With no DEA in sight, Bolivia keeps reducing coca fields

http://en.institutomanquehue.org/countries/bolivia/with-no-dea-in-sight,-bolivia-keeps-reducing-coca-crops.html

by gruez • 11 years ago

112 39 11 years ago

en.institutomanquehue.org

kelukelugames• 11 years ago

less blogspam link:

http://en.institutomanquehue.org/countries/bolivia/with-no-d...

dang• 11 years ago

Quite. URL changed from http://theantimedia.org/cocaine-production-plummets-after-de..., which points to this.

jakeogh• 11 years ago

Costa Rica Will Stop Sending Cocaine to Miami (2013): http://news.co.cr/costa-rica-will-stop-sending-cocaine-to-mi...

spikels• 11 years ago

How did expelling the DEA help? I can understand that the DEA would be ineffective but why would they be counter productive?

rincebrain• 11 years ago

The article insinuates that the DEA branch was accused of conspiracy and espionage - other articles seem to imply that the President at least believed that the DEA was following him around and spying on his romantic life, as well as implying that the US DEA branch attempted to contract killers to hit Bolivian gov't officials.

I can't imagine that the grounding of the President's plane under suspicions of housing Snowden warmed him up, either.

Further reading:

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolivia%E2%80%93United_States_...

[2] http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1856153,00...

[3] http://www.cepr.net/blogs/the-americas-blog/remember-when-ve...

fnordfnordfnord• 11 years ago

Psshhh! That's crazy talk. Our government wouldn't do anything like that.

davidovitch• 11 years ago

Very annoying when the source to the real report that is being discussed is not included. So here it is, in Spanish [pdf]: http://www.unodc.org/documents/bolivia/Informe_Monitoreo_Coc.... I don't speak Spanish so I have not read this report.

According to [1]:

“It’s not only about making money off a crop. In the old fashioned alternative development approach, we substitute one illicit crop for a licit crop. It’s about a more comprehensive approach that includes access to essential services like schools, hospitals, and roads in areas that traditionally have been hard to reach,”

and another citation, from the original UN report press release [2]:

"the importance of comprehensive, participative and long-term development programmes, as essential elements to ensure a sustained reduction of illicit crops."

I am by far an expert in this area, but I think kicking out the DEA allowed Bolivia to shift efforts from violent, top down (US orchestrated) repression to:

* Giving farmers incentives to shift to other crops: do not let coca be the only way of sustaining the farmers family

* Still allow coca growing for traditional usage (chewed, in tea, or as a natural analgesic)

* Bottom up: work together with coca unions and farmers to understand the incentives that drive farmers to chose coca in the first place

* Probably many more things I am not aware of

[1] http://theantimedia.org/cocaine-production-plummets-after-de...

[2] http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/frontpage/2015/August/2014-bol...

edit: layout fixes

pjc502• 11 years ago

The DEA are confrontational, destructive and foreign. They're the colonial police looking out for America's interest, not Bolivia's. This means they're going to be widely hated, even by people who might otherwise support their aims. So hated, in fact, that a political movement started against them and got elected: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movement_for_Socialism_%28Boli...

The coca reduction that's actually happening is based on replacing coca growing with other forms of agriculture in cooperation with the farmers.

Coca leaf is unlikely to be eliminated entirely as it's an effective traditional medication for dealing with altitude sickness (much of Bolivia is at high altitude, including La Paz at 13400ft). So again Bolivians are never going to support its 100% eradication.

The exported product is purified cocaine hydrochloride, not the leaf.

Quequau• 11 years ago

Having spent a fair bit of time in Peru and Bolivia, I am 100% convinced that consumers of cocaine, in the form of an illicit street drug, are missing the majority of the experience of consuming the Coca leaf as it's consumed locally. Unfortunately I simply lack the vocabulary describe what exactly is missing and how the experience of chewing the Coca leaf is superior... but I've personally found the difference to be profound.

My experiences traveling through the region have convinced me that attempts to eradicate the coca plant and practice of chewing coca leaves are fundamentally misguided and unethical.

Cocaine is problem primarily in the advanced capitalist economies and it is solely within these nations where those problems can be solved... though it's obvious to anyone who is being intellectually honest that the strategies of the DEA and the drug war are abysmal failures and so must be either substantially reformed or abandoned altogether.

jamesfe• 11 years ago

I don't doubt the incompetence of the DEA, but I thought the same thing - so I did some deep searching (sarcasm) and found this page: http://en.institutomanquehue.org/about.html - it looks like this is an institute devoted to, among other things, "projecting a faithful image of this region to the world".

I'd imagine that this story is being spun a bit - satellite imagery isn't the most accurate for crop identification over such large areas of land (biased source: myself, a satellite imagery analyst for 5 years), plus Latin American countries are constantly, for obvious reasons, trying to distance themselves from powers such as the US which often associated with colonialism and oppression.

TL;DR: This is a puff PR piece exaggerating the efficiency of the Bolivian Gov.

mariocesar2• 11 years ago

I'm bolivian.

"Coca is not cocaine" is a long movement that started way before the current government, a movement that for many years introduces changes with several social movements involved, one of them the most active make a president.

