Culture - Evo Morales elected :Cocaine Plants To Be Legalised By The First Home-grown President

[Alfa]

BOLIVIA, SHIFTING ITS FIGHT ON COCAINE, TO URGE FARMERS TO PLANT NEW CROPS

LA PAZ, Bolivia - After nearly a decade of forced eradication of coca,
the plant from which cocaine is made, Bolivia wants instead to try to
persuade poor farmers to abandon illicit crops in favor of coffee and
cocoa.

The strategy shift, outlined in a government report, is tacit
acknowledgment that unpopular forced eradication has come with too
high a social and political cost for Bolivia, which once was hailed as
the Andean leader in the U.S.-backed drug war.

The United States and Europe, which will be asked to pay for most of
President Carlos Mesa's new $969 million, five-year antidrug plan, are
grudgingly sympathetic. Successful past eradication efforts, in which
troops uprooted coca plants, have taken an estimated $400 million out
of Bolivia's small economy in recent years, causing scattered
violence, disruptive roadblocks, and political and social unrest.

Eradication also helped turn Evo Morales, an Aymara Indian whose power
base is among Bolivia's cocaleros, or coca growers, into one of the
country's most influential politicians. His Movement to Socialism
party could win up to half the votes in Bolivia's December municipal
elections, increasing the chances the country could have a
pro-cocalero president.

U.S. officials involved in Bolivia's drug war are not uncomfortable
with the size of the government's funding request for alternative crop
development. They privately concede that the weakness of the current
government and the difficult terrain in Bolivia's remaining coca
fields make it unrealistic to expect a repeat of past eradication successes.

In the 1970s and '80s, Bolivia ranked either first or second in the
world as a supplier of coca. With Peru and Colombia, it forms the
Andean triangle, which provides most of the world's cocaine.

Since the fall of pro-U.S. President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada last
October, U.S. antidrug experts have worried that political instability
could undo Bolivia's gains and allow a haven for drug rings fleeing
stepped-up eradication efforts in Colombia, now the world's biggest
coca producer.

Cocaleros led the opposition that toppled Sanchez de Lozada's
government last year, and they could easily turn against Mesa, a
historian by trade and an inexperienced politician without a political
party or legislative base.

Mindful of Bolivia's political minefield,
Mesa proposes to spend $557
million on alternative crop development, $355 million on interdiction,
$17 million on rehabilitation and treatment, and just $40 million on
eradication.

"We want greater equilibrium," Jorge Azad Ayala, Bolivia's vice
minister for alternative development in the Ministry of Agriculture,
said in an interview. "What has happened in previous governments is
the four elements were not balanced."

If donor countries disagree, they can use their power of the purse to
realign Bolivia's drug-war tactics.

Critics question Bolivia's plan to make coffee and cocoa the focus of
alternative development efforts. Similar efforts failed in Peru
because surplus production globally drove down coffee prices to record
lows, from which they have not recovered.

"It does beg a lot of questions that they would be promoting coffee,
given the price crisis," said John Walsh, a senior associate for the
Andes and drug policy at the Washington Office on Latin America, a
left-leaning policy think tank.

The Mesa plan seeks substantially less for eradication than Bolivia
sought when it launched its anti-coca Plan Dignity in 1998.
Then-President Hugo Banzer sought $237 million for eradication and
interdiction and $700 million for alternative development.

What Banzer got was $205 million for eradication and law enforcement
but just $128 million for alternative development. The subsidies
helped eliminate more than 90,000 acres of coca under cultivation,
but only about half of the 40,000 poor farmers in the key
coca-growing Chapare region got help producing alternative crops.

[Alfa]

LEGAL COCAINE?


LA PAZ, Bolivia - Indian leader Evo Morales said he would reject Washington' s policy of eradicating much of Bolivia's coca crop fi he is elected president and pledged he would work to legalize the leaf used to make cocaine.


Morales, a front-runner in this Andean nation's Dec. 4 election, is an Aymara Indian who led protest that help oust President Carlos Mesa in June and led to the calling of the December vote.


He rose to power ten years ago as the leader of the coca growers of the Chapara region, where U.S.-backed eradication efforts are focused.

[enquirewithin]

The use of coca tea is fully legal in Peru as a legitimate crop,but cocaine is not. Before the intervention of the US, neither posed a problem. Edited by: enquirewithin

[wingsofazrael]

that would be awesome...swim would be in bolivia setting up camp directly...

[raven3davis]

How greatly do you think this would impact cocaine importation to other countries? I would think this might have a pretty big impact on the prices andavailability of yayo around the world. This could be a very good thing, or a very bad thing, just depends on how you look at it. I wouldnt doubt it if the US tried to do some shit like go to war because Bolovia was responsible for a massive surge in cocaine production. I would think twice about a move like that it just seems like it might piss other countries off a lot (THE USA!) I dont think the US should be able to intervene into other countries doings but they have and will continue to. The whole thing with the Seeds from Canada, now over seas pharmacys, I wouldnt doubt if the USA tried to retalliate in some kind of way.

[Benga]

Coca isn't cocaine they're not asking to legalize cocaine production but coca plantation, as this is the case in Peru.


http://www.mamacoca.org/Octubre2004/index_en.htm

[enquirewithin]

Benga is correct. Cocoa tea is not a drug. It's a really good tea, which is good for digestion and altitude sickness, amongst other things. Chewed it helps with endurance, but is not harmful. Making coca (not cocaine production) is a much more constructive approach than spraying coca plantations. People can make a legitamate living.

[Alfa]

RUNNING ON THE COCA TICKET


Indian Farmer Campaigns For Presidency


La ASUNTA - The coca farmers on these steep mountain slopes have long felt their livelihood and Indian identity threatened by U.S.-backed efforts to uproot the crop that makes cocaine. Now they are pinning their hopes on one of their own: an Indian coca farmer who is the front-runner for Bolivia's presidency.


