Latinnews Archive
Andean Group - 29 August 1980
BOLIVIA: Cocaine: the military connection
The coca and cocaine industry has been expanding steadily for many years. But in the weeks since the latest military takeover the business has suddenly erupted. In the words of one US narcotics official, the trade is now 'completely out of control. . . for the first time ever the drugs mafia has evidently bought itself a government'.
United States drug officials estimate that Bolivia's narcotics exports have doubled in the few short weeks since General Garcia Meza and his fellow officers seized power. It is a view which has been echoed in Bogota, the main export artery of the Latin American cocaine trade. 'It is starting to rain cocaine here,' commented a member of the Colombian narcotics unit which recently seized a Bolivian trafficker in Bogota airport in possession of a 25 kg shipment.
It is already clear that the narcotics business, the new backbone of the Bolivian economy, was the mainspring for the 17 July coup, and that vast amounts of cocaine money have been passed on to the country's new leaders. According to informed local sources, prominent members of the military and their civilian associates in the South American cocaine capital of Santa Cruz have provided Garcia Meza with a direct grant of US$100m to support his regime during its initial period in office.
Allegations have already been made by prominent political figures in the United States (WR-80-33) about the involvement of Garcia Meza and other leading members of the new government in the cocaine business. A full Senate investigation into the affair is expected to be held early in September; sources in Washington claim that 'irrefutable' evidence will emerge of the connections between the drugs mafia and Bolivia's new rulers.
Among the witnesses to be called will be Jaime Paz Zamora, who was Vic-President-elect at the time of the coup. Paz was out of the country when the military seized power, recovering from injuries suffered in a plane crash in June. He claims that the plane was sabotaged by its owner, the current interior minister, Colonel Luis Arce Gomez, whose name has figured prominently in all recent reports about the role of the military in cocaine trafficking.
Senator Dennis DeConcini, the US Democrat who has published a series of detailed allegations against the Bolivian armed forces, says that Arce is himself the leader of a major drugs ring. Local sources claim that Arce is the chief coordinator of the business, and that in the days which followed the coup large numbers of convicted traffickers were released by Arce from prisons in Cochabamba and Santa Cruz and absorbed into the interior ministry's paramilitary units.
Colonel Arce is a partner of Colonel Norberto Salomon in an aircraft agency which regularly handles large north-bound shipments of cocaine. One of the agency's light aircraft makes a weekly trip to Colombia, to deliver cocaine base to a laboratory in Caqueta; a larger plane makes longer runs from Beni department.
Last February one of Salomon's planes was seized in the Beni with 300 kg of cocaine on board, but the Colonel avoided any legal problems by claiming that the craft had been stolen the previous day. He was subsequently transferred to Caracas as military attache.
Another government minister mentioned by DeConcini was Colonel Ariel Coca, the head of the education ministry. Coca is reported to have set up one of the biggest cocaine smuggling networks in South America while serving as head of the air force in Santa Cruz. Military personnel and equipment were deployed by Coca to move huge shipments of narcotics to Argentina, Brazil and Colombia. One of the few casualties of the scheme was Coca's brother in law, who was arrested in Panama last year in possession of 100 kg of cocaine.
Colonel Hugo Echeverria, the head of the army garrison in Santa Cruz, is another military figure who has been named by DeConcini as a link in the chain. He, too, recruited heavily from the jails of Santa Cruz during the coup, to bolster his activities in the Brazilian and Argentine markets.
Echeverria now occupies a strategic position in the trade. The rapid political and economic integration of Bolivia into the Southern Cone is expected to lead to a sharp rise in the movement of cocaine through Buenos Aires and Sao Paulo. Bogota, some say, may soon lose its status as the world's principal cocaine market.
Others have been quick to appreciate the importance of the Santa Cruz connection; in the weeks which immediately followed the coup, Major Rudy Landivar attempted to turn the local customs department into a new cocaine export organisation capable of rivalling those controlled by his senior officers. Landivar, a local falangist leader, has since been fired.
Drug income is recognised as vital to the survival of the regime; those associated with the business empire of Guillermo Bedregal, foreign minister under Natusch Busch and now a key economic adviser, are seriously considering legalising cocaine trafficking.
US observers put Bolivia's total earnings from cocaine at US$600m. But the real figure is probably much higher. Local enforcement agencies conservatively estimate the annual harvest of coca leaves at 35,000 tonnes, of which 27,000 are used for illicit trafficking. Up to 14,000 tonnes are converted into hydrochloride in clandestine local laboratories, before being shipped abroad. The rest is exported in semi-processed form, cocaine sulphate, to more sophisticated processing plants in Colombia where it is converted into pure cocaine.
Coca leaf prices have soared in the last year; there has been a rapid expansion in sowings in the Yungas and Chapare regions. But even if local police estimates are correct, sufficient coca is being grown to produce at least 70 tonnes of cocaine base and 60 tonnes of hydrochloride a year. Sulphate is currently selling on the world market at about US$5,000 a kilo, and hydrochloride at US$10,000 or more; Bolivia's total earnings from this sector, therefore, must be well in excess of US$1bn a year.
Several of the figures mentioned in DeConcini's submissions to the press occupied important official posts during the Banzer years, when a campaign was supposedly launched to stem the growth of the industry through the introduction of a licensing system for growers and traders. New sowings were forbidden, and the government undertook to deploy a US$4.2m grant from the United States to encourage producers to diversify into other areas.
Little was ever heard of the programme thereafter; indeed the industry underwent a major expansion during Banzer's period in office. As new export outlets were created, more and more coffee plantations and citrus groves were cut down in the Yungas to make way for coca.
In the south Yungas, where few peasants have ever been visited by a government inspector or asked for a permit, it is generally thought that sowings have doubled in the last year alone. Many are intent on cashing in on the cocaine boom which has come in the wake of the coup; a further sharp rise in plantings is being planned for the coming year.
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