Giving credit to a foreign ONG/Foundation/Institute/60' minded Guys the image of an whole country, is not that pretentious?

ingenieros• 11 years ago

DEA agents are usually too busy partying it up with local hookers supplied by drug cartels to do any actual work. http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/14/dea-agents-pr...

Zigurd• 11 years ago

DEA and the State Department operate a fleet of planes for, among other things, spraying defoliant on suspected drug crops in foreign countries. They roll around in armored SUVs. They bring a lot of business to houses of prostitution. They escalate violence.

And those are just the benefits.

tempodox• 11 years ago

It's in the interest of the U.S. to have expensive drugs be illegal, so they can use them to raise money on the black market for black ops or whatever else they won't fund publicly.

cryoshon4• 11 years ago

Not sure why you're being downvoted, considering that this is a well documented phenomena that goes back decades and frequently grabs international attention when problems crop up.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_CIA_drug_traffi...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_involvement_in_Contra_coca...

[2] http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/07/2012721152...

[3] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/special/...

This is the stuff Gary Webb was killed by the US government over.

atom-morgan2• 11 years ago

It has too much of a conspiracy tone to it so people downvote.

wcummings• 11 years ago

They're expensive because they're illegal, it creates an opportunity for arbitrage.

mariocesar2• 11 years ago

I'm embarrassed about the comments that are mention that this is something is happening "just now" and annoyed about the article giving credit just to the government.

The issue for most Bolivians is simple. Coca is not cocaine, for other is a more complex and is also related with bad economic incentives also a long history of an absent government in poor regions.

In all cases La DEA was always pretentious, bad managed, with several news about prepotency and abuse. However that was not the main case to Bolivians to start despise them, it was about his media message about Coca about being essentially evil that chocks most of us, in the 80` and 90` that was so subtle, sometimes clear. (Our American President say "Coca is cocaine") Months before I saw in newspapers "USA University leads chewing coca to bad digestion in long term consumption" ... This attempts to change a core cultural aspect was the main fuel for all social movements those years, and the current government is just result of one of this movements. The main misunderstanding from foreigners about social and politics in Bolivia is that they "feel" there is just one movement, one thought and that is represented by the current government; people still marches in the street, block avenues, shouts in the media and are not the opposition are indigenous movements that are looking for the same goals that the government but don't agree on the methods.

Anyway, here is a music video with most of the common Bolivian arguments about La DEA and Coca:

"Don't let DEA see me, because that cause me stress" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAGT5OxrYcE#t=116

joesmo• 11 years ago

It would help even more if we kicked out the DEA here in the US. In fact, banishment to an abandoned island wouldn't be too harsh a punishment at all for their crimes.

cryoshon4• 11 years ago

I'm with you, to a point. I'd much prefer if the DEA was stripped of its militarization and instead shifted to act as a quality/safety testing body for "illicit" drugs. Maybe enforcing certain purity standards and proper labeling of narcotics.

You know, something that would actually help the people using drugs-- "this batch of heroin in city X is actually 50% rat poison so don't use it" or "this stuff the dealers in city y call molly is actually MDPV and 25I-nBOME, be aware".

That'd help cut down a lot of the deaths and injuries from drug use. Imagine if you had a government agency looking out for you rather than trying to fuck you up for once.

JoeAltmaier• 11 years ago

The alternative is to not use unregulated non-FDA-approved substances. But that would require self control. So yup, we need a nanny government to make us safe...

knodi1232• 11 years ago

Before government policy shifts enough to transition the DEA to that role, there will be full legalization. Once we're that liberal, you'll be buying your molly/heroin in regulated pharmacies, not from sketchy dealers who are willing to let you inject rat poison.

arca_vorago• 11 years ago

Look people, you need to understand something. The British pioneered this in the Opium Wars (1 and 2).

As far as the CIA/DEA go, they are some of the biggest drug and gun runners around. Does anyone remember Iran Contra? When you are an agency that congress is supposed to have financial oversight on, following the money can reveal things you don't want revealed. What you want is to find a way to make money off the books, so you need a black market. If there isn't one, you create it. Then you operate it, run a few stings against competition if they get too powerful, and suddenly you have a huge black bag money coffer. No oversight! Yay for unaccountability!

I've said it before and I'll say it again. There is a Company man behind every other cartel man.

Afghanistan and the new heroin epidemic is a perfect recent example. Opium production was almost nill until we invaded, and suddenly even with the country occupied most of the heroin in Us cities is from Afghanistan? It's just Vietnam on repeat...

user_00012• 11 years ago

I don't think the situation is as black and white in Afghanistan as you make it out to be. The issue now is there is chaos. Before when poppy cultivation was reduced to (a reported) a near zero, the Taliban maintained a level of order (albeit brutal).

Or you could take the other approach, they hadn't sold their previous supplies of opium due to bumper crops in previous years, so wanted to limit supplies a bit to raise the price before selling over stock then plant again the following year.

happyscrappy• 11 years ago

Yes, if you eliminate extrajudicial death penalty for drugs(Taliban) then more people will take the money by growing the crop.

With no DEA in sight, Bolivia keeps reducing coca fields

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