Bolivia’s coca policy going bananas

Chimoré, Bolivia — A fireball shoots into the canopy of the Chapare jungle as soldiers torch a coca maceration pit, one of seven the unit destroys each day in the war on drugs.

Although President Evo Morales is maintaining the “zero cocaine” policy favored by Washington he draws the line at the U.S.-financed “zero coca” program. Since he took office January 22 Morales says Bollivia should be allowed to export legal coca-based products to stop the plant from finding its way into maceration pits.
Addressing the European Parliament this month (May), Morales asked why is coca “legal for Coca Cola but not for native peoples and peasants?”

Far from a rhetorical question, finding a workable solution to the coca issue is intrinsic to the country’s social, political and economic fabric, says Jim Shultz of Cochabamba based NGO the Democracy Center. It is also the main thorn in the side of Bolivia’s relations with the United States, according to US Embassy officials in La Paz.

As the populist Morales attempts to appease Washington and his political base, he has opted to continue with the consensual rather than forced coca eradication program of years past implemented last year by his predecessor, Carlos Mesa.
Like Mesa, Morales, who remains the president of the nation’s six coca growers federations, believes forced eradication creates social conflict and human rights abuses. Instead, security forces are concentrating on stopping the supply of chemicals used to produce cocaine as well as the destruction of cocaine laboratories and maceration pits.

Morales is also spearheading an international campaign to remove coca leaf from the list of controlled narcotics under the 1961 United Nations Single Convention on Narcotics. He hopes that Bolivia in the near future will export legal coca-based products, such as the tea that is available at the U.S. Embassy in La Paz that helps visitors cope with the effects of high altitude. Taking a packet of that tea out of the country is illegal.

The EU is sympathetic to Morales’ cause but he faces a Herculean task convincing the United States. Anne Patterson, assistant secretary for international narcotics says Washington will veto any attempts to amend current international law as it maintains its strict antinarcotics policy. "I do not think this idea is going to prosper in the future and the U.S. is not going to support the idea either. In our opinion, there is not international support for this idea. The treaties, the importnat treaty is very clear about the point, and so I am not goig to say more," Patterson said during a visit to Bolivia in early May.

Bolivian companies are ready, willing and able to develop coca products for export. La Paz based tea producer Windsor Hansa Ltda, a recipient of USAID funding, generates 10 percent of its $1 million annual sales from coca teas. Edgar Barco, medical advisor at La Paz based coca derivative products company Coincoca says “our industry is a natural pharmacy” but it suffers from “the stigma that it is synonymous with cocaine.”

Laboritario Hahnemann, in La Paz, the only Bolivian company with a license to export medicinal products to the United States, exports remedies using native plants such as maca and cats claw and would like to export coca-based products. “An excellent market for these products would exist, however while the US has a policy penalizing this product, there is no possibility of exportation,” said operations manager Jamil Rodas.

But according to a European diplomat, Washington has adopted a “new diplomatic stance” since Morales became president. It “does not mean that they are happy, but they have opted to wait and see and approach the problem with dialogue with the government.”

This détente is giving Morales room to stabilize his government, something the country desperately needs, given that it has gone through five presidents in five years. “There is an open dialogue (between the United States and Bolivia) and we are very relived about this. There are strong differences of opinion so it could fall apart, but they are sitting down and talking to each other. Both sides are really trying,” said Kathryn Ledebur of Cochabamba-based NGO Andean Information Network.

Washington remains unhappy about the discrepancy between Bolivia’s controlled substances law 1008 that permits 12,000 hectares (29,652 acres) of coca to be grown in the Yungas region north of La Paz for traditional uses such as tea and mastication and the 26,500 hectares (65,482 acres) that the U.S. State Dept says Bolivia grows (up from 19,600 hectares in 2000). It is assumed the difference is used for cocaine production.

Compared to Colombia and Peru, Bolivia is small fry in cocaine production. From the mid-1990s its cocaine production capacity has fallen from 255 metric tons to 70 metric tons according to the 2006 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) released by the Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. Colombia is thought to produce about 430 metric tons while Peru is the largest coca grower at 38,000 hectares (93,898 acres) under coca cultivation.

However, eradication has slowed as coca plants are now taken out at the root, a more labor intensive process than the past practice of using chemical herbicides.
“We eradicated more before but we do not have deaths now. The level of eradication has fallen noticeably but is compensated by the form. There is no violence,” said Bolivian Lt. Col. Jose Soliz of the Joint Task Force. He and other soldiers say that “if the farmer denies us permission we cannot enter his land.”

Kathryn Ledebur of NGO Andean Information Network, that seeks peaceful long-term solutions to the social conflicts, injustices, and inequalities created and exacerbated by the U.S. war on drugs in Bolivia, counters that despite cooperative eradication “coca production is not growing at a faster rate than it did under enforced eradication.”