Evo Morales promises that if elected Dec. 4, he will decriminalize all coca farming. That would mean an end to a decade-old crop eradication program that has led to clashes between farmers and soldiers in which dozens have died.


He would also be Bolivia's first Indian president, and his leftist politics -- he's a close friend of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez -- would move yet another Latin American government leftward, following the paths of Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay.


A Morales victory may worry Washington, as well as many governments in Europe, the chief market for Bolivian cocaine. But the cocaleros, as coca farmers are known, are delighted at the prospect.


"Many Indians are very hopeful that these elections can change history," said Issaes Alvarez, 23, a cocalero and town councilor in La Asunta, in a coca-growing region northeast of La Paz, the capital. "If the eradication continues, there will be a massacre, there will be death, there will be violations of human rights."


Indians are the majority in this nation of 8.5 million. For centuries, those in the Andean highlands have chewed the coca leaf to fight hunger pangs and work up energy, used it in religious ceremonies and boiled it into medicinal tea. It's sold legally in supermarkets throughout Bolivia and Peru, and served as tea in cafes.


Coca is also the main ingredient of cocaine, and the Bolivian and U.S.


governments are convinced a growing amount is turned into drugs.


Bolivia, the world's No. 3 coca power after Colombia and Peru, produced as much as 118 tons of cocaine last year, up 35 percent from 2003, according to the latest U.N. World Drug Report.


Morales' family is one of many who migrated from Bolivia's poor western highlands, where it struggled along by herding llamas and growing potatoes. In the tropical Chapare region, in southeast Bolivia, Morales began growing coca, became a trade union official and, in 1993, president of the cocalero organization. He still operates a coca farm.


Chapare is his power base, and it was there that he led the often violent clashes with government forces over coca eradication. He was elected to Congress in 1997 and narrowly lost the presidential race to Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada in 2002. He was a key figure in protests that brought down Sanchez de Lozada in 2003 and his successor, Carlos Mesa, in June.


Opinion polls give him a slight edge over conservative former President Jorge Quiroga Ramirez.


"Thanks to coca, we've made it through the endless suffering caused by the white man's infamous war on drugs," Morales wrote on his Web site.


Meanwhile, pulling out plants by hand continues. Last year, troops uprooted 20,800 acres in Chapare -- 83 percent of the total.


Los Yungas, about 300 miles away, is the only region where growing is legal. The government lets cocaleros farm 29,600 acres, but the U.N.


Illicit Crop Monitoring Program estimates that an additional 13,000 acres are planted.


Now the government is looking at Los Yungas, too. Next month it will begin paying some farmers to destroy their plants and encourage them to switch crops voluntarily. Authorities promise there'll be no uprooting by force. But after the army enlarged a checkpoint to track illegal drugs out of Los Yungas, cocaleros threatened a blockade, fearing eradication.


Farmers say alternative crops such as coffee and bananas are harder to grow and transport, and fetch a lower price. They are staking their hopes on Morales -- and their future on coca.

[Alfa]

ADVOCATE FOR COCA LEGALIZATION LEADS IN BOLIVIAN RACE


CHIPIRIRI, Bolivia - In nearly 50 years of growing coca, Jose Torrico has seen army soldiers swarm across his fields to pull up his plants and heard threats from successive Bolivian governments determined to destroy his crop.


And like thousands of other coca farmers in this verdant, tropical region of central Bolivia, Mr. Torrico has refused to stop growing coca, the main ingredient in cocaine, even in the face of a relentless United States-financed effort to stamp it out.


Now, after years of persistence, he and his fellow farmers say they are eagerly anticipating the advent of a new era, one in which growing coca will finally be made legal. That is, they say, if Evo Morales is elected president on Dec. 18.


"It will be legalized," Mr. Torrico, 69, said with a broad smile as he showed off an orange nylon tarp loaded with freshly picked coca leaves. "This is good for us. Evo can do us favors."


Mr. Morales, a onetime leader of the coca growers federation, has steadily become revered by the left around Latin America as an unbending opponent of globalization. That is worrisome enough to the Bush administration. But more alarming to American officials is that a man who promotes coca farming - an industry central to cocaine production - may soon lead this Andean nation.


Rising in part on his pledge to legalize coca, Mr. Morales has become the top presidential candidate in Bolivia, and he now leads his closest adversary, Jorge Quiroga, an American-educated former president, by 33 to 27 percent, according to a poll conducted earlier this month.


Mr. Morales's ascent now, at a time when President Bush holds the lowest standing of any United States leader ever in Latin America, has intensified a clash of cultures with Washington that shows some of its deepest strains here.


For 20 years, Washington has sponsored efforts to eliminate coca as part of its fight against the illegal drug trade, and Bolivian governments have cooperated, eager for loans and other support from international lenders.


But today Washington-backed economic prescriptions are being rejected up and down the continent. And though the presidential race is tight, political analysts say that Mr. Morales may have the upper hand because of the potent anti-establishment fervor that has swept Bolivia, forcing out two presidents since 2003.


The growing appeal of Mr. Morales, who like most Bolivians is of Indian descent, runs deepest here in the Chapare, a New Jersey-size swath of rivers and thick jungle where coca cultivation has for years made Bolivia one of the world's top cocaine producers.


For thousands of years before that, however, Indian highlanders cultivated and chewed unprocessed coca to mitigate hunger and increase stamina. Though the Bolivian government has made growing coca largely illegal, the bright green leaves are taken for granted as part of Andean culture.


They are still bought and sold legally across Bolivia for chewing or making tea, with people young and old never giving it a second thought. Indeed, coca tea is sold in supermarkets and it is consumed across the Andes, even in elegant hotels and offices.


While acknowledging that cocaine trafficking is a problem, Mr.


Morales and the coca growers contend that most coca in the Chapare goes for traditional uses. Mr. Morales says that as president he would allow the "industrial" use of coca, to make everything from toothpaste to pharmaceuticals to soft drinks to be exported as far away as China and Europe.


