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Eradicating Democracy: The
US in Bolivia
Mountainous, landlocked,
poor and indebted, Bolivia is in the midst of
social upheaval brought on in part by
Washington's unyielding support for the forced
eradication of coca and for Bolivia's repressive
and inept president, Hugo Banzer. With political
and military backing from the Clinton
administration, the Bolivian armed forces have
adopted a zero tolerance policy, vowing to
destroy coca growing in the Chapare region by the
end of this year. As a result, thousands of
peasants have lost their livelihood and fallen
even further into poverty. According to Eradicating
Democracy the U.S. in Bolivia, states a just-released
Foreign Policy In Focus brief by Bolivia-based
writer and activist George Ann Potter and Andean
expert Linda Farling, "Since the end of the
cold war, the war on drugs has become a
cornerstone of U.S. policy in Latin America, and
this has led to an expansion over the last decade
of both U.S. military aid and of human rights
abuses." In September 2000, Bolivia
was rocked by protests of unionists, teachers,
farmers and others, who set up roadblocks along
the main highways to protest deteriorating
economic conditions and increased military
actions against coca growers and other civilians.
One flash-point was that Banzer, a weak coalition
president who was Bolivia's military dictator in
the 1970s, had plans to construct, with U.S.
assistance, three new military bases in the
Chapare coca-growing region. |
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