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Coca dispute could grow into a bigger headacheAndres Oppenheimer
aoppenheimer@MiamiHerald.com
I have to make a confession: Earlier this year, I consumed coca.
To be more precise, I tried coca tea. It happened in the northern Argentina province of Salta, on the border with Bolivia, after dinner with state officials at a crowded restaurant.
After desert, the waiter offered us a digestive tea. As I was happily drinking it, I was informed that it was coca tea and that it is as legal in South America's Andean region as chamomile tea is in the United States.
LIFTING BAN
I'm telling you this story because some South American nations -- led by Bolivia, with the support of oil-rich Venezuela -- are launching an international campaign to lift a 1961 United Nations ban on exports of coca leaves. This crusade is likely to strain regional ties with the United States and the European Union and could become one of the biggest sources of tension in the hemisphere.
Since he took office on Jan. 22, Bolivia's leftist President Evo Morales, a coca growers' leader, has vowed to increase coca cultivation for legal use.
He says coca is a great medicinal plant that has been chewed by Bolivia's Indians for centuries to fight hunger and fatigue and that it should not be confused with cocaine, refined from coca leaves and a harmful drug.
Last weekend, during the inauguration of Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, Morales presented U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice with a charango -- a Bolivian musical instrument that looks like a small guitar -- decorated with coca leaves. Rice reportedly left it behind. Coca leaves are a controlled substance in the United States.
But the pro-coca campaign is in full swing. In recent days:
• Bolivian foreign minister David Choquehuanca proposed to replace the daily glass of milk at Bolivian schools with coca. ''Our children need calcium, and coca leaves have more calcium than milk,'' Choquehuanca told Congress.
OLD GRANDMOTHERS
(By the way, Choquehuanca is quite a character. When I interviewed him recently on television, he assured me with a straight face that his Indian grandmothers ''lived 200 years,'' thanks to the healthy herbs they consumed. Really, I asked. Calendar years? ''Yes,'' he answered. ``Calendar years.''
• Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez proposed last week that Venezuelans start eating bread made of coca flour. ''We should try to de-Satanize this product, which our indigenous people have been producing for centuries,'' Chávez said.
• In Peru, leftist-nationalist presidential candidate Ollanta Humala, who is close to Chávez and Morales, has vowed to give out coca bread as a breakfast meal at public schools if he is elected president in next month's elections.
Are Morales, Chávez, Humala and others pushing for a noble cause or are they unwittingly -- or consciously -- promoting cocaine trafficking?
Whatever the case, U.S. and European officials are nervous. They estimate that only half of Bolivia's coca production is used for coca tea or other legal purposes, while the rest goes for cocaine smuggled, mainly to Europe. If coca production increases, so will cocaine production, they say.
DIFFERENT PLANT
What makes many U.S. officials suspicious about Morales' coca production plan is that he represents coca growers from the Chapare region, who produce big-leaf coca that is mostly used for cocaine production. The coca for legal uses has small leaves and grows in other regions of the country.
Last week, I asked Peru's President Alejandro Toledo -- like Morales, an Indian -- whether he supports Bolivia's stand. He reacted with a skeptical smile.
''If you come to my home, you will be offered a coca tea,'' Toledo told me. ``But this [legal] production does not explain the current extent of coca production. It [coca for legal production] doesn't even amount to 10 percent of the coca acreage in most places.''
My opinion: I have nothing against Bolivia producing -- and perhaps even exporting -- coca tea (although, as far as I remember, it tasted horrible) or making sandwiches with coca-flour bread.
Why not? Paul John Paul II drank coca tea when he visited La Paz, the Bolivian capital, in 1988, to combat soroche, or altitude illness. Even U.S. officials in La Paz drink coca tea, as they themselves have told me.
But Morales will be playing with fire if he expands coca production on his own, without the cover of an international monitoring mechanism. If his plan results in a major increase in cocaine production, it will not only enrage Washington and the European Union, but also neighboring Brazil, the biggest market for Bolivian cocaine. The big question is not whether Morales does it, but how he does it.
aoppenheimer@MiamiHerald.com
I have to make a confession: Earlier this year, I consumed coca.