"Coca and coca tea can be industrialized to circulate internationally," Mr. Morales said during an interview en route to a meeting with coca farmers. "How can we not legalize, since we are not hurting anybody?"


Erecting road blockades and battling soldiers, the coca growers have already won victories against the Bolivian government once thought impossible, most recently with a pact last fall that allowed each farmer to plant up to a third of an acre with coca in the Chapare.


Today the blue, black and white flags of Mr. Morales's party, the Movement Toward Socialism, flutter from houses in the Chapare, and Mr. Morales is treated like a conquering hero during his frequent visits.


"Evo came up from the bottom, first as a union leader, then as the leader of the coca growers federation," Rene Arandia, a coca growers leader, said as he took a break from a recent meeting between Mr.


Morales and several hundred cocaleros, as the growers are called, in the town of Lauca N. "And now he's on his way to becoming president of the republic. For us, this is a victory."


For Washington, however, it is little short of a nightmare. American officials and leading drug policy experts contend that, no matter what Mr. Morales and the coca growers say, most of the coca grown in the Chapare winds up as cocaine.


They also say that the recent pact permitting limited coca production in the Chapare has emboldened not only coca farmers, but cocaine traffickers.


"The results are pretty clear," said Eduardo Gamarra, the Bolivian-born director of Latin American studies at Florida International University, who has closely tracked the drug trade.


"Coca production has expanded considerably in Bolivia, and cocaine production has expanded considerably in Bolivia."


The United Nations said in a recent report that Bolivia produced up to 107 tons of cocaine last year, up 35 percent from 2003. The sudden increase has prompted warnings that cocaine traffickers are gaining ground after several years in which Bolivia's drug crops were substantially reduced.


"I don't think there's an attractive or viable future by becoming a narco-state," John Walters, the White House drug czar, said in an interview.


American officials, though, have watched helplessly as Mr. Morales's influence has grown. When they have offered opinions - like claims, with little proof, that Mr. Morales is linked to drug trafficking - it has only strengthened Mr. Morales's appeal.


"They accuse me of everything," Mr. Morales told a crowd on a recent campaign swing. "They say Evo is a drug trafficker, that Evo is a narco-terrorist. They don't know how to defend their position, so they attack us."


As president of the so-called Six Federations, a confederation of coca growers, he molded it into a powerful political force that propelled him to Congress.


Mr. Morales is well aware of the debt he owes his base. "If not for the Chapare, if not for the Six Federations," he says, "there would not be an Evo Morales."


Though 20,848 acres of coca was uprooted in eradication efforts in 2004, farmers keep planting it. They say they have no choice but to grow coca, since other crops fare poorly here and American-financed efforts to encourage them to switch to legal crops have stumbled.


Mr. Torrico's 20 acres are filled with crops like bananas, fruit, yucca, coffee and cacao. On a tour of his plot, though, he listed off the hurdles he faces making ends meet, from high transportation costs to bottom-basement prices for most of his crops.


Coca, on the other hand, earns him as much as $162 dollars a month.


It is not a windfall, even by Bolivian standards, but it is a living, he said.


"With coca, I was able to send my children to study," said Mr.


Torrico, who has eight children. "The other stuff, the citrus fruit, the bananas, give us nothing. Coca is what sustains us here."

[Woodman]

Legitimizing coca production will allow for an open exchange of financial
information at the source of cocaine production.

This method of commerce could spread to other areas of the cocaine market
and if it does, it would be difficult for CIA to hide money made from
trafficing cocaine.

As such, Mr. Morales is likely to either fall ill, suffer a serious accident, or
succumb to some pre-existing health problem.Edited by: Woodman

[Woodman]

Bolivian Activist Morales Wins Election as President (Update3)
Dec. 18 (Bloomberg) --



Bolivian Indian activist Evo Morales, who describes himself as the ``United States' worst nightmare,'' won election as president of South America's poorest nation.

Morales, 46, took 51 percent of the vote based on 80 percent of ballots counted, Bolivian station Unitel reported. Ex-President Jorge Quiroga, 45, the second-place finisher, conceded at a press conference in La Paz, Bolivia tonight. Polls had indicated no candidate would win the majority needed for a first-round victory.

An ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Morales will increase opposition to the U.S. in the region and discourage foreign investment, said Jose Cerritelli, an emerging-market debt trader at London-based broker ICAP Plc. Morales campaigned against U.S. efforts to eradicate production of coca and vowed to increase state control of the nation's natural-gas reserves, the largest in South America after Venezuela's.

Morales's victory may ``add new risk to investments in many emerging markets that lack political consensus,'' Cerritelli said in a telephone interview from New York. ``Chavez is the inspiration of Evo. This adds a huge chunk of the Latin American map to the Chavez axis.''

Fireworks

Thousands of Morales supporters chanting ``We feel it, Evo president,'' set off fireworks and danced in the streets of the eastern cities of Cochabamba and Santa Cruz as election results were announced.

Morales said at his final campaign rally Dec. 16 in Cochabamba, Bolivia that he was ``the United States' worst nightmare'' and pledged to oppose ``parasitic businesses that grow richer at the expense of the poor.'' Morales, who led protests to topple the government in 2003, today called on Bush to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq and close military bases in Latin America.

He also reiterated a pledge to endorse output of coca, a traditional medicine in Bolivia that is also used to make cocaine.

``There will be zero cocaine, zero drug trafficking, but not zero coca,'' Morales, an Aymara Indian and former llama herder, told reporters today in La Paz.

Bolivia's 9 million inhabitants are the poorest in the region. The country's gross domestic product totals $2,600 per capita, compared with $10,200 in Argentina and $7,600 in Brazil.

Economic growth slowed to 3.9 percent in the second quarter after a 4 percent expansion in the first quarter and 5.1 percent in the fourth quarter of last year. Investment in the oil and gas industry dropped 40 percent to $62.5 million in the first six months of 2005 from a year earlier.

