Unequal Battle : Bolivia Drug Lords Again Rule Jungle

Here in the Chapare, a tropical tract the size of New Jersey, prosperous cocaine traffickers are the lords of the jungle. Their only major rivals are the “Leopards,” a special Bolivian police unit with a notoriously spotty record.

The Leopards receive U.S. government support, including the use of helicopters equipped with machine guns. But the traffickers have legions of peasant farmers on their side and irresistible amounts of cocaine money at their command.

It is an unequal rivalry in which Leopard officers have been known to forget, for a price, which side they are on. As a result, the drug trade flourishes throughout the Chapare, making this area of central Bolivia a major source of the cocaine that flows into the illegal American market.

Slowdown Ends

The flow slowed to a trickle for a four-month period last year when 170 American troops and six Blackhawk helicopters were in Bolivia to help crack down on cocaine production and traffic. But since the American military mission left in November, the drug traffic has flourished anew, and fresh signs of corruption have surfaced.

According to published reports and informed sources, the corruption has reached high levels of President Victor Paz Estenssoro’s government. Last month, Paz accepted the resignation of Interior Minister Fernando Barthelemy, who had been accused of receiving payoffs from cocaine traffickers in exchange for official protection.

The Interior Ministry is responsible for the national police, including the Leopards. Maj. Ciro Jijena, a Leopard officer, told a Bolivian congressional committee last year that another officer collected protection money for Barthelemy from drug traffickers in the Chapare.

U.S. Request

Sources close to narcotics control efforts in the Chapare said that several other Leopard members confirmed Jijena’s story. One source said U.S. officials had asked that Barthelemy be removed.

Barthelemy has denied receiving any bribes. His resignation was officially described as part of a routine reorganization of Paz’s Cabinet.

Anti-drug sources name numerous police officers who, they say, have also received payoffs from traffickers. According to two sources, the major who until last month was in charge of the Leopard post at the jungle village of Ivirgarzama was once seen meeting in his headquarters with Jorge Roca Suarez, one of Bolivia’s top drug overlords.

The major was transferred out of the Chapare and is said to be the subject of an internal police investigation. Some Leopard officers have been suspended for suspected corruption, often at U.S. insistence, but none has been put on trial.

“Many people think we come here to make money, but that is a lie,” said Maj. Oswaldo Veizaga, the current commander of the Ivirgarzama post.

In a conversation with visitors, Veizaga said he had been in charge of the remote post for 15 days. He complained angrily about shortages of uniforms, boots, medical supplies and housing for his men. He said the unit has only two working vehicles and not enough gasoline to operate effectively.

Planes Transport Drugs

Meanwhile, according to Veizaga, planes used to move unrefined cocaine take off and land on roadways in the area, flying within sight of the Leopard post.

“The planes come by low,” he said. “They pass right over us.”

As Veizaga spoke, one of his unit’s pickup trucks rolled into the post compound carrying a squad of policemen and two civilian prisoners. The squad had raided a pit where coca leaves were being converted into paste, an unrefined substance that contains the essence of cocaine powder.

The squad leader said the two prisoners were small fry. The owner of the paste got away.

One of the prisoners, a sullen young man in a striped sport shirt, was chewing coca leaves. The greenish residue of mashed coca leaves covered his feet. He was a “treader,” hired to make paste from coca leaves by mashing them with his bare feet in a solution of kerosene, sulfuric acid, lime and water.

Some Coca Is Legal

Later, a teen-age boy came by the post walking a bicycle loaded with two large bags of leaves.

“That is coca,” Veizaga said. “It is for legal consumption. They have authorization.”

Waist-high coca bushes produce the small, heart-shaped leaves that Bolivian Indians have chewed for centuries as a legal stimulant and hunger-suppressant.

The government allows each farmer in the Chapare to grow up to two hectares, or nearly five acres, of coca bushes. Experts estimate that about 90,000 Chapare farmers are cultivating a total of at least 280,000 acres of the leaf.

Legal consumption of coca in Bolivia amounts to a small fraction of the estimated 275,000 tons produced annually in the Chapare.