Bolivia’s anti-narcotics force known as FELCN (Fuerza Especial de Lucha Contra el Narcotrafico) now focuses on intercepting drugs and chemicals. In 2005 it seized 11.5 metric tons of cocaine/base, 540,774 liters of chemicals needed to manufacture cocaine such as acetone and diesel, and 298,815 metric tons of sulfuric acid and bicarbonate of soda. It also destroyed 2,619 cocaine laboratories. So far this year, in Chapare, 1,082 maceration pits that make cocaine base have been destroyed and 1,086 hectares of coca have been eradicated.

Coca production could increase given that Morales has protected the one cato (40x40 meters) of coca that each family is allowed to grow in the Chapare and Yungas regions. In a country in which more than 65 percent of inhabitants live in poverty, the 40,000 families in the Chapare are happy about this. Coca has been the lifeline for the miners-turned farmers from the western mining regions that were displaced following the collapse of metal prices in the 1980s. “People can subsist with the cato. In some areas it is their only income and people want the cato protected,” said Edwin Castillo, administrative official in remote Chapre village Puerto Villaroel.

Coca is the perfect subsistence crop says Ledebur as it grows easily in unfertile soil, provides up to four harvests a year and is easy to transport.
“Coca growers want to put food on their tables. With their cato they can earn $80-$120 per month per family,” she says.

The success of the cato means Morales is “stuck between a rock and a hard place,” said Jim Shultz of The Democracy Center. He is under “enormous pressure from cocaleros to increase coca production because this increases their members income,” he said.

Despite coca federation claims that self-regulation has caused no rise in coca production, the United States disagrees. Its International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) report says that after years of declining coca production, it is now on the increase again. It says that in 2005, Bolivia’s coca cultivation increased eight percent overall — the fourth consecutive year of increase — even though the Government eradicated 6,000 hectares of coca. Still, Coca Growth is much less than before. But with about 26,500 hectares of coca planted in all Bolivia in 2005, this is still less than the highs of the early 1990s. In the chapare alone, according to the U.S. State Department, the areas planted with coca have fallen from 35,300 hectares in 1990 to 5,800 hectares in 2005 due to eradication policy.

One of the reasons for this decline is that, according to USAID, the area planted with legal crops such as bananas and pineapples have increased from 36,000 hectares in 1983 to 150,000 hectares in 2005 in the Chapare region. USAID pumps funds into the region to convert coca production into bananas, pineapples, oranges and palm hearts, but as coca is a higher value ‘crop’ many farmers like Edwin Castillo, who grows bananas and oranges, still grow the 40x40-meter cato the law allows because “it pays more and is easier to grow,” he said. “I have four hectares of bananas and produce 180 cases a week. Bananas are more work than coca. It is constant work,” added Geronimo Quispe, a farmer and father of four from the village of Nueva Canaan, who earns $124 per month.

Bananeros, through a growers association known as Caban, complain of being marginalized by the government. President Morales effectively ignores alternative crops as their success undermines his pro coca message that farmers have no alternatives to coca. His uneasy relationship with the bananeros stems from the road blocks organized by cocaleros in 2001 to impede banana exports when then, as now, he was leader of the coca federation.

“President Morales intends to damage the export of [bananas] to Europe to defend his thesis that people can only survive by growing coca in the Chapare. If we open the European market, his thesis about coca falls,” said Caban leader Miguel Zambrana.

Mountain biking the world’s most dangerous road

The cold mountain air ripping past my face draws tears from my eyes as my mountain bike plummets down the Yungas Road as it carves its way down the precipitous Bolivian Andes. The majestic scenery is straight out of Lord of the Rings, but at 50 mph, my eyes are fixed firmly on the road ahead so that I don’t end up as another white cross beside the road. Welcome to the world’s most dangerous road.

Walking through downtown La Paz, between the dried lama foeti of the Witches Market, the robust Cholita women wearing bowler hats and the pickpockets lingering for their next victim with a bottle of ketchup or a mouth full of spit, Calle Sagárnaga screams out offers of mountain bike trips down the world’s most dangerous road. On offer is the chance to cycle 64 km down the Yungas Road that heads north out of capital La Paz from 4,700 metres above sea level in the snow-capped Andes down to the atrophying heat of the Amazon jungle near at 1,600 metres. This road is putting Bolivia on the adventure tourism map, attracting those seeking thrills in an exotic location underpinned by a very real element of danger.

This is why I am sitting in a minibus with ‘Gravity Assisted Mountain Biking’ painted on the side, at an hour of the day that seems far too early with an international group that includes English, French, Canadians and Americans, dissipating the clouds of sleep with Marvin Gaye and The White Stripes, while chewing coca leaves to minimize the effect of the altitude.