More Jobs

Morales's supporters say he will provide more job opportunities for Bolivia's 4 million Aymara and Quechua Indians, whom Morales said in an interview Oct. 31 have been excluded from the benefits of tapping the country's natural resources, including tin and silver as well as oil and gas.

``There's no work for people of my skin color,'' said Hugo Mamani, a 25-year-old soft drinks street vendor of Aymara Indian origin, in an interview in La Paz. ``Evo will bring change for our people.''

About 50,000 police and soldiers were deployed along the main avenues of La Paz to help guard against protests during the election. More than 200 international monitors also are in Bolivia for the vote. Popular protests have toppled two governments in the country in the past two years.

``It wasn't easy to make it to Dec. 18,'' President Eduardo Rodriguez said during the day at a ceremony at the National Electoral Court in La Paz broadcast on television station Bolivision. ``We overcame many dangers along the way.''

The elections, originally scheduled for Dec. 4, were set back after Congress was unable to agree on congressional seat distribution. Rodriguez established seat allocation by decree last month.

New Congress

The nation's 3.6 million voters also elected the 157-member Congress and prefects for the country's nine departments. Morales' Movement Toward Socialism won party 78 seats in congress, one short of a majority, and two prefect's seats, according to Unitel.

Morales, who would be Bolivia's fifth president since 2002, said in the Oct. 31 interview in La Paz he wants Venezuela's state oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela SA, to replace the dozen multinationals, including Irving, Texas-based Exxon Mobil Corp. and Reading, England-based BG Group Plc, which will have to renegotiate exploration and production contracts under a law passed in May.

An accord with Venezuela's oil company would give Bolivia's government more income from gas sales, enabling it to boost spending, according to Morales. Venezuela is the world's fifth- largest oil exporter.

``We could definitely see a greater role of the state, driving out some foreign companies,'' Theresa Paiz-Fredel, a sovereign debt analyst at the Fitch Inc. ratings service, said in a phone interview from New York.

Protests

The year after losing the 2002 election, Morales headed anti- government protests in which at least 70 people died and forced President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, 75, from office. In May, Morales again led protests, prompting Congress to hike royalties on oil and gas output.

President Carlos Mesa, 52, resigned in June as protests continued. His successor, Rodriguez, 49, called elections for this month.

Supporters of Quiroga, nicknamed ``Tuto,'' said Morales will bring greater instability.

``We don't know how long Evo would last as president or if his own people will eventually kick him out,'' 46-year-old waiter Victor Mendoza said in an interview in La Paz.

Quiroga, a former IBM executive and finance minister who studied at Texas A&M University, said Morales' policies and anti- U.S. sentiment will scare away investment and fail to spur economic growth.

`Bare Minimum'

``Bolivia's missed the boat in many ways,'' Fitch's Paiz- Fredel said. ``Oil companies are investing the bare minimum.''

Rodriguez replaced his energy minister last month after talks to renegotiate contracts with eight companies, including Exxon Mobil and BG Group, broke down. The companies are demanding that the government honor bilateral investment-protection agreements.

BG spokesman Neil Burrows said Dec. 13 the company remains committed to Bolivia, despite some concern with legislation. Exxon Mobil spokesman Len D'Eramo said his company wants to do business ``under attractive fiscal terms and in a fair and equitable investment climate.''

Lula

A dialogue with Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and a realization that Bolivia needs foreign investment to tap its reserves will have a moderating influence on Morales, said investors such as James Barrineau at Alliance Capital Management LP in New York.

``Cool heads will prevail before kicking foreign investors out of the country,'' said Barrineau, senior vice president responsible for Latin American economic analysis at Alliance Capital, which manages $163 billion in fixed income securities and had $8 billion in emerging market debt as of Dec. 1.

Morales said in the interview as president he would press the Inter-American Development Bank and other lending agencies to forgive his country's $4.9 billion of international debt, equivalent to 60 percent of GDP.

Before the vote, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Rodrigo de Rato urged Bolivia's next president to hunt for private capital to tap the country's gas.

``To mobilize those natural resources, the Bolivian authorities will need financial resources that the country doesn't have today,'' de Rato said at a Dec. 16 news conference in Washington.


To contact the reporter on this story:
Alex Emery in Lima at aemery1@bloomberg.net

[Nagognog2]

Now Pat Robertson will declare Morales to be in league with Satan and send Henry Kissinger after him with a sawed-off shotgun. I smell another Allende in 1973.

[enquirewithin]

Welcome to "America's worst nightmare"!

[Alfa]

