Bolivia's war on coca plants far from over

COCHABAMBA, Bolivia -- He's 45, but Maximo Rivero looks 65.

Cancer gnawing away at his cheek, the coca farmer wept as he described his plight -- no money and in yet another hospital, this time with a leg broken during hours of interrogation by police searching for farmers who killed five soldiers.

Rivero joined a growing number of victims in the battle over coca that has plagued Bolivia since 1997, when the government began a U.S.-backed campaign to eradicate the Andean crop used as the base for cocaine.

The government has already declared success in central Bolivia's Chapare, once one of the world's largest coca-growing hot spots. Officials say they have wiped out more than 127,000 acres there and have only 5,000 acres to go, although some experts think the latter figure is too low.

The battle is far from over. The poor farmers who grow coca say they will keep fighting attempts to eradicate the lucrative crop. "If there is no more coca, my people have nothing," Rivero said. "Everybody has a cause to die for -- this is ours."

Road has been chosen

The government is just as resolute. "Bolivia chose a road in 1997, and we are going to keep following it. We have no time for complacency," Foreign Minister Gustavo Fernandez said recently.

Thirty-nine coca farmers, police and soldiers have been killed since 1997. Clashes have gotten worse since President Jorge Quiroga took office in August, with 14 of the deaths coming since then.

Most confrontations occur in the tropical Chapare in a repeating cycle of violence: Joint military-police units are sent to uproot coca plants, farmers blockade roads to protect their fields, soldiers and police fight to open the highways. Farmers are killed by guns or rifle-fired tear gas canisters; officers are shot by snipers or captured and beaten.

In January, the conflict spread outside the Chapare, with waves of anti-government protests throughout the country.

Thousands of Chapare farmers stormed into the small town of Sacaba outside Cochabamba and tried to reopen a market shut down for allegedly selling illegal coca. Three coca farmers and five security troopers died during four days of violence.

The government responded fiercely. The coca farmers' radio station was shut down, and dozens of farmers were taken into custody.

The cancer-stricken Rivero, who said he had been avoiding the coca wars because of his health, wound up in the middle of the chaos one night when he stopped on his way home from cancer treatment to spend a night at the coca farmers' federation in Cochabamba.

He said he was seized in a raid, taken to police headquarters and beaten until officers conceded he knew nothing about the Sacaba deaths.

In sponsoring Bolivia's anti-coca effort, the United States has spent $50 million since 1997 to develop alternative crops, build roads and clinics, and improve electricity in the Chapare. Farmers complain that alternative crops like black pepper don't pay as much as coca and that their bananas often attract no buyers and must be left to rot.

According to government figures, 60 percent of Chapare farmers have converted to legal crops. But thousands are still planting coca.