report showed that neighboring Peru registered a 14 percent increase in coca plantings and a 23 percent rise in cocaine production. The only good news, the United Nations said, was that cocaine production in Colombia, the world's main source of the drug, had fallen.
Much of the growth in coca cultivation in Bolivia has come in the Yungas region, where Mr. Mesa's government prohibited forced eradication for fear of angering organized cocaleros, or coca farmers. It is an approach unlikely to change with the new president, Eduardo Rodríguez, who faces simmering anger from a range of antigovernment forces, including the cocaleros.
Coca farmers from the Yungas, where the United States would like to spray, said they would fight if efforts were made to destroy their crops. In the Yungas, many farmers grow coca for traditional use, as permitted by Bolivian law, though American and Bolivian officials say much of the new growth goes toward drug trafficking. "This would be like taking our daily bread," said Valentín Quispe, 42, a farmer who on Tuesday was selling his coca leaves in Bolivia's main coca market in La Paz. "We have to defend our source of income, to the last consequence."
Jeffrey D. Sachs, a Columbia University economist who has advised Bolivian governments, said the problem was that the United States had done little to provide real options to coca farmers whose livelihoods were wiped out by Bolivian forces under American supervision. Indeed, Mr. Sachs noted, rising anger against the eradication and the Americans helped make Evo Morales, the leader of the cocaleros, a national figure who now has a shot at winning the presidency in the next election.
"If you want to deal with this in a sustainable way, you need to have a sustainable approach," Mr. Sachs said by phone from New York when told of the spike in coca production. "If you think you can solve this militarily, then you've got it wrong."
Mr. Sachs says alternative development programs financed by the United States amount to a "ludicrously small investment" that cannot replace coca farming. The State Department contends that the programs, which total $212 million over a generation, have helped thousands of families switch to legal crops.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
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