BOLIVIA'S NEWLY ELECTED LEADER MAPS HIS SOCIALIST AGENDA
LA PAZ, Bolivia -After his decisive win in the election for president on Sunday, the Socialist indigenous leader, Evo Morales, vowed Monday to respect private property but repeated his pledge to increase state control over the energy industry and reverse an American-backed crusade against coca, the plant used to make cocaine.
Wearing his trademark black jeans and tennis shoes, Mr. Morales arrived in La Paz to begin laying the groundwork for an economic and political transformation that he says will give voice to the poor, indigenous majority that fueled his campaign. "The voice of the people is the voice of God," he said late Sunday.
Mr. Morales, 46, a former small-town trumpeter and soccer player who turned a movement of coca farmers into the country's most potent political force, stunned his countrymen on Sunday by burying seven challengers in the most important election since Bolivia's transition from dictatorship to democracy a generation ago.
Unofficial results showed that Mr. Morales won up to 52 percent of the vote to become the first Indian president in Bolivia's 180-year history, a victory that solidifies a continent-wide shift of governments to the left.
"For the first time a candidate wins with 50 percent plus 1, and it's the biggest margin between the first two finishers," said Gonzalo Chavez, an economist and political analyst at Catholic University in La Paz. "This is a democratic revolution. The voting was tremendously strong, and signifies a tremendous demand for change in Bolivia."
President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and President Nestor Kirchner of Argentina, two of the continent's leading left-leaning leaders, quickly offered their congratulations, as did Chile, Spain and the European Union.
The United States tried to discredit Mr. Morales in the past by alleging ties to drug trafficking, and ended up increasing his popularity. The administration offered cautious congratulations to Mr.
Morales and to the Bolivian people "for carrying out a successful election."
But American officials acknowledged that they viewed his presidency with serious concern, while insisting that they would wait to see how he actually governed.
A State Department official noted that Bolivia had experienced several years of chaos in government, "and now they have chosen a leader and still have a constitutional process." adding, "We have to respect that, whatever else Morales has said." He declined to be identified, citing department policy.
Mr. Morales's party, the Movement Toward Socialism, won nearly half the 27 seats in the Senate and up to half the 130 seats in the lower house. Unofficial figures showed the MAS, as the party is known, also won at least two of nine governorships.
Podemos, the party of Jorge Quiroga, a former president, finished a distant second. Three other traditional parties practically disappeared from the national scene.
The MAS is now poised to push through legislation tightening the terms on British Gas, Repsol YPF of Spain, Petrobras of Brazil and other foreign energy companies operating here. Mr. Morales has promised to "nationalize" the lucrative natural gas industry, not by expropriating it, but rather by expanding state control over operations, policy and the commercialization of gas.
"The government will exercise its right to state ownership of Bolivia's hydrocarbons," he said Monday.
Foreign oil companies have in the past said that financially onerous terms could prompt them to cut back on investments, which have fallen from $608 million in 1998 to $200 million last year. But on Monday, Ronald Fessy, spokesman for the Bolivian Hydrocarbon Chamber, said it was too soon to predict.
"Governments have to be seen in action, not in times of campaigning,"
he said. "We hope that this government will work to achieve scenarios that would lead to policies that are good for investments that this industry and Bolivia urgently need."
Mr. Morales has also pledged to reverse Bolivia's longstanding alliance with the United States in the generation-long fight against drugs, which has greatly curtailed the coca planting but has set off politically volatile uprisings by coca farmers. Mr. Morales and his followers say much of Bolivia's coca goes for traditional uses, to be chewed or used in tea, while Washington says most of it becomes cocaine.
"The fight against drug trafficking is a false pretext for the United States to install military bases," Mr. Morales told reporters on Monday.
Even with the mandate from voters, Mr. Morales is not expected to have an easy time in a country rocked by years of social protests fueled by inequality and poverty.
He will be under pressure to ensure that the country's budding exports of textiles and furniture continue, while answering to indigenous leaders who seek radical change. Some social movements have vowed to apply pressure. The Bolivian Workers Central, the country's largest labor confederation, said the government would have to expropriate private energy installations from private companies, or face the kind of protests that forced out two presidents since 2003.
"He has to make changes or he falls," Jaime Solares, the head of the confederation, said in an interview.
In the main square of La Paz, where one president was lynched on a lamppost in 1946, most people seemed tired of protests and wanted to give Mr. Morales a chance .
"We have to give him some time," said Martin Bautista, 35, a truck driver. "I feel happy because here a lot of things are about to change."

[Woodman]

Originally Posted by Alfa

BOLIVIA'S NEWLY ELECTED LEADER MAPS HIS SOCIALIST AGENDA
LA PAZ, Bolivia -
...The United States tried to discredit Mr. Morales in the past by alleging ties to drug trafficking, and ended up increasing his popularity. The administration offered cautious congratulations to Mr.
Morales and to the Bolivian people "for carrying out a successful election."
But American officials acknowledged that they viewed his presidency with serious concern, while insisting that they would wait to see how he actually governed.
A State Department official noted that Bolivia had experienced several years of chaos in government, "and now they have chosen a leader and still have a constitutional process." adding, "We have to respect that, whatever else Morales has said.

It would appear that if Bolivia legitimizes cocaine production, it could present a serious threat to drug trafficking revenues that CIA generates in order to fund it's black op's projects.

I just wonder what will happen first: will Morales suffer some unfortunate fate, or will regional instability spill over into other sectors and become widespread, like Nicaragua?

Either way, Morales will most certainly NOT be allowed to move ahead with his coca agenda, at least not to any degree that would inpact cocaine commerce outside of Bolivia.

[Sitbcknchill]

FIVE centuries of white rule in Bolivia have ended with the election of the country's first indigenous head of state.

Evo Morales, of the Movement towards Socialism ( MAS ), won more than 50 per cent of the vote in Sunday's election, far outstripping all predictions. In his unprecedented first-round victory he left his nearest rival for the presidency, the pro-US Jorge "Tuto" Quiroga, more than 20 percentage points behind. Addressing Bolivia's main indigenous groups during his acceptance speech, Senor Morales, who is an Aymaran Indian, said: "I want to say to the Aymaras, Quechuas, Guaranies and Chiriguanos that for the first time we are going to be President." Thousands took to the streets to celebrate. Su pporters crammed into trucks and drove around La Paz chanting "Evo to the palace, Tuto to Washington".

Senor Quiroga, a former IBM executive, conceded defeat once it became clear that the margin of Senor Morales's victory was such that the traditional parties would be unable to overturn it by a vote in Congress. In Bolivia, if no candidate passes 50 per cent plus one vote in the initial round the decision passes to Congress.

Senor Morales built his campaign on a promise to break the power of the European elite that has run Bolivia since independence from Spain in 1825 and which is seen by many as having ransacked the country's vast mineral wealth and left its people impoverished.

Senor Morales has pledged to nationalise the country's huge gas reserves and call a constituent assembly to write a new constitution that will reflect the indigenous majority. Ethnic Aymara and Quechua people make up a majority of the 9.3 million population.

He has also promised to ally Bolivia with other regional left-wing leaders such as Presidents Chavez of Venezuela and Castro of Cuba. Senor Chavez was one of the first to telephone to congratulate Senor Morales, whose victory continues Latin America's shift to the Left. The outcome of the election will be closely watched in Peru, which is to vote for a new president in April. Ollanta Humala, a nationalistic former army officer, has made strong progress in opinion polls there by appealing to the country's indigenous majority.

