La Paz, Bolivia--7/13/01. While traveling through South America recently, my wife and I crossed the border from Peru into Bolivia. Within the first 75 miles we became stuck in a nearly four-hour shutdown of the Pan-American Highway miles north of La Paz. This was just one in a month-long series of highway shutdowns/blockades throughout the northern part of the country carried out by peasants, most of whom are Indiginos (Indians), protesting the Bolivian government's policy of coca eradication.

This policy is strongly supported and funded by the United States through Plan Columbia. Such support from the US has been ongoing since the Nixon Administration, but has accelerated greatly since 1997, and has expanded further under Plan Columbia. Many Americans know that the plan is sending $1.3 billion to aid the efforts of the Colombian government to defeat guerrillas who allegedly protect and profit from the international coca trade--a policy whose cost and possibilities of success are a source of contention.

Beyond this, however, we are also sending increasing millions of dollars to Andean governments, especially Bolivia, in order to convince (coerce?) them to greatly decrease coca production. Since 1997, production has decreased by about 75% in Bolivia, almost eliminating that part of the crop which goes to the international cocaine trade. Now, however, we want Bolivia to further decrease coca production.

This is what the peasants are protesting, because hundreds of thousands of them make their living from coca cultivation for domestic Bolivian consumption. In Bolivia, as well as in Peru and Ecuador, coca leaves are grown legally (although cocaine--chemically synthesized from coca--is illegal), and have been for centuries. They've have been used for thousands of years. Bolivians use it the way we drink coffee and tea. In fact, tea is made from it in the Andes, with about as much effect on the human nervous system or as much social disruption as coffee in the US. Coca has long been chewed in small amounts in the high Andes in order for daily work to proceed. It is therefore an important domestic cash crop.

Beyond this, the Andean Indians still consider it a sacred crop granted to them by the Gods. Yet, American policymakers seem wholly indifferent to these beliefs. Our government's only concern is to eliminate world coca production, so as to lessen North American cocaine consumption and abuse. (Imagine if China demanded that our farmers stop growing tobacco because millions of their citizens smoke too much.)

The protesting Bolivian peasants understand, and are reacting to, what any thoughtful North American already knows: that cocaine abuse is a North American problem--not a South American one. We should accept that fact and not push the problem off on the poorest inhabitants of our hemisphere. At the minimum we should agree to favor imports of agricultural products from Andean nations, so as to allow peasants whose livelihood is threatened some alternative crops for income. (This, however, conflicts with our present globilization philosophy of free trade--but that's another issue). Better yet, we would have much better success spending Bolivia's Plan Columbia money--as well as the high cost of incarceration of small time drug users--on reducing our demand, by funding many more drug treatment programs and more drug education, such as in hospitals, schools, and in places of employment. We need to accept that we have the social problems that lead many to cocaine abuse and addiction, and not push the problem onto the poorest and most defenseless of South Americans.

Long ago we denied Indians of North America their birthrights. Let's not deny the same to their (and our) brothers and sisters in South America, just because we lack self control.