To be more precise, I tried coca tea. It happened in the northern Argentina province of Salta, on the border with Bolivia, after dinner with state officials at a crowded restaurant.
After desert, the waiter offered us a digestive tea. As I was happily drinking it, I was informed that it was coca tea and that it is as legal in South America's Andean region as chamomile tea is in the United States.
LIFTING BAN
I'm telling you this story because some South American nations -- led by Bolivia, with the support of oil-rich Venezuela -- are launching an international campaign to lift a 1961 United Nations ban on exports of coca leaves. This crusade is likely to strain regional ties with the United States and the European Union and could become one of the biggest sources of tension in the hemisphere.
Since he took office on Jan. 22, Bolivia's leftist President Evo Morales, a coca growers' leader, has vowed to increase coca cultivation for legal use.
He says coca is a great medicinal plant that has been chewed by Bolivia's Indians for centuries to fight hunger and fatigue and that it should not be confused with cocaine, refined from coca leaves and a harmful drug.
Last weekend, during the inauguration of Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, Morales presented U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice with a charango -- a Bolivian musical instrument that looks like a small guitar -- decorated with coca leaves. Rice reportedly left it behind. Coca leaves are a controlled substance in the United States.
But the pro-coca campaign is in full swing. In recent days:
• Bolivian foreign minister David Choquehuanca proposed to replace the daily glass of milk at Bolivian schools with coca. ''Our children need calcium, and coca leaves have more calcium than milk,'' Choquehuanca told Congress.
OLD GRANDMOTHERS
(By the way, Choquehuanca is quite a character. When I interviewed him recently on television, he assured me with a straight face that his Indian grandmothers ''lived 200 years,'' thanks to the healthy herbs they consumed. Really, I asked. Calendar years? ''Yes,'' he answered. ``Calendar years.''
• Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez proposed last week that Venezuelans start eating bread made of coca flour. ''We should try to de-Satanize this product, which our indigenous people have been producing for centuries,'' Chávez said.
• In Peru, leftist-nationalist presidential candidate Ollanta Humala, who is close to Chávez and Morales, has vowed to give out coca bread as a breakfast meal at public schools if he is elected president in next month's elections.
Are Morales, Chávez, Humala and others pushing for a noble cause or are they unwittingly -- or consciously -- promoting cocaine trafficking?
Whatever the case, U.S. and European officials are nervous. They estimate that only half of Bolivia's coca production is used for coca tea or other legal purposes, while the rest goes for cocaine smuggled, mainly to Europe. If coca production increases, so will cocaine production, they say.
DIFFERENT PLANT
What makes many U.S. officials suspicious about Morales' coca production plan is that he represents coca growers from the Chapare region, who produce big-leaf coca that is mostly used for cocaine production. The coca for legal uses has small leaves and grows in other regions of the country.
Last week, I asked Peru's President Alejandro Toledo -- like Morales, an Indian -- whether he supports Bolivia's stand. He reacted with a skeptical smile.
''If you come to my home, you will be offered a coca tea,'' Toledo told me. ``But this [legal] production does not explain the current extent of coca production. It [coca for legal production] doesn't even amount to 10 percent of the coca acreage in most places.''
My opinion: I have nothing against Bolivia producing -- and perhaps even exporting -- coca tea (although, as far as I remember, it tasted horrible) or making sandwiches with coca-flour bread.
Why not? Paul John Paul II drank coca tea when he visited La Paz, the Bolivian capital, in 1988, to combat soroche, or altitude illness. Even U.S. officials in La Paz drink coca tea, as they themselves have told me.
But Morales will be playing with fire if he expands coca production on his own, without the cover of an international monitoring mechanism. If his plan results in a major increase in cocaine production, it will not only enrage Washington and the European Union, but also neighboring Brazil, the biggest market for Bolivian cocaine. The big question is not whether Morales does it, but how he does it.
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