Senor Morales, who used to lead a coca-growers' union, has promised to legalise the cultivation of coca, the primary ingredient in cocaine -- to the horror of the US, which has pursued a big coca eradication effort in Bolivia in recent years. Bolivia is the world's third largest producer of cocaine.

Senor Morales is the first presidential candidate to win more than 50 per cent of the vote since democracy returned to Bolivia in 1982. In more than doubling his share of the vote since the last presidential elections in 2002, he reached out to sectors beyond the poor indigenous voters who form his party's base. In La Paz's middle-class neighbourhood of Sopocachi, many white voters said that they were voting for Senor Morales for the first time after losing faith in the traditional political class. "For 180 years since independence we have been governed by 'the gentlemen' and what did we get? Nothing!" said Gabriella Sanchez.

The party did less well than its leader in several other races also decided on Sunday. It is likely to be a minority in the Senate and will struggle to form a majority in the lower house.

The most significant source of confrontation in a country that has seen virtually no dialogue between the poor majority and the small but powerful elite could be the flight of capital. Fewer than 4,000 people control 80 per cent of all deposits. Gilberto Hurtado, an economist, said: "The financial system doesn't share Evo's vision and you cannot be President without a financial system ."

[Sitbcknchill]

BOLIVIAN ELECTION RESULT MAKES US ANXIOUS

Bolivia has its first indigenous Indian president after a landslide victory that leaves relations with the United States at a historic low and Washington's war on drugs in tatters.

Evo Morales, 46, who was the clear favourite, far exceeded expectations, with exit polls and quick counts of the ballots showing him passing the 50 per cent barrier.

He will be the first president to do so since the country returned to democracy in 1982.

"We have won and now we are going to change this country," said Mr Morales, surrounded by delirious supporters. "All the majority together. The people are finally in power."

Mr Morales is expected to be confirmed as president by Bolivia's congress in January.

Fireworks blazed over La Paz, many coming from the poor city of El Alto which sits over the capital, a stronghold of Mr Morales's Movement Towards Socialism ( MAS ) party. He enjoys much support from Bolivia's Indian population, who make up just over half of the country's 9.4 million people.

Indigenous people have taken control of their own destiny. It is a great day for Bolivia - Jose Tapia, student

"It has finally happened," said Jose Tapia, 22, a student and fervent MAS supporter. "Indigenous people have taken control of their own destiny. It is a great day for Bolivia."

The key issue for many Bolivian voters was the nationalisation of the country's oil and gas. Bolivia sits astride the largest known deposits of natural gas in South America, but these are mostly under the control of foreign companies, among them British Gas. Mr Morales has pledged to rip up existing contracts and said that while he will stop short of confiscation, everything has to be renegotiated.

"We will not extort foreign companies," he said. "But the Bolivian people demand we take control of our natural resources."

But the overwhelming victory could push his reforms farther than originally planned. A euphoric Carlos Villegas, MAS's main economic adviser, told The Scotsman in the middle of celebrations at the party's headquarters, that the nationalisation drive will now be more ambitious. "The state will recover 100 per cent ownership over the hydrocarbon industry. We'll offer multinationals [including British Gas and BP] the option to recover their investments and generate a reasonable return, not the outrageous amounts they're making right now."

As he spoke, some 300 MAS followers outside the building waved party flags and shouted "The people united will never be defeated."

With expectations running extremely high in the country - which has suffered more than 160 coups since independence in 1825 - Mr Morales will soon face serious challenges.

We will not extort foreign companies, but the Bolivian people demand we take control of our natural resources - Evo Morales

For one, MAS lacks trained personnel to run the government. According to Mr Villegas, "99.99 per cent of us haven't got any public management experience", even though "with our will and determination we'll be able to do the job".

Also, one of MAS's star initiatives - enshrining Indian rights in a rewritten constitution next summer - may soon run into trouble, given Indian groups' conflicting demands.

While the nationalisation issue most concerns Britain, drugs are central to the US relationship with the poorest South American nation.

The State Department issued a veiled warning when its spokeswoman, Amanda Rogers-Harper, said: "As with all nations, the quality of our relationship will depend on the convergence of our interests, and that includes counter-narcotics issues.

"We continue to support the government of Bolivia's long-standing counter-narcotics policy, and we expect the next government to honour its international commitments."

Bolivia is the third largest producer of cocaine in the world, after Colombia and Peru. For many rural voters, particularly the farmers of Chapare, from where Mr Morales comes, the key issue was the decriminalisation of the growing of coca. Coca is an everyday feature of Bolivian life. Many people chew it to keep working at the high altitudes and all foreign visitors to La Paz, the Americas' highest capital, are offered coca tea to help ward off altitude sickness.

At the moment only 12,000 hectares of coca crops are legal, the amount calculated to supply traditional demand for leaves. Mr Morales has said this is not enough and more effort must be made to industrialise the legal products derived from the coca leaf. He insists a study must be commissioned to evaluate coca demand. Meanwhile, coca growing will be decriminalised.

Cocaine, which is the refinement and crystallisation of a coca extract, is not used in Bolivia and is a foreign invention. However much of Bolivia's coca production is sold to drugs traffickers, producing 90 tonnes of cocaine a year. Brazil recently expressed concern about Bolivian-sourced cocaine on its streets. The US fears that Mr Morales' plans to legalise coca production will create a bonanza for drugs traffickers to buy, undermining the multi-billion-dollar war on cocaine.

Also of deep concern to the White House is Mr Morales's friendship with outspoken critics of the Bush administration such as Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Cuba's Fidel Castro. Mr Morales has said he will accept no bullying from the White House and wants dialogue, "not a relationship of submission".