Immense Carpet of Jungle

The Chapare takes its name from the river that flows through it. It is an immense carpet of jungle, stretching from mountains in the west across flat, green terrain to the horizon in the east. The forest fastness is broken by scattered clearings with thatch-roof houses and small fields of coca plants.

The cocaine market began booming at the beginning of the 1980s. Since then, coca cultivation in the Chapare has all but displaced food crops--rice and bananas and other tropical fruits.

The Chapare’s four rice-processing plants have been abandoned. One of them, which had been built and operated by a government agency, is now used as a makeshift headquarters by the Leopard unit at Ivirgarzama.

The Leopards, officially Mobile Units for Rural Areas, were organized under a 1983 agreement between the United States and Bolivia. After more than a year of training, the special force entered the anti-drug campaign in 1985.

U.S. Provides Supplies

Of the 600 men currently serving with the Leopards, about 460 are stationed in the Chapare. The United States pays for their food and provides them with medical supplies, 40 rough-terrain vehicles, uniforms and even monthly stipends of $50 for enlisted men and $70 for officers.

Not long after the Leopards began operating, it became evident that at least some officers were receiving money from the drug traffickers. Last year, when it was equally evident that the Leopards were not reducing drug traffic, President Paz quietly invited the United States to send an air-mobile military unit to help.

It came in mid-July. Within days, the price of coca leaves in the Chapare fell to as little as $10 per 100 pounds, far below the estimated $40 that it costs farmers to produce the leaves.

The U.S. troops and Blackhawk helicopters did not operate in the Chapare, where most Bolivian coca is grown. Instead they concentrated their action in Beni, the province to the north. Cocaine paste produced in the Chapare was being flown there for further refinement.

Disrupted by U.S. Operation

The Americans raided 21 cocaine “factories” and 24 clandestine trans-shipment points. The operation disrupted trafficking from the Chapare and sent traffickers into hiding.

With their market drying up, leaf and paste producers poured out of the Chapare by the tens of thousands, apparently returning to areas of Bolivia where they had lived before joining the Chapare coca rush.

Some thought the coca bonanza had ended. Others were leaving as a precaution amid rumors that the American troops would move into the Chapare.

As fear began to subside, some traffic resumed, and in August the price of leaves went up to $50 per 100 pounds. At the same time, leftists and nationalists in La Paz loudly protested against the American military presence as a violation of Bolivian independence.

“They stamped on our national sovereignty,” says Julio Rocha, head of the main farmers’ federation in the Chapare.

Price Goes Back Up

Political pressure forced the withdrawal of the troops in November, and the price of coca leaves in the Chapare immediately began to rise.

Seasonal rains since November have hampered trafficking and dampened coca prices, but in February, buyers were paying as much as $90 per 100 pounds, according to a market study by Bolivian officials.

A U.S. Embassy official in La Paz, Bolivia’s capital, said by telephone that more effective action by the Leopards is helping to drive the price down. On some days in February, the price went as low as $50 per 100 pounds.

Since December, the Leopards have been using six UH-1H helicopters, called Hueys, on loan from the United States. The United States also trained Bolivian air force officers to fly the Hueys.

In recent weeks, two of the helicopters have been based at Chimore, where the Leopards have their main post in the Chapare. Lt. Col. Magin Cardozo, the commander at Chimore, said the choppers are useful for spotting and attacking cocaine paste pits, or factories, hidden in the jungle.

One Leads to Others

“Many times we find a factory here, and we follow the trails and find another, another, another, another,” Cardozo said.

Each Huey can carry 10 Leopard troopers. When a pit is spotted, the pilot tries to land nearby so that the troops can raid the pit. If the chopper cannot land because of dense jungle growth, the pit is strafed from the air with .30-caliber machine guns.

Rarely do the airborne Leopards find people at the pits. Cardozo said the noise of the helicopter gives everyone time to flee into the forest.

A helicopter pilot said the pits apparently have begun operating more at night to avoid disruption by the helicopter raids. A paste pit, lined with sheet plastic, can be assembled or dismantled in a few hours.

The pilot and the commander spoke to a reporter in the post’s dirt-floor, open-air dining area, shaded by a conical roof of palm fronds. Cardozo, a thin-shouldered, curly-haired man in his 40s, wore a T-shirt printed with the special unit’s symbol, a leopard’s head and crossed rifles.

