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Bolivian front-runner pledges coca control
(AP)
Updated: 2005-12-21 09:36
Bolivia's soon-to-be president, Evo Morales, a coca farmer under pressure to
crack down on cocaine, pledged Tuesday to keep controls on coca but said he will
study expanding the area where it can be legally grown.
Morales also called on the United States to work with him to develop
better ways of ending drug trafficking while preserving the traditional market
for coca in his Andean nation, where people have chewed the plant to stave off
hunger and used it as a medicine for thousands of years.
"There won't be free cultivation of the coca leaf," said Morales, who still
has his own coca plot and came to prominence leading fellow growers ��
"cocaleros" �� in fighting U.S.-backed efforts to eradicate coca in Bolivia, the
No. 3 supplier of cocaine to the United States after Colombia and Peru.
Morales' apparently wide victory margin in Sunday's election virtually
assures that Congress will declare him president in January even if he falls shy
of the majority needed to win outright in the eight-man race. And a majority win
appears increasingly likely, since Morales already had slightly more than 50
percent Tuesday with half the vote �� including much of his rural support �� still
uncounted, according to official results. His opponents have conceded and the
outgoing administration said it was preparing to hand over power to him.
Buyers trade coca leaves on a coca market in
La Paz, Bolivia on Friday, Jan. 23, 2004.
[AP/file] | A leftist Aymara Indian who grew up in poverty, herding llamas and raising
potatoes in Bolivia's arid highlands, Morales migrated to the coca-growing
region of Chapare, where many otherwise impoverished farmers depend on small
plots of the crop.
The U.S.-led war on drugs inadvertently helped bring Morales to power. The
battle against coca eradication that he led helped mobilize Indian organizations
already angered by continuing poverty and political domination by a rich elite,
feeding a broader political movement.
Indians are a majority of Bolivia's 8.5 million people, but never in its
180-year history has the country had an Indian president.
Acting increasingly like the president-elect, Morales said Tuesday that his
government would study whether acreage limits should be increased to satisfy
legal consumption.
Current laws permit coca cultivation in 29,000 acres of the Yungas valley and
a legally dubious accord struck by President Carlos Mesa in a compromise with
protesting farmers alloweed 7,900 acres to be cultivated in the Chapare.
But past Bolivian administrations and the U.S. government are convinced that
an increasing amount of the crop is being turned into drugs. Bolivia, the
world's No. 3 coca grower, may have produced up to 118 tons of cocaine last
year, up 35 percent from 2003, according to the latest U.N. World Drug Report.
U.S. officials so far have taken a cautious approach to the man who had
described himself as their "nightmare."
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told CNN on Monday that relations with
Bolivia will be determined by the "behavior" of the new government in La Paz.
"We have good relations with people across the political spectrum in Latin
America," Rice said. She did not mention two of Morales' allies, Cuba's Fidel
Castro and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, with whom the United States has had
increasingly tense dealings.
Myles Frechette, a former U.S. ambassador to Colombia, said that while
Bolivia may produce "more coca for local consumption," Morales may also
cooperate "in his own way, so as not to hurt not just the United States, but the
rest of the world."
Morales has described his policy as "zero cocaine and zero drug trafficking,
but not zero coca or zero cocaleros," and says he is ready, in principle, to
work with U.S. officials.
A former U.S. ambassador to Bolivia, Robert Gelbard, said Morales' real
challenge will be using force to follow through on his pledge to curb drug
trafficking.
"It's very, very likely there's going to be a move by trafficking cartels to
try to increase their capabilities" in Bolivia.
"The expectations clearly will be that there will be much more room for
maneuver on the part not just of the coca farmers, but on the part of
trafficking organizations," Gelbard said.
But Morales and supporters insist that the coca leaves they sell in local
marketplaces go for legitimate ends.
People in the Andean highlands have chewed coca leaf to suppress appetite and
work up energy, used it in religious ceremonies and boiled it into medicinal
tea. It is sold legally in supermarkets throughout Bolivia and Peru, and is
served as tea in cafes.
Julio Atto, a 56-year-old worker at La Paz's coca market, said that his
meager income from coca allowed him to put his children through college.
"The poor don't have money, the drug traffickers have dollars," Atto said as
Indian women in bowler hats, stooping under 25-kilogram bags of coca, stood in
line before scales saying "Made in the U.S.A."
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