The Chapare and the Coca Conflict

I decided to take a weekend during the week, since we work on Saturdays and Sundays, and venture out to Villa Tunari, in the Chapare region. The Chapare has gained notoriety for its coca crops. While the coca of the Yungas is widely chewed and central to the Andean cosmovision, the bigger, bitterer leaves of the Chapare are generally processed into cocaine for first-world consumption.

In the Chapare coca is grown by peasant campesinos. Then it’s bought by narcotraficante networks, and collected in clandestine labs deep within the Chapare and Beni rainforests. There it is processed with ether, hydrochloric and sulphuric acid into a paste. The coca paste loaded into light planes and flown from hundreds of hidden airstrips to Colombia for more processing. Finally, it’s smuggled into the US, where it sells for a thousand times more than the cocaleros’ take.

Ironically, the US inadvertently encouraged coca cultivation for cocaine production. In the 1970s USAID monies built the Cochabamba-Santa Cruz highway, opening the Chapare to colonization. In the 1980s, thousands of miners were laid off in neoliberal labor-flexibilization programs promoted by the US and their multilateral interests, and as many altiplano campesinos were displaced by neoliberal land reform that dispossessed them of their lands. Encouraged by the government, many of them migrated to the Chapare, where they found the perfect new cash crop. Coca grows well in the Chapare’s poor soils (since most of the nutrients are stored in the standing rainforest), provides immediate returns, requires little work, and has a high price.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, when structural adjustment was in full swing and the economy in shambles, illegal coca export earning equalled or exceeded all legal export earnings combined. Two-thirds of all cocaine snorted by yuppies stateside came from Bolivia. Cash from coca crops kept thousands of campesino families from starvation. By all accounts, Bolivian governments, democratically elected and authoritarian alike, benefited from their blind eye to the coca boom. The city of Santa Cruz was by and large built with drug money by cronies of President Banzer.

In the late 1980s, under pressure from the Regan administration to fight the War on Drugs, the Bolivian government made an abrupt about face, and began going after coca growers. Originally, they paid the cocaleros to eliminate their crops, but the policy had little effect, as people replanted their crops. Alternative development projects have been equally unsuccessful. The government began eradication without compensation under the paradoxically named Plan Dignidad. In response, cocaleros organized to defend their meagre livelihoods. They organized mass protests and blockades, paralyzing the region. A number of unarmed cocaleros were killed in clashes at blockades in blatant violations of human rights. As such, some cocaleros have become more militant, killing a number of DEA agents with booby traps. The situation has improved somewhat with the election of cocalero Evo Morales, evidence of their influence. The Bolivian army and DEA agents have backed down a bit, and are now uprooting coca crops by hand. It's a particularly painful example of the stupidity of supply-side economics.

After my run in with the Aymara militants, I was concerned about meeting cocaleros while hiking in the isolated Parque Nacional Carrasco, which is also a popular coca smuggling corridor. However, the cocaleros’ syndicato was kind enough to write me a letter, affirming that I was not a DEA agent and stating that I was friend to all campesinos and cocaleros, which they signed and stamped with their official seal. I never needed to show it, but it makes an excellent souvenir.

I did see some more obvious signs of the coca conflict, like the highway checkpoints. There the police search for precursor chemicals for cocaine coming into the Chapare and unauthorized coca coming out. They make everyone get off the bus and show identification, while they search it top to bottom with absolutely un-Bolivian thoroughness.

The next sign I was in coca country were the blockades. While blockades in the Chapare have been scenes of violent standoffs between cocaleros and police in the past, the one we ran into was not a big deal. The protesters had left for lunch, so all the passengers helped remove the rocks and tree trunks from the road, and on our way we went. The driver assured me that after a siesta, the protesters and their blockade would be back, which was very Bolivian.

The effects of the coca boom were especially apparent when I arrived in Villa Tunari. The town has seen better days, before the eradication campaign. Most of the people in the outlying areas are desperately poor, living in small shacks, subsisting on small kitchen gardens and sporadic hunting. In town there are huge houses, built in a narco-baroque style, which have since been abandoned. All the fancy hotels and nice restaurants, which used to cater to narcotraficantes, now depend on DEA agents and occasional tourists for their due. The residents are trying to turn Villa Tunari into a tourism destination, but with the incredible political instability, it seems unlikely. All they have to show are a bunch of signs proclaiming Villa Tunari a Pariso Ethnoecoturistico.

For more information about the coca conflict, please check out the Acción Andina website. It’s run by my amazing boss, Theo Roncken, who has filled books on the subject.