Bribery Charges

Like the commander at Ivirgarzama post, Cardozo said he had been assigned to his post 15 days earlier. His predecessor at Chimore has been accused of taking more than $100,000 in bribes from drug traffickers, according to anti-drug sources.

Asked about allegations of corruption among Leopard officers, Cardozo said: “I don’t know of any, and I can’t say that it is true or false.”

A new agreement between the United States and Bolivia, signed Feb. 24, calls for Bolivian legislation that will allow foreign anti-drug forces to operate here. U.S. Embassy officials said that if the Bolivian Congress enacts such legislation, it will make it easier to supervise the Leopards against corruption.

The agreement also says that Bolivia and the United States will negotiate terms of new U.S. aid for eradicating coca in the Chapare and replacing it with substitute crops.

Bonuses Rejected

Bolivia had requested U.S. assistance to pay farmers $2,000 for each hectare, or 2.47 acres, of eradicated coca. The United States has refused to pay such cash bonuses, but it is willing to pay for the labor costs of eradication and for supplies and equipment used in cultivating substitute crops.

On the basis of the Feb. 24 agreement, the Reagan Administration certified to Congress that Bolivia was making progress in drug-control efforts. Under current U.S. law, that certification was needed by March 1 to prevent automatic suspension of about half of Washington’s economic aid to Bolivia, the poorest country in South America.

Under a 1983 agreement with the United States, Bolivia was to eradicate nearly 5,000 acres a year of coca plants in the Chapare. Only 650 acres have been eradicated since then, and thousands of acres more have been planted with coca, according to officials involved in the eradication campaign.

Officials agree that the key to reducing coca production is effective suppression of cocaine trafficking. When buyers cannot operate freely and the price of coca leaves drops dramatically, they say, farmers quickly lose interest in the crop.

Corruption Acknowledged

Alfredo Salazar, a colonel in the police reserves who heads the eradication project, acknowledged that corrupt Leopard officers help to keep traffickers in business.

“The economic power of the narcotics traffickers is deteriorating the professional ethics” of the mobile force, Salazare said. “Right now almost all officers are exposed to that situation. It is a problem; it is a very serious problem.”

Rene Villarroel, another official in Salazar’s office, said low-level traffickers and even farmers are notified when Leopard “cover” (protection) will permit cocaine paste to be picked up by traffickers, or when a Leopard raid is being planned.

“They know the days when there is cover,” he said. “They know hours ahead when there is going to be a patrol action.”

Villarroel and another official, Hector Mendoza, meet frequently with farmers to discuss regulations on coca production. At a meeting the other day with 30 farmers on a back road lined with coca patches, Mendoza warned that coca planting may be made illegal in the Chapare.

Food Crops Urged

“Then you will have to reduce your coca to zero,” he said, urging the farmers to plant food crops now.

“Can you put a plate of coca on the table for your baby to eat?” he asked. “We don’t live on coca alone.”

Most of the farmers, sitting in the shade of houses raised high on wooden posts, were chewing wads of coca leaf. One of them observed that many coca farmers lack roads for taking heavier food crops to market.

“You can produce pineapples, bananas,” he said, “but you have to have a road to carry it.”

In 1983, the U.S. government allocated $30 million to help develop the Chapare with roads, schools, health clinics and agricultural projects with crops to substitute for coca.

Waldo Telleria, an official in the Bolivian agency that was to coordinate the development project, said that only $5 million of the U.S. aid has been spent.

Profit Motive

He said the project cannot go ahead without a simultaneous program that effectively controls cocaine traffic. Farmers simply will not plant other crops as long as coca cultivation is profitable, he said.

“We can’t compete with coca leaf,” he complained. “There is no demand for the project.”

Telleria emphasized that the main obstacle is police protection of cocaine trafficking. He estimated that the Chapare exports 300 tons of cocaine paste a year.

“There has to be some protection, or a lot of protection, for that quantity of cocaine to go out,” he said.

He said road building under the project has been stopped because new roads encouraged settlers to open virgin areas for coca cultivation. Even aid for school construction was halted after a grant was made to help a community finish building a new schoolhouse.

“One day we went to make an inspection and we found that they were drying coca leaves on the floor,” Telleria said.