Federico Fuentes
Juan Choque, a 37-year-old cocalero (coca farmer) from the Chapare region in Bolivia was shot dead on September 28, while 19 others were injured in clashes with the military. The death came only three days after talks between Bolivian government officials and cocaleros broke down. A series of confrontations in the previous two weeks over coca growing left more than 20 people injured and the Chapare region at boiling point.
On September 9, the Bolivian government, led by President Carlos Mesa, announced a plan that would forcibly eradicate coca farming by 2008. The plan to eliminate production of the plant, which many Bolivians chew as a stimulant and is also used in the production of cocaine, is at the heart of the US and Bolivian "war on drugs" that has lasted for 15 years.
Four days before the text of the new plan was made public, US ambassador David Greenlee sent a message to the Bolivian government praising the plan and pledging Washington's support.
The cocaleros struggle for their livelihood is a struggle against US domination of the country, and for national dignity and self-determination.
Following the death of Choque, Mesa called a four-day break in the eradication program to calm the situation but pledged not to halt the plan.
The clashes have occurred as cocaleros attempt to impede soldiers from leaving three new military camps in the Chapare region. Julio Salazar, the secretary general of the Federation of Tropico in Cochabamba announced "our cocalero brothers can no longer accept this suffering and in the next few hours anything could happen if the government does not order the withdrawal of all those in uniform".
These new camps have been established as part of an offensive by the Mesa government to push forward its program of forced coca eradication. The cocaleros have demanded a suspension of eradication at least until a study can be conducted to determine the level of coca cultivation necessary to meet legal demand and real plans for alternative crops to maintain their livelihood are proposed.
It was the neoliberal onslaught in Bolivia beginning in the mid 1980s that created the cocaleros as a social phenomenon. From the 1952 Bolivian national revolution until 1985, Bolivia's tin mines were run under state control. At the behest of the US government, Bolivian dictator Hugo Banzer privatised Bolivia's tin mines, sacking 40,000 tin miners, predominately from indigenous Aymara and Quechua backgrounds. Many former miners, who had been among the most combative Bolivian workers, turned to coca growing in order to survive, taking with them their strong class consciousness and history of militant struggle and solidarity.
In 1988, the US-endorsed Law 1008 was approved by the Bolivian government. Setting the general framework for the "war on drugs", the law was a direct attack on the livelihoods and traditional cultures of the indigenous peoples of Bolivia, who for hundreds of years have chewed coca as a stimulant.
Initially the eradication programs were limited to the Chapare region of Cochabamba, where the coca grown is suitable for use as cocaine. Here, cocaleros were paid compensation and given help in moving towards alternative crop. The other main coca growing area, the Yungas in La Paz, was designated for coca cultivation for traditional purposes.
The compensation however was never enough for a dignified life and many returned to coca growing when it ran out. In 1998, the introduction of Plan Dignidad saw what little compensation was given whittled down until it was completely gone, and a move towards forced eradication carried out by armed soldiers, without consultation or compensation for the cocaleros.
The US-backed plan intensified the resistance and organisation of the cocaleros, making them one of the most powerful social movements in Latin America. The overt cooperation between the US and successive governments in the "war on drugs" meant the movement in defence of coca became a powerful symbol and an integral part of the national popular movement in defence of sovereignty.
Mesa's plan, which will require over US$900 million in foreign aid, has not only brought to an end nearly a year of relative peace in the coca growing regions, but also threatens to trigger a dramatic escalation in conflict — particularly to begin forced eradication in the Yungas areas.
The plants grown in the Yungas areas are used predominantly for traditional chewing, making it a particularly powerful symbol of national identity. The terrain, combined with the militancy of the cocaleros, has also always deterred action against this area. Bolivian Colonel Jaime Cruz Vera pointed out in an August 8 interview with Narco News that "the Yungas region has already fostered a political situation in which the farmers are opposing our entrance, and the terrain favours them... If eradication [was begun] there at this moment it would detonate, in a serious way, against public safety and the peace that the country is enjoying now, because social problems would mount."
Cruz Vera is the commander of the Mobile Rural Patrol Unit, responsible for seizing drugs, and is the commander of the central drug war base in the town of Chimore, in the Chapare region. The renewed conflict has threatened to further strain the relationship between Mesa and parliamentarian Evo Morales, the leader of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), a radical party based predominately on the cocaleros. Morales is also head of the six federations of cocaleros.
Since the October 2003 overthrow of former president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, to whom Morales came second in the 2002 presidential elections, Morales has supported the Mesa government. For Mesa, who is an independent with no official party support, the "truce" with Morales and the MAS has been crucial to maintaining his position in power.
Cruz Vera stated that the peace in the region was because: "Evo Morales who has instructed [the cocaleros] to calm down. Before him the national conflicts never stopped. Now there is peace... He doesn't want conflicts here so that his image won't be harmed." Under pressure from his traditional support base, Morales has stated that Mesa has until the end of September to suspend coca eradication and was quoted in numerous news reports as saying "the truce [with Mesa] is at breaking point due to the errors of this government".
On the same weekend as the breakdown in official dialogue, a national conference of cocaleros voted to step up their campaign against the Mesa government. They will join a Morales-initiated march leaving Caracollo on October 11, designed to get to La Paz on October 18, the first anniversary of Lozada's overthrow. The cocaleros will be demanding the immediate suspension of coca eradication, and supporting the march's existing demands of renationalisation of the gas industry and the prosecution of Lozada for his role in the murder of 66 Bolivians during the uprising that overthrew him.
From Green Left Weekly, October 6, 2004.
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