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September 12, 2006
Interdiction is up in Bolivia
Felipe Cáceres, the "drug czar" of Evo Morales' government in Bolivia, was in town today. He held a meeting with NGOs and spoke at an event hosted by the Washington Office on Latin America. He is also meeting with officials in the Bush administration and members of Congress.
Cáceres is an unlikely drug czar: he is a longtime coca-growers' union leader in Bolivia's Chapare region. For nine years, he was mayor of Villa Tunari, a Chapare town that saw a great deal of strife between coca-growers and U.S.-funded coca-eradication forces. Today, however, Felipe Cáceres commands those forces.
Obviously, many here in Washington believe that with a drug czar like that, Bolivia is about to become a narco wonderland. But Cáceres comes armed with some surprising statistics that should reassure the drug warriors. Take this one, regarding drug interdiction:
- In 2004, the State Department reports, Bolivian forces seized 8.7 metric tons of cocaine and cocaine base.
- In 2005, according to the State Department, this seizure total went up to 11.5 metric tons.
- Cáceres says that in just the first seven months of Evo Morales' government (January-August 2006), Bolivian forces interdicted just under 9 metric tons of cocaine and cocaine base - already surpassing the 2004 figure and closing in on the 2005 full-year total. He says that this figure has been evaluated and seconded by the U.S. embassy's Narcotics Affairs Section and the DEA. He estimates that over half of this cocaine was made in Peru, in transit to Brazil.
Morales came into office promising that his government would be tolerant of the traditional use of coca leaf, but tough on cocaine trafficking. This is appearing to be more than just empty rhetoric.
Posted by isacson at September 12, 2006 5:47 PM
Comments
This goes to show that putting an end to the drug trade is *really* in the interests of progressive governments, as opposed to the merely *ostentatious* interest of reactionary governments, which actually hold a major stake in the drug business. The Bush Administration's reaction will be silence. But initiative like this--comparable in my opinion to Chavez's selling heating oil at a discount to the poor in New York--will soon build up enough pressure to give the lie to Washington.
Posted by: rainercale ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.ciponline.org/colombia/blog/nav-commenters.gif)
at September 13, 2006 12:48 AM
Since previous Peruvian and Bolivian efforts already displaced most of the drug production industry up north to Colombia, it's no surprise that Bolivia, "progressive" or otherwise, can now apparently do fine on interdiction under Morales, especially when they already did most of the tougher work much earlier on and don't have to face the same complications as others do.
In the grand scheme of things, that's not really that new, IMHO, and ideology is pretty irrelevant as far as such efforts go (those earlier victories weren't under particularly "progressive" governments).
And further still, all such efforts are made even more irrelevant by the fact that the drug trade will never be defeated through force. Until some sort of serious legalization or regularization is put in practice, none of this will matter.
At most, it'll keep moving from one region to another, from one country to another, but it'll never stop as long as there are millions of people willing to "get high". And that isn't going to happen anytime soon, so we might as well face the reality.
Posted by: jcg at September 13, 2006 3:21 AM
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