Gravity took its first paying customer in July 22 1988 and as its business has grown from four to over 80 bicycles, the Yungas Road has developed into one of the most exciting and talked about activities in Latin America, with an estimated 13,000 people cycling it in 2005.



We are blessed with a sunny day and clear blue sky at the summit as the three guides (including two gringos) unload the bikes and we get ready to ride. While I have done off-road mountain biking before, many in the group haven’t and I can see that a few nerves beginning to creep in as people get ready to confront a road with a reputation for giving severe punishment for any error. Some babble nervously as others clam up in introspective silence, but when Kory Kramer, our guide from Michigan, USA, gives his ‘fear of God’ speech, he has everyone’s attention.

“Keep your eyes on the road because if you look at the beautiful valley below, that is where you are going to go. We had a German guy last year who rode off the cliff without making any attempt to brake. We rescued him and asked him what happened and he said he was looking at into the valley and just went over,” he says.

Kory says that the key to enjoying the ride is to keep within your ability, and he talks about rules of the road, how to mount and dismount, what to do if a truck comes, or a car comes, riding position, riding style and how to corner. “You have disk brakes so you do not need to use a Kung Fu death grip to stop. With a Kung Fu death grip you will go over the handlebars, so just use a couple of fingers and feather the pressure on and off,” he says.

The villages we will pass also add their own four-legged hazards, he says. “There are pigs and there are dogs running about, so if you see domestic animals slow down. You don’t want to hit a dog at 40mph,” says Kory.



Gravity’s founder, New Zealander Alistair Matthew, says the fear of God speech is the key element to ensure that everyone has a good day. “The fear of God speech is to keep people focused and to stop them from getting too excited. It is when you are not concentrating that is when you are going to fall, and you can fall anywhere from 4 metres to 800 metres off the edge,” he says, adding that, “we work up the drama. People don’t want to feel it is too easy. We are about myth creation here,” he says.

Suitably briefed we form a circle and offer a tribute to Bolivian earth goddess Pachamama and ask her for a safe journey. We swig some raw alcohol and spit it out on the ground, offering her alcohol so that she won’t take our blood.

THE RIDE

The first part of the ride is a smooth and fast asphalt section that gives us an opportunity to familiarize ourselves with the bicycles under relatively controlled conditions, particularly the bodyline for riding at speed, such as leaning into corners with the inside pedal raised so as not to catch any rocks, and of course feeling out the brakes. I opted to pay the extra for a bike with full suspension and enjoy the extra comfort and control it gives me as the road squiggles down the mountain.



We are so high up in the mountains that we ride through pockets of cloud, losing sight of the sheer valley walls that rise around us save for damp black rocks that peep out once through the mist, before bursting into the sunlight that shines down on the lush green valley below. The cold air biting into my face is compounded by the wind chill of speed and I have to twist my head so that the rush of air clears the tears forming in my eyes. My desire to look at the scenery is tempered by Kory’s speech but I cannot resist snatching glimpses of the beautiful landscape.

The Yungas area hosts coca plantations and so the road has a couple of police checkpoints as part of the government’s effort to restrict the movement of precursors, the chemical raw materials used in cocaine production. We pass through the Unduavi checkpoint and stop at a hamlet called Pongo where the guides check the bicycles and brief us about the next stage. The feeling of speed is addictive and has hooked everyone in the group. “I was a bit tense at first as this is fastest that I have been on a mountain bike,” says Jane from Nottingham. “This is free-falling on a bicycle, the ultimate two-wheel adrenaline rush," says Canadian lawyer Ben.

After 20km we pass from asphalt onto an uneven dirt track that just wide enough for a truck to pass. Riding out of the saddle, my legs are getting a real good shaking and suspension seems to have been the correct choice after all.

Riding on dirt at speed is a very different challenge, and I almost don’t adapt quick enough. I approach a right-hand corner and brake hard, but not early enough and I enter the corner too fast. My speed means I run wide from the track cleared by the passing of countless trucks and buses and takes me into the gravel banked up on the outside of the curve. I have entered the margin of error, the 30cm of gravel that delimits the edge of the road from the empty space of the valley below. I am riding too fast to brake hard while turning on the gravel and can feel the tightening effect of fear that comes with the knowledge that I am in a bad place. I fight the impulse to tighten up, try to keep loose, and lean hard into the mountain, using my body weight to get round the corner. All this happens in an instant.

This is stupid. I am riding too fast. I remember the words of Alistair the night before: “It is not actually a dangerous road. What makes it dangerous is people getting over excited.” Danger is relative of course, but with the Yungas road, if anything does go wrong, the chances are your that your F**ked, and with a 10- to 20-degree angle of descent, whoo!, the speed just keeps on coming on!

