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Viewing cable 06LAPAZ1644, BOLIVIA'S EXPANSIVE COCA POLICY

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Reference ID Created Released Classification Origin
06LAPAZ1644 2006-06-19 15:30 2011-08-25 00:00 UNCLASSIFIED//FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY Embassy La Paz
VZCZCXYZ0052
RR RUEHWEB

DE RUEHLP #1644/01 1701530
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 191530Z JUN 06
FM AMEMBASSY LA PAZ
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 9618
INFO RUEHAC/AMEMBASSY ASUNCION 5923
RUEHBR/AMEMBASSY BRASILIA 7087
RUEHBO/AMEMBASSY BOGOTA 3240
RUEHBU/AMEMBASSY BUENOS AIRES 4340
RUEHCV/AMEMBASSY CARACAS 1631
RUEHPE/AMEMBASSY LIMA 1625
RUEHQT/AMEMBASSY QUITO 4265
RUEHSG/AMEMBASSY SANTIAGO 8813
RHMFIUU/DEPT OF STATE AIR WING PATRICK AFB FL
RHEHOND/DIR ONDCP WASHINGTON DC
RUEAWJA/DEPT OF JUSTICE WASHINGTON DC
RUEAIIA/CIA WASHINGTON DC
RUEAIIB/CNC LINEAR WASHINGTON DC
RUEABND/DEA HQS WASHINGTON DC
RHMFIUU/NATIONAL DRUG INTEL CENTR JOHNSTOWN PA
RHMFIUU/DIRJIATF SOUTH
UNCLAS LA PAZ 001644 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPT FOR INL, WHA/PPC, WHA/AND 
USAID FOR LAC/SA 
JUSTICE FOR OIA, AFMLS AND NDDS 
CUSTOMS FOR LA OPS, INTELLIGENCE 
DEA FOR OEL (STEFFICK) AND OIL (HARRINGTON) 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: SNAR EAID BL
SUBJECT: BOLIVIA'S EXPANSIVE COCA POLICY 
 
REF: LA PAZ 1281 
 
1. (SBU) SUMMARY: The GOB's coca strategy is 
becoming more explicit, and its expansiveness will 
only complicate effective control. On June 17, 
President Morales celebrated the opening of a coca 
tea plant in the Yungas and unveiled a domestic coca 
leaf commercialization regime that reportedly allows 
cocaleros to market their leaf personally anywhere 
in the country; it also allows seized leaf to be 
recycled back into the national market. (Later, the 
Minister of Rural Development said the policy would 
not be that expansive.) Earlier, a much-touted "no 
expansion" agreement was partially annulled when a 
dissident community held its GOB author hostage. 
Meanwhile, although the GOB has asked for NAS 
support to undertake "reduction" operations (AKA 
eradication) in the Yungas (a historic first), it 
has been unable to pull together its own counterpart 
(most especially, prior agreement with affected 
cocaleros about where to begin reducing excess coca 
cultivation). END SUMMARY. 
 
LIBERALIZING "LICIT" LEAF 
------------------------- 
2. (SBU) The government of President Evo Morales has 
steered a circuitous route in defining its coca 
policy, supporting eradication (albeit using new 
terminology: "reduction" or "rationalization") while 
also dramatically redefining the controls on the 
domestic sale of leaf. On June 17, Morales announced 
a new regime governing the commercialization of the 
leaf, which underpins the GOB's broader efforts to 
"revalorize" the leaf. Under this new regime, 
individual producers are now permitted to seek new 
channels for the sale of leaf to reach new markets 
through a barter system (trueque). 
 
3. (SBU) The announcement was made in Irupana, a 
Yungueno community where Morales celebrated the 
opening of a coca tea plant financed with US$125,000 
of Venezuelan assistance provided under the auspices 
of the People's Trade Agreement (Tratado de Comercio 
de los Pueblos) signed in Havana on April 29. (The 
President arrived at the event in one of the Puma 
helicopters recently provided to the GOB by the 
Venezuelan government.) Morales admitted that, while 
initially the project would run at a loss, "it will 
permit us to demonstrate that the coca plant can be 
used for other purposes than just the production of 
cocaine, such as tea, soft drinks and other uses." 
Morales also spoke of eventually baking a cake made 
from coca flour for Fidel Castro. 
 
4. (SBU) Morales also invited Yungueno cocaleros to 
attend a June 29 ceremony in the Tropico de 
Cochabamba where he said he would lobby Argentine 
President Kirchner to accept the legal import of 
coca leaf into Argentina. In a separate press 
account the Argentine Ambassador to Bolivia was 
reported to comment that there was a history of coca 
consumption among residents of Jujuy. (NOTE: Monday 
newspapers subsequently declared that Morales was to 
meet Kirchner in Buenos Aires on June 29.) 
 
5. (SBU) The new commercialization regime also 
contemplates the recycling of seized leaf for the 
benefit of impoverished camposinos residing in the 
altiplano, who prior could not tap into the market 
structure for coca; it also might be provided to the 
elderly. (NOTE: The means for effecting this 
recycling before the leaf becomes unpalatable are 
unclear, as are the mechanisms to ensure that the 
leaf is not diverted to narcotrafficking. END NOTE) 
This recycling apparently violates the letter of Ley 
1008, the Bolivian drug law that has yet to be 
revised to suit the GOB's new priorities. 
 