Washington now has few friends in South America. Only Colombia's Alvaro Uribe is a stalwart ally and even he seems to be distancing himself, last week rebuking the American ambassador to Bogota for interfering in internal affairs.

The rest of South America divides into those fervently opposed to George Bush, headed by Mr Chavez, and other left-wing governments like that of Brazil, which keep Washington at arm's length. The US looks to have lost control of its "back yard".

Source: Scotsman (UK)
Copyright: The Scotsman Publications Ltd 2005

[Alfa]

CAN EVO MORALES FOSTER A WORLD COCA MARKET?
The resounding election victory in Bolivia of coca grower and indigenous leader Evo Morales clearly troubles U.S. drug warriors. But coca advocates and some Latin American media see an opportunity for "Mama Coca" to emerge as a legitimate economic resource for South America's poorest nation.
The U.S. style of fighting the drug war stresses plant eradication. As part of his left-leaning platform, Morales has vowed to decriminalize the harvest of the coca plant, which can be used to manufacture cocaine but has been grown and chewed traditionally in the Andean corridor for millennia.
"It's not at all far-fetched to imagine that China and Europe could be great markets for coca tea," writes Jose Mirtenbaum, a sociologist and coca expert, in Bolivian alternative bimonthly El Juguete Rabioso.
Mirtenbaum writes that even U.S. space agency NASA has experimented with coca gum to prevent dizziness in astronauts, and that coca has hundreds of possible applications--he cites high-chlorophyll toothpaste, pharmaceuticals, an alternative to chew tobacco, anti-diabetics and nutritional supplements. But stigmatization and prohibition have prevented Bolivian science from researching coca's potential, Mirtenbaum says.
For advocates, coca is the ginseng of the future. Their hope, and that of the highly organized cocaleros, as Bolivia's coca growers are known, is that with their man Morales as its spokesman the leaf might finally clear the legal and political hurdles (and prejudices) that block the creation of a legitimate world coca market.
Some call for an amendment to enshrine coca's sacred status in Bolivia's constitution, which will undergo revision.
"Coca is Bolivia's natural resource, just like gas, oil or water,"
said Leonilda Zurita, president of a women coca producers' federation, speaking at an international coca conference in Bolivia in November.
"Therefore it ought to be protected in our constitution when we re-write it next year," said Zurita, as quoted in The Narco News Bulletin Web site, which tracks the drug war in Latin America.
Morales has sought to reassure the world he won't harbor drug runners.
But he also was emphatic in making the distinction between cocaine, made via an involved chemical processing of the leaf, and the plant, which is sacred in the Andes.
"Coca is not cocaine," Morales said. "The producer of coca leaf is not a drug trafficker and the consumer is not an addict, this must be clear."
Under the previous government of President Carlos Mesa (who resigned in June), Morales and the coca growers had already achieved a small-scale decriminalization of coca cultivation. Since October 2004, coca growers in the Chapare region, where Morales began his political career fighting U.S.-backed, militarized eradication programs, have been allowed to grow coca legally. Each grower was allowed a small, traditional plot called a cato (less than a half-acre).
This was a huge victory, because until then, the government's position (in line with Washington, D.C.'s) was that virtually all Chapare coca was being funneled to illegal trade. As part of the agreement, it was decided that a civilian-government commission would undertake an exhaustive study of the country's legal coca market.
Morales says he will push for the study to occur soon, and determine whether coca acreage needs to be expanded further. He also has promised a referendum to ask Bolivians how the coca issue should be managed. He says Bolivia will become an advocate for the decriminalization of coca leaf at the United Nations, whose drug conventions are the framework for global narcotics control.
Elsewhere in the Andes, the alliance between coca and muscular Indian political movements is increasingly powerful, and could add regional muscle to the call for coca's legitimization on a global scale.
Humberto Cholango, of Ecuadorean indigenous movement Ecuarunari, congratulated Morales on his victory in an op-ed on Bolivian news Web site Bolpress.com. "(The result) is a blow to the U.S. government because it tried to ban the planting of coca in Bolivia," Cholango writes.
In Peru, nationalist Ollanta Humala is a strong contender ahead of April 2006 presidential elections. There are rumors that Humala has offered coca growers' leader Nancy Obregon the vice presidential nod, according to The Narco News Bulletin. Humala has publicly offered room on his congressional slate to coca growers, who overwhelmingly support his candidacy.
The coca decriminalization debate has echoed as far north as Mexico, a country convulsed by the open warring of cocaine cartels that manage the flow of cocaine northward to the United States.
"The international prohibition on the international commerce of coca-derived products has no scientific foundation," writes Ethan A.
Nadelmann, director of the U.S.-based Drug Policy Alliance, in an op-ed series published by left-leaning Mexico City daily La Jornada.
Nadelmann asks: "Is there an intermediate point between open prohibition, which has caused so much destruction, and a frank legalization that does not seem politically possible in the near future?"
Bolivia's immediate political future will answer that question.

[Sitbcknchill]

Thanks for the merge alfa, I didn't know this was here.

[Alfa]

