The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) will operate again in Bolivia after being expelled in 2008, along with the United States embassy, by the government of Evo Morales. This is one of the first decisions of the new president, Rodrigo Paz, announced by the Minister of Government (Interior), Marco Antonio Oviedo. “We are going to have the collaboration of several international agencies, among them, obviously, the DEA. Because drug trafficking and terrorism do not belong to a single nation,” he said on Wednesday at an official event.
Oviedo primarily targeted the coca-producing region known as the Cochabamba or Chapare tropics, Morales’s political stronghold and with the least regulation on leaf production. The coca growers in the area warned that they will not allow the installation of the international agency.
The return of cooperation is part of the escalation of violence that the country has suffered this year due to organized crime and the reopening of diplomatic relations between Bolivia and the United States after Paz came to power. The Vice Minister of Controlled Substances, Ernesto Justiniano, maintained that the presence of the international anti-drug agency will take place “as soon as possible”: “Without the DEA we retreated in the fight, fighting blindfolded. The problem with drug trafficking in Bolivia is that large quantities of cocaine are produced and it is not known how much, nor which organizations handle it.” The support, he assured, will be technological, logistical and training.
Although the DEA had been cooperating with the Andean country since the 1970s, its presence intensified during the 1980s and 1990s, with the rise of drug trafficking and the “war on drugs” policy promoted by Washington. At that time, coca leaf production increased drastically in Chapare. Minister Oviedo maintains that everything harvested in that region has an illegal destination and contrasts as “legal coca” what is grown in the pre-Hispanic province of Los Yungas (La Paz).
The Chapareño population, especially peasant farmers, does not have good memories of the times of the DEA: the forced burning of coca fields, guarded by armed agents, ended in harsh confrontations that left around twenty dead.
The tensions and arrests of that time were recalled on Wednesday in a press conference by coca leader Aquilardo Caricari. “We are emphatic: we are not going to allow the installation of any military base in the tropics of Cochabamba. If they want to bring the DEA back, let them take it to the border, where international trafficking supposedly occurs,” he declared. The position was supported by Morales in his X account: “The Tropics region already has the presence of 13 military units (…) As our Constitution mandates, the military must not allow foreigners to give them orders or allow them to move through our territory,” he wrote.
The friction between Morales and the new government has been evident from the first day of administration. The former president denounced that Paz did not fulfill his electoral promise to resolve, from his first day as president, the problem of fuel shortages that the country is experiencing. He also attacked the obvious cracks between the president and the vice president, Edman Lara. The latter, during the campaign, had assured that Chapare coca would be “respected” and that the intervention of the DEA was not necessary. The response to the former president came from Oviedo: “Evo does not understand life without being president (…) He is psychologically affected, that is why he tries to destabilize from day one.”
Even harsher was the father of the head of state and former president, Jaime Paz, who stated that Morales “is looking to be slaughtered.” Morales used the threat this Thursday to relaunch, under a narrative of resistance, the participation of his nascent party, Evo Puebloin next year’s municipal elections. The coca leader urged his bases to “repeat” the support he claims to have achieved in the first presidential round on August 17, when he promoted the null vote, an option that was around 20%, compared to the historical 5%.
Minister Oviedo announced that the coca plantation in Chapare will be replaced by other economic activities. “We have to promote more attractive programs for our compatriots. Why not develop capacity in hospitality? It is an attractive tourist area,” he proposed. The initiative evokes the times of compensated eradication of the last century, before the “strong hand” of the DEA, a plan that failed because no other crop or activity was as profitable as coca, which can be harvested up to four times a year.
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