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| Caribbean-Latin America |
| Coca grower appointed drug chief |
| 2006-01-29 |
| Evo Morales, the Bolivian president, has appointed a coca grower to oversee his country's efforts to combat drug trafficking. During a trip to the heart of Bolivia's coca-growing region, Morales announced the appointment of Felipe Caceres, a co-founder of his Movement Toward Socialism party, to the job. "A coca farmer is going to be in charge of the fight against drugs," Morales said, wearing a hat weaved of coca leaves and drawing loud applause from the assembled crowds, many of them coca farmers. In recent years, the head of Bolivia's anti-drug efforts has worked closely with Washington, which spends about $150 million a year on coca-eradication programmes in the country. But Morales, who took office last Sunday, first rose to political prominence as the leader of the country's coca farmers, and led protests against US-backed eradication efforts. |
| Posted by: |
| #5 making sure Evo gets his cut |
| Posted by: Frank G 2006-01-29 16:26 |
| #4 Ummm, Set a thief to catch a thief? |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2006-01-29 12:44 |
| #3 I don't know much about the coca crop market but I would imagine the farmers do not get the large cash influx that comes from the cocaine market, not unlike the farmers in the US. |
| Posted by: 49 Pan 2006-01-29 11:17 |
| #2 We are never eally going to get a handle on the drug trade from the grower to the seller unless we get a handle on the end user. As long as there is the money to be made the trade will be there. If one could find economically viable replacement crops for the coca growwers then you might have a chance of stifling it from that end. But what crop could they grow that would earn as much and how much would it have to be subsidised. |
| Posted by: Cheaderhead 2006-01-29 08:52 |
| #1 I have been to the coca plantation areas of Bolivia. The level of production that I saw, hardly is limited to the mate de coca (two leaves) tea market. Most growers probably do not sell directly to the Cocaine producers, but they know where its going. It looks like the fox is guarding the hen house. |
| Posted by: ForkoBonitazumanoid 2006-01-29 03:02 |