In the popular Villa El Carmen and Villa Fatima neighborhoods in Bolivia’s capital, La Paz, clashes between coca producers and police have been frequent for about a month. The issue was highlighted this Monday (29) in the newspaper Le Figaro.
Bolivians chew or drink coca tea every day during religious ceremonies or public occasions. The so-called “holy leaf” is grown by about 70,000 families and includes people responsible for transportation and marketing, a group with significant political weight.
Figures for coca production in Bolivia are unclear. The UN drug and organized crime agency estimates that coca generates between US$365 million and US$449 million in official markets. However, the informal market is the rule, and it is estimated that half of the crops pass through unregulated channels and are diverted to drug trafficking.
Coca production and commercialization in Bolivia is a state affair. Until then, only two associations controlled the factory’s market: Adepcoca and Chapare in the central region of the country. But a union-led split split Villa Fatima-based Adepcoca. The opposition gave birth to a new unity.
The emergence of a new domain to manage the lucrative coca market has brought the conflict to the streets. “When the government says it’s an internal conflict, it’s not true,” says Huascar Pacheco, a researcher. “There are clear rules that must be respected,” he explains. “It’s been a government strategy for nearly a decade: when a social organization gets in the way, the ruling party creates a parallel leadership,” he adds.
coke and power
Research and most of the Bolivian media accuse the leaders of the new union of being supporters of the current president Luis Arce. The production of Chapare is led by former president Evo Morales, to whom Arce is close and is Minister of Economy. A lawyer for the Adepcoca union speculates that the former president wanted to reach out to the head of the La Paz-based union organization to erase all clues about what happened at Chapare, where 94% of production did not go through the official market and 94% of production was sold. seen as one of the cores of the drug trade.
source: Noticias
