The Globe and Mail (Canada)
                           February 26, 1985 Tuesday

TITLE: Cultivation of coca leaves pillar of Bolivian economy
By  OAKLAND ROSS

    COCHABAMBA, Bolivia

Seven days a week, hordes of peasant merchants and their clients converge
upon a mud-puddled square in the heart of this central Bolivian city to
buy and sell sacks of coca leaves, raw material for North America's most
fashionable illicit substance - cocaine.

As sellers armed with hand-scales measure out dried, olive-green coca
leaves into burlap sacks, their prospective clients haggle angrily over
prices.

'There is no fixed price,' remarks a local woman, while watching a
particularly heated transaction bubble to a violent boil. 'Sometimes the
price goes up; sometimes it goes down.'  This is the honest, upright side
of Bolivia's booming business in coca leaves.

None of the greenery so openly bought and sold in this square will ever
be converted into the crystalline powder with a landed value in New York
City of between $35,000 and $40,000 a kilo (before it is cut for street
sales).

Instead, Indian peasants and miners in Bolivia will buy the unprocessed
leaves from street-corner retailers for about 20,000 pesos (or six cents)
an ounce. For them, the mild narcotic effect induced by chewing coca
leaves is almost the only protection available against relentless hunger
pangs, hard work and the bitter cold of Bolivia's mountain plateaus.

The plant also has mystical and medicinal qualities deeply rooted in
the culture of Bolivia's Indians, who comprise more than half of the
country's five million inhabitants.

According to Jorge Otasevic, Governor of Cochabamba State - where most
of Bolivia's coca is grown - roughly 25 per cent of the country's total
coca production is consumed by Bolivians in Bolivia, in ways that are
perfectly legal.

'The Government cannot oppose the traditional production of coca because
that comes from our forefathers,' said a senior Boliviian police official
in Cochabamba. 'Coca is like Carnival: It's something that comes from
our ancestors.'

In some respects, however, things have changed drastically since Inca
times. The Chapare area is now responsible for about two-thirds of the
estimated 150,000 tons of coca leaves produced annually, most of which are
put to uses neither traditional nor legal - but are colossally lucrative.
'To my mind, coca is the greatest source of wealth that Bolivia has,' said
Rafael Otazo, former head of the Bolivian Government's anti-narcotics
campaign.

Bolivia produces about half of the coca leaf necessary for South America's
total cocaine output. Peru provides the other half, while Colombia handles
the marketing end of the multi-billion-dollar business - a business of
breathtaking sophistication and ruthlessness.

In the rainy foothills of central Bolivia conditions are ideal for the
cultivation of coca. The plants are grown by peasant farmers on almost
every available piece of land, yielding at least three annual harvests,
and sometimes four.

According to Mr. Otasevic, a farmer with a single hectare planted in coca
can expect to earn between $7,000 and $8,000 a year.  'No other product
in Bolivia could provide 20 per cent of that.'   A decade ago, Chapare's
contribution to Bolivia's narcotics industry was pretty much limited to
the cultivation and harvesting of coca.

Since 1980, however, most of the basic refining of the coca leaves has
been undertaken in Chapare itself, leading to the eventual establishment
of countless tiny 'factories' where coca leaves are converted into pasta
basica, or basic paste.

Such operations could hardly be more primitive, typically consisting
simply of a 30-centimetre pit, between a metre and a metre and a half wide
and roughly 4 metres in length, lined with plastic. The pit is filled with
dry coca leaves, which are then mixed with a succession of gasoline,
kerosene and sulphuric acid.

Pisadores - or 'stompers,' hired from among the local peasants or the
urban unemployed - spend roughly eight hours mashing the mixture with
their bare feet, finally producing the gooey, grey paste, which sells
for anywhere from $400 to $1,300 a kilo.

According to Julio Alem, who operates an economic research centre in
Cochabamba, the production of coca leaves in Chapare increased sixfold
between 1975 and 1982.  'In this (economic) crisis, the only thing that
is saving a good part of the country is cocaine,' he said. 'Without
cocaine, the unemployment would cause social chaos that no one could
withstand.'

Despite Chapare's importance as a centre for coca production, there are
no major drug traffickers living in the area. The Bolivian 'big boys'
estimated to number between 20 and 40, live in the cattle-ranching region
of Beni in the north.

The pasta basica produced in Chapare is either transported to Beni
directly, aboard light aircraft using clandestine airstrips, or it is
shipped through Cochabamba, where it is loaded aboard C-46 airplanes at
the municipal airport.

In warehouses on the cattle ranches of the Beni, the pasta basica is
stored for pickup by the Colombians, who fly it out in small aircraft.
In Colombia, the paste is refined into cocaine hydrochloride, or pure
cocaine, and then to North American markets, according to U.S. officials.

Mr. Otazo, the former head of Bolivia's anti-narcotics campaign,
estimates that about 600,000 of his countrymen (or more than 10 per cent
of the population) rely on the coca industry to support themselves.

Despite increased financing from the United States for Bolivia's
campaign against drug production, and despite a recent increase in
activity by anti-narcotics police, there is general skepticism that
economically crippled Bolivia will manage to make much of a dent in
its most lucrative - and corrupting - industry.  'A lot of noise, a lot
of spectacle,' said a sour Mr. Otazo, referring to Bolivia's recent
anti-narcotics efforts.


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