Peruvian Coca Farmers Ripe for Bolivia-Style Revolt [View All]

More trouble on the horizon for Uncle Sam....

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LIMA, Peru (Reuters) - "Coca is not a drug," says a souvenir vendor at the indigenous craft market in Lima, reading from a T-shirt depicting a healthy green coca leaf, the raw material used to make cocaine.

The T-shirt is just another sign of growing resistance in Peru to U.S. programs to wipe out drug production in South America that critics say have aggravated poverty and sown resentment in the region.

Coca leaf growers, or "cocaleros," were a key part of a bloody revolt this month that toppled the president of Bolivia, the world's third-largest cocaine producer, removing a key U.S. ally in the anti-narcotics war.

Across the Andes in No. 2 producer Peru, some 200,000 angry coca farmers are gaining political clout. Critics say if Washington wants to prevent a repeat of the Bolivian crisis, it should re-examine its drug policy there.

"This should be a wake-up call to U.S. policymakers as to coca eradication policies which basically come with the promise of development and leave people to feel like they're holding nothing," said John Walsh, senior associate for the Andes and drug policy at the Washington Office on Latin America, a think tank.

<http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=ourWorldNews&storyID=3722940>