6. (SBU) Hugo Salvatierra, the Minister of Rural 
Development, told the press that this regime had 
been agreed to by both producers and the retail 
sellers of coca. The GOB however never provided any 
draft text to the USG, despite repeated requests 
that it do so; the Embassy is still seeking the 
official text. 
 
7. (SBU) In Irupana, President Morales reportedly 
balanced this expansive policy with a call for 
voluntary rationalization: "(Rationalization) is not 
an imposition; rather it is a suggestion. It is 
better for everyone to rationalize, to mark out the 
plots to a maximum of half a hectare and stop 
there." (NOTE: Allowing a half hectare --5,000 sq 
meters-- greatly exceeds the standard "cato" (1,600 
sq meters) that Felipe Caceres (the Vice Minister 
for Social Development, Evo's apparent "drug czar") 
has said the GOB wants to apply countrywide. END 
NOTE) 
 
8. (SBU) In an interview published June 19, 
Salvatierra apparently began to backstep from his 
forward-leaning pronouncements in Irupana. He said 
Ley 1008 was not being changed, that the controls on 
commercialization were actually becoming more 
strict, in that they were now to be the 
responsibility of each coca federation to 
administer, channeling limited shipments from each 
member (afiliado) through the two legal markets. 
"The (producers) cannot begin free cultivation ...." 
Control will be "coordinated with the (coca growers) 
associations, because you must understand, it is 
from there that the flow towards illegal uses 
begins, but outside channels, invisibly." 
 
PUSHING FOR --THEN RETREATING FROM-- "NO EXPANSION" 
--------------------------------------------- ------ 
9. (SBU) In sharp contrast to this liberalizing 
trend is the GOB's avowed desire to assert control 
over coca cultivation in the Yungas, an area that 
has resisted such intervention. On June 9, a senior 
official within the GOB's Vice Minister of Coca and 
Integrated Development unveiled a "no expansion" 
agreement covering some 40,000 hectares within the 
traditional zone surrounding Coroico, a historic 
rupture with Yungueno belligerence against any form 
of control. Unfortunately, within days the same GOB 
official was held captive by a dissident community 
within that same zone until he signed another 
pronouncement that maintained the "no expansion" 
zone, but annulled its application to the dissident 
community. The GOB hopes to secure further "no 
expansion" agreements from other Yungueno 
communities in the coming weeks. 
 
LAUNCHING REDUCTION IN THE YUNGAS 
--------------------------------- 
10. (SBU) On June 8, Felipe Caceres formally 
requested NAS support to undertake operations to 
"reduce" (aka eradicate) coca cultivation in the 
Yungas, starting in the province of Caranavi (an 
area outside the traditional zone that has 
experienced recent growth in coca plantings). 
Caceres said that eventually reduction operations 
would be extended into La Asunta, Apolo and 
Larecaja. Cocaleros would be allowed no more than a 
cato per family (a norm being extended from the 
Tropico), as permitted in the recent ministerial 
resolution pending the completion of the EU-funded 
licit demand study (REFTEL). 
 
11. (SBU) Prior, Caceres had described the same 
initiative to the press in some detail, referring to 
the standing up of a "mini-JTF" (a reference to the 
Joint Eradication Task Force that NAS supports in 
the Tropico). Although Caceres wanted reduction 
activities to begin as soon as June 20, the 
logistical requirements are substantial, there is no 
clear agreement with cocaleros yet as to which 
cocales will be uprooted first and the GOB's own 
abilities to pull the pieces together are nearly non- 
existent. The NAS sent experts to Caranavi to 
determine the requirements needed to support the 
mini-JTF (a small task force consisting of 100 
conscripts and roughly 30 officers and civilians, to 
be based in a pre-existing military camp located in 
Caranavi). They found little evidence on the ground 
that prior coordination had been accomplished by GOB 
authorities. 
 
COMMENT 
------- 
12. (SBU) There is a perpetual disconnect between 
the expansive line stated publicly by the President 
(now so dramatically expressed thorough the new coca 
commercialization regime) and what his Vice Minister 
of Social Defense seeks to do to reign in the 
cultivation of coca. If initial press accounts prove 
to be true, the new commercialization regime will 
radically loosen the already minimal controls that 
exist over the licit sale of coca and undoubtedly 
complicate the role of the police in monitoring its 
movement. (In fact, it might prove impossible 
legally for the police to seize any excess leaf at 
all.) It might prove to be Bolivia's "great leap 
backward" in its coca policy. 
 
13. (SBU) Additionally, the Embassy repeatedly sees 
the disconnect between what Caceres says is GOB 
policy and what actually gets done. Caceres has 
consistently voiced a hard line against excess coca, 
purportedly mirroring the President's own views. 
Nowhere is this divergence more evident than in the 
Tropico, where reduction/eradication operations 
under this government have been lackluster, hindered 
by a lack of prior planning and coordination with 
cocalero leaders. It is obvious that there are few 
seasoned political operatives dedicated to making it 
all come together, especially in the sensitive area 
of establishing with cocaleros where reduction will 
occur. This weakness is most apparent in the Vice 
Ministry of Coca and Integrated Development, whose 
only explicit responsibility by law is the promotion 
of the "revalorization" of coca, although until now 
it has also been overseeing the destruction of 
 
excess leaf. 
 
GREENLEE