Bolivia Set to Elect a Former Dictator Who Also Masterminded Cocaine Trade

President Bush’s much-touted war on drugs may get a rude reception in Bolivia today as that nation’s 2.8 million voters select their next president.

The front-runner is retired Gen. Hugo Banzer Suarez, 62, a former dictator who seized power in a 1971 military coup financed by drug lords. Before he was in turn ousted by fellow officers in 1978, Banzer had transformed the military’s participation in cocaine from isolated bribes to multimillion dollar profits. In 1983 he participated in a coup attempt with known military drug traffickers. The coup failed, and since then Banzer has kept a low cocaine profile, concentrating on politics.

But a Banzer victory could signal the demise of the troubled U.S. anti-drug campaign being waged in cooperation with outgoing President Victor Paz Estenssoro. Bolivia currently receives $59.3 million in U.S. economic support and drug-eradication program financing, the most given to any South American nation.

Yet that aid could prove fruitless if Banzer’s anti-drug cooperation turns out to be the kind offered by Panamanian strongman Gen. Manuel Noriega, a known drug merchant whom the United States has been trying to dislodge for nearly two years. The State Department concedes that it is worried about Banzer’s drug past.

Though Banzer publicly opposes the drug traffic and supports a gradual transition to legal cash crops with U.S., European and Japanese aid, he is critical of U.S. meddling in domestic affairs, like most of the nine other presidential candidates. The United States has no business sending troops to raid jungle cocaine laboratories, as it did in 1986, or forcing a ban on all coca leaf production, as it did last year, he says. Yet this public posturing may be only a smoke screen for his real concerns.

Bolivia, with annual per capita income at $610, is the poorest nation in South America and the second-largest grower of coca leaf, after Peru. An estimated 100,000 coca farmers produce 170,000 tons of leaf a year, to be crushed into coca paste and then processed into pure cocaine. While world prices for tin, its leading official export, collapsed in 1985, the coca trade continues to generate nearly $2 billion of Bolivia’s annual $3.87-billion gross domestic product.

The general’s past business activities seem forgotten during the campaign, overwhelmed by the need to resuscitate a comatose economy. “Memories are short in Bolivia,” said a U.S. missionary there for the past 10 years. “They remember a semblance of stability (under Banzer), and there’s lots of money behind him. Plus nobody bats an eye at drug activity. It’s almost a non-issue. Nobody can do anything about it, it’s so entrenched. It’ll be business as usual if Banzer wins.”

Banzer initially came to power when he overthrew leftist army Gen. Juan Jose Torres. Torres was a reformist strongman who refused to grant government protection to the cocaine kingpins. They responded by offering Banzer, in exile in neighboring Paraguay, financing for his eventual takeover. One of the coup’s financiers, Edwin Gasser, a Bolivian citizen of Swiss descent, later boasted on German television that German-Bolivians had created the Banzer government and that the “military came cheap.”

Banzer’s family also has been involved in drug peddling. According to a teacher at the American Cooperative School in La Paz, where resident U.S. diplomats and others sent their children, Banzer’s daughter openly sold cocaine on campus during her father’s reign. A son-in-law, a La Paz physician, was arrested in Canada with a suitcase full of cocaine at the end of Banzer’s presidency.

During the 1979 presidential campaign, Bolivian drug agents raided a large cattle ranch on the eastern side of the Andes that turned out to be owned by Banzer. While a gun battle was in progress, a high-ranking military officer arrived and ordered the agents to leave the area. The agents ignored him, eventually arresting the men inside and confiscating more than 600 pounds of raw coca paste.

Banzer told reporters that the drug manufacturers “were using my house illegally. I didn’t know.” The Bolivian electorate apparently didn’t believe him, and with clear memories of his seven-year, iron-fisted reign, they gave him a scant 12% of the vote, although he had been the predicted winner.

In the last 10 years, however, Banzer has resurrected himself, convincing Bolivians that he is a different man from the one who ruled through repression and torture in the 1970s. He has carefully built his rightist National Democratic Action Party into a formidable political machine, winning a plurality of the presidential vote in 1985 but losing to Paz Estenssoro when the decision went to Congress. Bolivia has suffered hard times in the last few years, hit by a general Latin American economic crisis. Hyper-inflation had reached 60,000% a year when Paz Estenssoro took office in 1985 and the government has had to enforce drastic austerity measures. Banzer’s party promises a return to “Order, Peace and Work.”

A candidate needs at least 50% of the vote to secure the office outright; with 10 candidates running, the Congress is expected to choose the next president for the third consecutive time. But this time Banzer is said to have enough support to capture the office.

For the United States, a Banzer presidency may signal an increase in exactly what the Bush Administration has promised to eliminate. Judging by Banzer’s track record, to expect him to crackdown on the cocaine trade is wishful thinking. Instead, the cocaine czars can expect to expand production, most of which will end up on the streets of America.