Bolivian Cocaine

As is usual,  my housemates Aliya and Marcello are playing with Teva (the young housemate--11 months).  It's ten PM.  Marcello returns from rehearsal (with his band, Quimbando) every night, usually we eat a light supper (lunch being the main meal here)  -- tonight a sip of soup and a bit of spinach salad.  We finish eating, and together they play with Teva.  That girl is loved.

I visited a couple classes of SIT--School for International Training--this week.  SIT is what originally brought Aliya (my housemate and the one foreigner in the collective) to Bolivia when she was a college student.  Katari brought her back..  Katari, husband and child kept her here.

Rain in the city meant snow up above--the hills and
mountains surrounding Cochabamba

Today I sat in on a "charla" about the Drug War in Bolivia--a cozy lecture with the director of the Andean Information Network (AIN, see:  http://ain-bolivia.org/).  
No shock:  it was fascinating.  And no shock:  this was not the sort of lecture that makes one proud to be American.  For a country that "loves freedom and democracy" it's astounding how delighted we are to support militaristic dictators abroad who suck up to our every foreign policy whim.  Concerning Bolivia the US has made many foreign policy decisions (costing millions of dollars and thousands of lives) without a true understanding of what was actually going on on the ground.  Indeed one of AIN's main advocacy efforts among journalists and Washington politicians is: "Just Leave Bolivia Alone."  I won't dare try to squeeze in three hours of lecture, but some highlights:

One of Cochabamba's many plazas

• It's at least 23 times cheaper and more effective to focus on the DEMAND side of cocaine than the supply end.   The US has not invested its funds accordingly.
• Opulent supply of coca hasn't convinced Bolivians to make it their drug of choice.  Worst addiction problems here:  alcohol and glue.
• The US State Dept, Defense Dept, CIA, Customs, Justice Dept, among others -- all work on counter-narcotics, but especially work for their own success in this area, often counteracting the work of another.  Often these departments have celebrated "another coca farmer dead or jailed."   But this "success" is not the capture of large drug-lords (who have budgets against which the US anti-narcotics budget will never be able to compete).  More typically "success" is the poor farmer caught mashing coca in a naïve attempt to support his family--these are the "disposable population" according to drug lords.   
• Washington/State Dept/Embassy/etc lack accurate information because people simply lie to keep their jobs.   One charming example of the disconnect between Washington's understanding and reality in Bolivia:  years ago the US threatened to pull all US Funding from Bolivia if Evo Morales were elected.  (The first threat in 2002 skyrocketed Morales' support from 10% to 48%).  The second threat (2005) was predicated on Morales' unwillingness to eradicate coca growth.  However, the present "Catua" system which allows farmers a particular rationed plot of coca growth per family (enough to survive) was already in place a year before Morales took office -- the US "officials" simply hadn't told Washington this supposedly unpleasant information.  Washington assumed eradication was still in process. 
• The Catua System offered families enough on which to survive, and was locally governed by strict union participation--which includes a no-tolerance cocaine policy.  When the Catua System was put in place, the frequent and devastating road blockades and protests stopped -- finally the Chapare population could survive.  A limited, registered plot of coca also encouraged cultivation of other crops (which are much more expensive to farm than coca) on each farm.
• At 25% of the cost, Bolivian efforts to curtail cocaine production have been far more effective and humane than US military efforts.
• The US funded Bolivian soldiers who were destroying coca farms chewed coca, even dried it outside their tents.  As military officials defended them:  "How do you expect these boys, in this tough climate, to be able do the exhausting work of eradication if they're not chewing coca?" 
• I have chewed coca and sipped coca tea, but I am cocaine-free.