Evo and Coca: The Rock and the Hard Place

For those trying to follow the pivotal issue of coca here in Bolivia this week, it has been like watching a three year old giving it all she has on a swing. There has been a lot of moving back and forth.

As I have written in this space several times in the past few weeks – coca is the first issue that will define the relationship between the new Morales government and the US government. I heard that loud and clear on my trip to Washington, from the halls of the US Congress to meetings with progressive advocacy groups. There a lot of issues up for US/Bolivia discussion, from trade to gas, but on coca the US Congress will take an actual vote, probably sometime this spring, on foreign aid that is tied to coca eradication in Bolivia. When that happens the dialogue ends and the rubber starts to hit the road.

That makes the events here this week all the more important.

Time for the DEA to pack?

The confusing back and forth of Bolivian policy toward coca leapt to the surface this week when a national congress of the six major coca grower unions convened here in Cochabamba. That Congress voted to continue having President Evo Morales as its union leader. It then approved a resolution calling for all organizations that receive direct funding from the US government to leave the Chapare, the coca-growing jungle region outside of Cochabamba.

The obvious question then was – what was the position of President Morales? Was it the official position of the Bolivian government that USAID, the DEA and their subcontractors all needed to pack up and take new residence in the city? That might be good news for the local Burger King but not for the US anti-drug war.

Initially, it appeared that this was exactly the position of the Morales administration. The presidential media spokesman was quoted by the media here Wednesday saying that the US agencies needed to leave. Then the President of the Senate (a member of Morales' MAS party) announced publicly that press coverage of the media spokesman's comments didn't accurately describe the government's position. According to the Senate head, the real position of the government was that it was time for the Bolivian and US governments to start a dialogue about how "institutions [from the US] that had completed their work ought to begin to leave."

Amidst the confusion, an emergency meeting was called last night, bringing together President Morales, Vice President Garcia Linera, US Ambassador David Greenlee, and a few others. It is unclear who called the meeting. What is clear is that following it the position of the Morales government changed one more time. Morales announced that the DEA and the others were welcome to stay as long as they respected the law. "Everyone has a right to be in our country, respecting our dignity and national sovereignty, respecting the people," Morales said.

The Rock and the Hard Place

Morales critics on the right will be quick to site this as evidence of government incompetence. Critics on the left will cite this as a dangerous sign of kissing up to Uncle Sam. On both, everyone is free to reach his or her own judgment. That however misses a larger and more important point. On the hot potato issue of coca the Morales government is stuck in a very difficult position between a rock and a hard place.

The rock, in this instance, is the cocaleros, Morales' chief political base, one of the most organized social movements in the country, and a group of people eager to expand production of their crops. The hard place is the US government, which for years took a hard line on coca eradication but more recently, with a bit of a wink and a nod, has accepted the limit of "one cato per family", about 1600 square meters.

Keeping both sides happy amidst heightened hopes on the one side (for more coca production) and heightened wariness on the other, is one of the biggest challenges Morales faces. This is especially true as a handful of moderates within the Bush administration have stuck their necks out recently in favor of talking with Morales instead of demonizing him. There are clearly other, more right-wing, figures in the Bush administration eager to chop of their diplomatic heads. The cocaleros could easily hand them the axe.

What to do About Coca Headed for the Drug Market?

Morales and Bolivia suffer from some basic facts. One is that it is plain myth that all of the coca grown here is headed solely for traditional uses such as chewing, the production of bagged coca tea, and others. One reliable study may soon report that more than half of the coca grown here is unaccounted for in legal usage, raising the question – what happens to the rest of it?

From afar it looks like the Morales strategy for dealing with that excess is three-fold. First, contain that excess production by jawboning the coca-growers to voluntarily stick with the 1600 square meters per-family limit [the cocaleros want to raise that to 1600 square meters per family member, a major jump]. Second, support interdiction of illegal coca or coca paste at the border. Third, develop alternative markets that can use up that excess in legal ways.

That last objective, an important one, raises a pretty simple question for me. Why doesn’t the US start allowing the import of commercially-produced Bolivian coca tea? Let's be clear. One, you would be hard pressed to find a gringo who has visited here who hasn't tried it and loved it (including some well placed Bush supporters, I'll add). Two, coca isn’t cocaine until you totally alter it chemically. Three, Coca Cola is already allowed to import the leaves for its production. Four, there is potentially a huge market for it among herbal tea drinkers in the US. Last, anyone who claims that cocaine-makers in the US will start tearing up those little Lipton-sized bags to get the half teaspoon of ground-up leaf out and turn it into white powder ought to try doing that for a box or two.

All that said, this remains the tough spot in which Morales is trying to make coca policy and there is little doubt that he is making that policy personally. An even if the US manages to maintain a softer line against coca than it has in the past, history still hangs heavy around its neck. "It's pretty hard to accept a conciliatory message when you've been shot," notes Kathy Ledebur of the Andean Information Network, explaining the deep Chapare animosity toward the US government and the Bolivian anti-drug forces it backs.

Negotiating a way forward with coca growers on one side of him and the Bush conservatives on the other is going to take huge political skill. The days ahead will see if Morales can pull that off.