BOLIVIANS WAITING FOR WORD ON WHAT TO DO WITH COCA
President-Elect Pledged to End Policy Against It
CHIMORE, Bolivia -- The day after Evo Morales' victory in Bolivia's presidential election last week, government counternarcotics teams were streaming back from patrols into their base in the Chapare jungle. Col. Rosalio Alvarez Claros, commander of this base, watched them from his small office window.
"We will continue with our work here as usual, until someone tells us to stop," he said. "And that hasn't happened yet."
It might soon.
Morales, 46, a former coca farmer who got his start as a political leader of the cocaleros, or coca growers, campaigned on the promises of decriminalizing all cultivation of coca, the raw material for cocaine, and ending eradication efforts. He has reiterated his intention of fulfilling those pledges when he takes office next month.
Doing so would be a slap in the face to Washington, which gives Bolivia -- the world's third-largest coca producer, after Colombia and Peru -- $150 million a year in aid. Two-thirds of the money goes toward eradication of coca leaf, destruction of cocaine laboratories and encouraging alternative agricultural projects for coca growers.
Morales is the latest Latin American leader to come to power on an anti-American platform. He's friendly toward Venezuelan President Hugo Chvez, who commonly ridicules U.S. policies in Latin America, and Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Morales will travel today to Cuba to visit with Castro.
Morales partied until dawn Thursday at a victory celebration with coca growers, the Associated Press reported. "We are winning the green battle: The coca leaf is beating the North American dollar,"
Morales told supporters.
His coca campaign platform appealed to farmers and tapped into anti-American sentiment that views U.S. drug policies in the region as imperialism.
"We are sustained by coca," says coca farmer Leandro Valencia, 63, who admits that his plots -- in the valley near Morales' hometown of Villa Catorce de Septiembre -- are illegal. "I put my three children through school on coca money. ... You talk about drug problems, but whose problem is that? I care about money for my family."
By growing coca, Valencia says, he can make "10 times" what he would growing pineapples or yucca, a staple crop here.
"It is the foreigners who came in here and started tempting us with big and easy money," Valencia says.
Morales has said his position on coca growing does not mean he intends to be soft on drug trafficking. "Yes to coca, no to cocaine"
was one of his campaign slogans. He has suggested that the additional coca cultivated would be absorbed by the local, legal market, or alternatively would jump-start a legal export industry for products made with coca such as tea, wine, soft drinks and toothpaste. During the campaign, he was vague about how to create such an export market.
The movement to legalize coca growing may be catching on elsewhere in the region. In neighboring Peru, where more than 123,000 acres are planted in coca, a rising star in politics these days is Ollanta Humala, a populist, anti-U.S. leader in Morales' mold who has also vowed to decriminalize coca growing if elected president in April.
"There is as radical a coca movement here as in Bolivia, and the two coordinate," says Jaime Antesana Rivera, an expert on drug trafficking at Lima's Peruvian Institute of Economics and Politics.
Morales' position on coca production has not been consistent. During the campaign, he advocated total legalization, but after the Dec. 18 vote, he suggested the government might put limits on cultivation. He has not changed his vow to stop the eradication program.
It is also not clear whether Morales will actually follow through on all his campaign rhetoric.
The United States is reluctant to comment on Morales or his policies before his inauguration Jan. 22. "We will make an evaluation of what kind of relationship we will have with Bolivia based on the drug policies Bolivia's new president pursues," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack says.
Bolivia grows about 67,000 acres of coca a year, according to Col.
Luis Caballero Tirado, head of Bolivia's special counternarcotics police force. Under an agreement with the Bolivian government, 38,000 acres, mainly in the Yungas region, are cultivated legally and used for local, legal, consumption. The remainder of the acreage is illegal coca farms.
Revered culturally by Bolivian Indians, the coca leaf is chewed to ward off hunger and fight illness and is used in traditional ceremonies. Even some of the anti-narcotics special forces chew it.
Legal uses of the leaf also include tea and medicinal pastes.
Coca tea, for example, is sold in markets and served at tourist hotel breakfasts. The coca liquid, says Sdenka Silva, owner of a coca museum in La Paz, "produces an anesthetic effect in the mouth, light euphoria, and sensation of increased awareness and energy."
Coca leaves can be more profitably made into cocaine. Typically the product is sold to middlemen who transport it to jungle laboratories, where it is mashed and processed into a cocaine paste. It is then moved out of the region to more sophisticated labs, where it is condensed and further refined.
The coca growers here are paid $800 to $1,000 for providing enough leaves to make a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of cocaine paste, Caballero says. Once processed, the price of that kilo of paste cocaine goes up to $2,500, he says.
Some of the cocaine from here goes through Mexico to the USA, but most, Caballero says, moves through Brazil to Europe.
The U.S. State Department estimates that Bolivia produces and sends
71 tons of cocaine to the world market annually. In 2005, the Bolivian military uprooted and destroyed 19,800 acres of coca fields.
The Bolivian counternarcotics forces, trained by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, destroyed 3,888 jungle cocaine labs, confiscated nearly 50 tons of cocaine paste and arrested 4,208 suspected drug traffickers, according to the Bolivian government.
U.S. DEA agents are in Bolivia training police and military counternarcotics forces, but they do not participate in raids.
"We catch more, they produce more, then we catch more," Alvarez says.
"The drug traffickers have more money and better technology than we do. Look, our mobile (phones) don't even get reception when it rains.
So, who's winning? It is hard to say."

[Alfa]

BOLIVIA'S PRESIDENT-TO-BE MAPS COCA PLAN
LA PAZ, Bolivia -- Bolivia's soon-to-be president, Evo Morales, a coca farmer under pressure to crack down on cocaine, pledged Tuesday to keep controls on coca but said he will study expanding the area where it can be legally grown.
Morales also called on the United States to work with him to develop better ways of ending drug trafficking while preserving the traditional market for coca in his Andean nation, where people have chewed the plant to stave off hunger and used it as a medicine for thousands of years.
"There won't be free cultivation of the coca leaf," said Morales, who still has his own coca plot and came to prominence leading fellow growers -- "cocaleros" -- in fighting U.S.-backed efforts to eradicate coca in Bolivia, the No. 3 supplier of cocaine to the United States after Colombia and Peru.
Morales' apparently wide victory margin in Sunday's election virtually assures that Congress will declare him president in January, even if he falls shy of the majority needed to win outright in the eight-man race. And a majority win appears increasingly likely, since Morales already had slightly more than 50 percent Tuesday with half the vote -- including much of his rural support -- still uncounted, according to official results. His opponents have conceded.
The U.S.-led war on drugs inadvertently helped bring Morales, a leftist Aymara Indian, to power. The battle against coca eradication that he led helped mobilize Indian organizations angered by poverty and political domination by a rich elite.
Indians are a majority in Bolivia, but never has the nation had an Indian president.