Drugs and Foreign Policy: A Critical Review by Raphael F Perl

Author:Raphael F Perl [Perl, Raphael F]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367011932
Google: iR1ZxgEACAAJ
Goodreads: 52178685
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-06-07T00:00:00+00:00

Bolivia

The U.S.-Bolivian decision to seek a military solution perhaps best illustrates the militarization of U.S. drug foreign policy in Latin America. One cannot make the narcoterrorism argument, in either of its forms, for, unlike Colombia and Peru, Bolivia does not have a guerrilla threat or substantial narcotraficante violence. Bolivia is very important to the suppression of the cocaine trade, however, because it is the second-largest coca producer. In the 1990 agreement between Washington and La Paz, Bolivia agreed to accept $32.2 million in military aid in exchange for militarizing its antidrug efforts, supplanting UMOPAR, the antidrug police. As one of the poorest nations in the hemisphere, Bolivia could not risk losing foreign aid. Moreover, to a nation historically controlled by its military, the offer of additional money and equipment for that military must have been irresistible. Although the Bolivian government has been democratically elected since 1981, civilian power is extraordinarily weak. That Colombia and Peru have not been as compliant as Bolivia does not belie the fact that Washington has greater faith in Andean militaries than it has in Andean policemen.

In Bolivia, opposition to the implementation of U.S. drug policy, particularly the use of military units, comes from democratic forces—political parties, farmers' syndicates, and labor unions. In the Chapare region, where most of Bolivia's illicit coca is grown, the coca farmers' syndicate represents at least 40,000 families. Coca growers belong as well to the CSUTCB, the nation's largest farmer organization, and have ties to the COB, one of the nation's largest labor organizations. The CSUTCB voted in May 1991, to stage a national blockade of roads and trains in June to protest use of the military in antidrug activity. Opposition political parties court the coca farmer syndicates, giving the latter still another entree into national democratic politics.27

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