Coca eradication

Coca eradication is a strategy strongly promoted by the US government as part of the war on drugs to eliminate the cultivation of coca, a plant whose leaves are used in the manufacture of cocaine. This strategy is being pursued in the coca-growing regions of Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia where it is highly controversial because of its environmental and its socioeconomic impact.

Table of contents 1 Environmental impact 2 Socioeconomic impact 3 Geopolitical issues 4 External links

Environmental impact

Plots denuded of coca plants by mechnical (burning or cutting) or chemical (herbicides) means are abandoned and cause serious problems with erosion in seasonal rains. In addition, the US has also been involved in the development and application of biologically-designed fungi to wipe out coca, which pose serious hazards to humans and other plant species besides coca. Moreover, such activities are potentially illegal under the Biological Weapons Convention[?].

Socioeconomic impact

In the sierra of Peru, Bolivia, and northern Argentina, coca has been consumed (by chewing) for thousands of years as a stimulant; it also has symbolic value. The sale and consumption of coca is legal in these countries; there is a legal and legitimate market for it. As such, total eradication of coca (the stated goal of past and present US adminstrations) is neither desirable nor feasible; it would be comparable to demanding France eradicate its grapevines[?] or America destroy its tobacco fields.

With the growth of the Colombian drug cartels in the 1980s, coca leaf become a valuable agricultural commodity, particularly in Peru and Bolivia, where the quality of coca is higher than in Colombia. Many poor campesinos, driven from the central highlands by lack of land or loss of jobs, migrated to the lowlands and valleys of the eastern Andes where they turned to the cultivation of coca.

To counter this development, the US government, through its foregn aid agency USAid[?] has promoted a policy of crop substition, whereby coca cultivation is replaced by coffee, banana, pineapple, palm heart, and crops suitable for a tropical climate. Prices, however, for these products are extremely low; moreover, many remote coca growing areas lack adequate infrastructure to get such perishable products to market on time. The price of coca, on the other hand, has remained high. Moreover, when dried, coca stores well and is easily transportable.

To date, virtually all the crop substition programs implemented in Peru and Bolivia have failed, primarily because the campesinos are not guaranteed an adequate price for alternative products.

Geopolitical issues

Given the above-mentioned considerations, many critics of coca eradication believe the fundamental goal of the US government is to constrict the flow of income to the Colombian Marxist rebel movement, FARC, which is heavily funded by illegal drug trade, rather than combatting drugs per se. Few if any such critics have anything favorable to say about the illicit drug trade, but they point out that, through coca eradication policies, poor campesinos bear the brunt of efforts to combat it, while North American and European chemical companies (which supply chemicals needed in the manufacture of cocaine) and banks (which annually whitewash[?] hundreds of billions of dollars illegal revenues) continue to profit from the trade.

External links

• Project Sunshine (http://www.sunshine-project.org/)
• Narco News (http://www.sunshine-project.org)