The feud between President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada and his arch-rival, Evo Morales, has escalated again after the latter was accused of directing a spate of violence in the coca-growing Chapare area, and he in turn announced that he was suing his accuser, interior minister Yerko Kukoc, for defamation and libel.
Clashes in the central Chapare region, between coca growers and the joint military-police eradication squads, had been increasing steadily over recent weeks. In mid-June, a powerful nail bomb killed two soldiers and injured six other members of a team moving in on coca plantations of the Sindicato San José. Days later another explosive device injured two policemen on an eradication team in Ivirgarzama.
Responses. Interior minister Kukoc, even before he had the full facts of the first incident, publicly blamed Morales. 'The Bolivian people,' he said, 'point at Evo Morales Aima and accuse him. These acts of violence are ordered by him.'
This came just as Morales was being re-elected (for the sixth time) president of the coordinating committee of the Federaciones Campesinas del Chapare -the umbrella association of cocalero unions.
It is worth noting that Morales's first reaction to the first bombing was to claim that he had 'lost control' of his grassroots followers. Then he suddenly changed his tune, suggesting that this was the work of government agents provocateurs seeking to justify a major military intervention in the Chapare.
In any case, after his re-election Morales persuaded his followers to call a 'truce', promising them that they would embark upon a drive to gain power through the ballot box, starting with next year's municipal elections.
Once Morales had filed his suit, the government softened its attitude. In the wake of the second bombing, presidential spokesman Mauricio Antezana invited Morales to contribute to the 'pacification' of the Chapare by returning to the negotiating table.
'Inasmuch as it may depend on Evo Morales,' he said, 'we ask him to halt this climate of confrontation, starting with the study of the legal market for coca.' This was an allusion to the government's offer to commission an independent study to determine the actual demand for 'legal' coca.
Morales, for his part, called on the church to mediate in a dialogue with the government, to prevent a harsh response to the bombings by the eradication forces.
The undercurrents. In La Paz there are those who see a strong military response as inevitable. The influential newsletter Siglo 21 said, 'Even if there had not been a determination to go for a radical solution of the Chapare problem, the [recent] attacks would justify it. Public opinion is now prepared for the government to launch upon Chapare the military action which is being readied.'
The publication also suggested that the government's campaign against Morales was behind the resuscitation, last week, of a three-month-old report claiming that Colombia's ELN guerrillas were establishing 'fronts' within Bolivia.
Behind this story was the arrest in La Paz, on 19 April, of the Colombian national Luis Gerardo Cortés Beltrán (aka Francisco Cortés Aguilar), reputedly a member of the ELN.
On 26 June, Bolivian foreign minister Carlos Saavedra Bruno -in Colombia at the time the story was broadcast there by RCN- dismissed any suggestion of a link between Colombian guerrillas and Bolivian cocaleros.
What seems to be happening is that some, but by no means all, of the members of the Bolivian government believe that affixing a 'terrorist' label on Morales would help gain extra support for action that the US embassy in La Paz has already been urging.
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