The road curves and turns so much that I lose sight of the rider in front of me. The person behind me has probably lost sight of me and so the thought occurs to me that if I went over the edge now no one would ever know until the next rest point. A sobering thought.



We pass under the patchy cloud and into a warmer climatic zone with rich greenery clinging to the sides of the valley that glistens under the Andean sun. The mountains rise vertically around us and waterfalls cascade in white ribbons down their sides. The distant sound of falling water impregnates the air and mingles with the low static murmur of the tyres on the gravel and the occasional warning blast of tri-tone truck horns. Bamboo and ficus grow in abundance and a host of other plants and vines cling to the mountains and black, iridescent yellow and blue butterflies flit about. We have descended several hundred metres and the air tastes fresh and sweet, and is scented with eucalyptus. It feels good to be alive.

The road passes through picture postcard scenery with views to die for as I look forward at the road squiggling ahead into the distance, or peep into the valley below that has a vertical drop from the road averaging about 400 metres.

We stop about half way down to snack on chocolate and a banana before entering a section with the exquisite San Juan waterfalls falling over the road from over a hundred metres above, cloaking the road in a diaphanous rainbow mist. The water is ice-cold and each drop stings as they hit me like a lead weights as I pass underneath.

As the road nears the bottom of the valley we see the village of Coroico, our destination, perched atop a spur. The road gradient softens and the gravel becomes a dusty surface that Kory says is more dangerous and slippery that the muddy sections.

Almost as if to prove this point, we pass a group of riders with Downhill Madness, another operator, who are gathered around an Australian girl who has just had a hard crash. It looks as though her bike slid out as she tried to turn with too much speed and she went slamming down on her right hand side. Her head is badly swollen, her eye closed, she has cuts all over her right leg and arm, and she is in a lot of distress but fortunately Kory is there to give her first aid since there is no sign of her group’s guide. We wait in silence as Kory helps her, the exciting fizz of our descent flattened by the reality of when things go wrong. “This is a sobering moment,” says Neil from Nottingham.

We ride the final section into Yolosa and gladly swap our mud covered bicycles for the cold beer that is waiting for us at the end of the road.

HOW DANGEROUS IS THE DANGEOUS ROAD?
The Yungas road has put Bolivia on the action adventure map. The many hundreds of deaths in vehicle crashes on the road serve to draw people from around the globe to flirt with danger. It is only as a result of this rush, and the explosion in number of tourists and operators, that people have died biking it. A handful of deaths over the years Alistair, a die-hard mountain-biker, admits that since he took his first paying customer in July 1988 that he has “created a monster”. “It is a legend, a myth. It is not about mountain biking in Bolivia; it is about the world’s most dangerous road.”

Gravity has grown from four to over 80 bicycles and an estimated 13,000 people cycled the Yungas Road in 2005, but just how dangerous is the Dangerous Road? Alistair is uncomfortable with the ‘Death Road’ sobriquet “because we have never had a death and we don’t think it is necessary to die on the road,” he says, because he takes safety very seriously including not riding in the rainy season, training his guides in first aid and rescue techniques and giving them regular days off.

Safety in part depends upon how much operators invest in their equipment. “Some companies operate with $50 bicycles but we import $1,000 Kona bicycles from the US, the mountain bike equivalent of a Clydesdale horse,” he says. On top of this, Gravity uses original Hayes hydraulic disk brakes that run $220 a pair and pads that retail at $22 a pair. “We go through 2,500 pairs a year. Other companies take sneaky shortcuts and may have a $1,000 bike with 50 cent recovered brake pads,” he says.

This difference was painfully clear for the Australian girl. She crashed because of brake failure; the brake plates had no pads on them, leading Alistair to speculate that they had been resurfaced with a substance that is little more than chewing gum and grit. Luckily for her, she had slid into the cliff. If she had gone the other way…

Safety boils down to individual responsibility and to this end travelers are perhaps their own worse enemy, seeing little difference between the different tour companies. “Tourists cannot assume that the difference between a $25 and $50 tour is the quality of the lunch. This is Bolivia. They cannot assume that there is a minimum safety standard here like there is in the US or Europe. The difference between what is promised by the operator and the product that is delivered can result in death, and since there is no investigation or follow up on accidents, there is little incentive for an operator to even try and meet the minimum safety standards that the tourist might assume will be in place,” he says.

The paradox is that in part it is the lax safety standards of many operators that have made the Yungas Road so popular. “Mountain biking could become a major attraction of the country but if there continues to be the safety issues to the level that exist it will turn people off. Or it will create the myth of the world’s most dangerous road,” he says.