Peruvian Coca Farmers Ripe for Bolivia-Style Revolt

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>

from the article:

They also say the government does not differentiate between coca that is processed into cocaine for international consumption and that chewed in leaf form by indigenous mountain-dwellers since time immemorial to give energy.

(snip)"All it takes is something like privatization of a major utility or policies for drug eradication that actually seem to be hurting people and you have a very explosive situation in Peru," said Max Cameron, political scientist at the University of British Columbia.

While pouring aid into Colombia, which produces 90 percent of cocaine sold worldwide, Washington has also stepped up its anti-narcotics drive in Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador to prevent Colombian producers from simply relocating. (snip)