America’s Immersion in Drugs Has Lifted Bolivia From Its Misery

The pichicateros live in the suburb of Urubari, in the tropical Bolivian city of Santa Cruz, in large, expensive homes of a singularly gaudy architecture, a mixture of Oriental and Spanish styles. They drive the latest expensive European cars, socialize at their own country club and are rarely seen in public without bodyguards.

Santa Cruz’s pichicateros are credited by many Bolivians for lifting the standard of living in the small, land-locked country that until not long ago held the dubious distinction of being one of the hemisphere’s poorest. In the United States, the pichicateros have the opposite reputation: They are accused of having helped undermine the United States’ political, economic, social and moral fabrics by organizing and financing the growth and trafficking of Bolivia’s most profitable product: coca.

Cocaine consumption in the United States, as President Bush confirmed this month, has reached epidemic levels. As part of a plan to respond to the crisis, the President announced that the U.S. government would allocate $2 billion to help Colombia, Bolivia and Peru to fight the cocaine cartels. He added, “When requested, we will for the first time make available the appropriate resources of America’s armed forces.”

Will the United States win the cocaine war by increasing its military pressure and by promoting the cultivation of agricultural products for legal export markets? Most likely, no. There are at least two reasons: logistical and economic.

As the war in Vietnam should have taught us, it is not possible to defeat an enemy that has the ability to relocate its base of operation from one area to another on very short notice. Bolivia’s processing plants generally produce base cocaine. The production process requires a minimum of equipment and is conducted in small, isolated areas. The producer has the coca leaves spread in ditches that are less than 1 3/4 feet deep, and a little over 2 1/2 feet wide. The length of the ditches varies depending on the amount of coca that needs to be processed, but it is never longer than 20 feet. With ditches dug, all that the producer needs is a few men to press the leaves with their feet, some type of solvent, generally kerosene, which is spread over the leaves as they are being pressed, acetone which is used as a catalyst and sulfuric acid to create the cocaine paste.

To uncover and destroy these processing plants, the United States would need to train and pay for thousands of Bolivian soldiers, develop an extremely sophisticated method of detection, and provide enough helicopters to conduct comprehensive and continuous surveillance over vast mountainous and jungle areas. It is doubtful that any U.S. government would be ready to augment its involvement to these levels, or that any Bolivian government would be willing to risk the domestic upheaval that the implementation of such strategy would generate. In the eyes of most Bolivians, it would be a sign of surrender of sovereignty to an outside force, namely the Yankees.

The implications of these obstacles are obvious, yet there is another, more critical, factor preventing the implementation of an effective military policy: the effect it would have on the Bolivian economy and the welfare of the Bolivian people.

In its role as the leader of the West, the United States has often preached the virtues of capitalism. For years, Bolivia proved to be a slow learner, but it seems to be catching on. Aware that a tremendous demand for cocaine exists in the United States and other advanced industrialized states, Bolivia has responded to market forces and recognized the benefits of becoming a major supplier.

In 1985, Bolivia’s annual rate of inflation reached close to 30,000%. Thousands of miners marched through the city of La Paz demanding that the government increase wages. But the rest of the country did not join in the demonstrations. They were enjoying the fruits of the cocaine economy, which by then was earning an estimated $2 billion annually, a revenue four times greater than what Bolivia was receiving through its legitimate exports.

The importance of coca to Bolivia is evident even to the most untrained observer. On any day, as one travels the principal road that connects the cities of Santa Cruz and Cochabamba, it is easy to spot huts surrounded by small fields planted with coca. In times past, the owners of these huts could not afford even the minimal comforts associated with quality of life in most advanced Western societies. Today, most of the households flaunt tall television antennas and the latest models of small trucks or Jeeps, indispensable for transporting the coca leaves to the processing plants.

But these farmers, along with the coca processors and distributors, are not the only Bolivians benefiting from all of this “illegal” activity. The billions earned by the selling of cocaine abroad have contributed to the revitalization of Bolivia’s cities. In Santa Cruz, for example, there are new office buildings; homes and roads are being constructed at an unprecedented rate. The telephone company is in the process of introducing the latest technology in order to increase its lines in the next three years from 28,000 to 78,000. Television, which was almost an unknown service 10 years ago, has become so popular that the ordinary Cruceno can begin on Sunday watching an auto race televised live from West Germany, then switch to a soccer match played in Caracas and end a day of television globe-trotting with a review of the news in Spanish presented by CNN directly from the United States.

The fact that cocaine has revitalized Bolivia’s economy is not something that gives pride to all of its people. But, as two Bolivian businessmen grudgingly acknowledged to me, “Without cocaine, Bolivia would not have been able to rise from its misery.”

The United States must recognize that if it wants to stop the consumption of cocaine within its own borders, the solution does not lie in other countries. This point is understood even by the Bolivian coca grower with the smallest of plots. As one of them remarked to me, “So long as the Yankees keep using this thing, I’ll grow it.”