Coca growers resist Bolivia crackdown - The Washington Times

SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia -- Indigenous coca farmers who helped put President Evo Morales in power are violently resisting even the token eradication efforts demanded by the United States to avoid Bolivia's decertification as a country cooperating against drug trafficking.

Dissatisfied with new laws permitting peasant farmers to grow up to half an acre of coca for traditional use, the farmers are backing demands for increased acreage with road blocks and gunfights that so far have killed two growers and wounded two police officers.

The government, which this week was maneuvering in New York to secure a two-year term on the U.N. Security Council, is divided on how to proceed.

It came to power in January with strong backing from Andean Indians who for centuries have used the coca leaf as a mild stimulant, and Mr. Morales, a former coca grower who heads Bolivia's largest coca-growing syndicate in the Chapare Valley, has repeatedly pledged to use "peaceful" means to limit cultivation of the leaf.

But police and elements in his own government are concerned that as much as half the current coca production is being diverted into the production of cocaine for the illicit international market.