ReconsiDer Tidbits

Apparently the Bolivian people aren't too fond of the U.S.-incited Drug War:

U.S. drug war breeding discontent

By Andres Oppenheimer
The Miami Herald
The next U.S. president may have to be more creative to obtain greater
Latin American cooperation in the war on drugs: One can sense a growing and
increasingly open regional discontent with current U.S. anti-drug policies.
Even Argentina, one of the closest U.S. allies in South America, is keeping
a prudent distance from the $1.3 billion U.S. military package to fight
drugs in Colombia, and is beginning to criticize publicly what it sees as a
narrow-minded U.S. focus on drug interdiction and eradication in countries
such as Colombia, Bolivia and Peru.
At his office last week, Foreign Minister Adalberto Rodriguez Giavarini
summed up the growing regional frustration by recalling what he saw during
a recent visit to neighboring Bolivia.
The Argentine foreign minister was planning to congratulate Bolivian
President Hugo Banzer for his successful U.S.-sponsored coca eradication
program, which has eliminated more than 90 percent of the country's illegal
coca crops. Instead, he found Banzer in a devastating political and
economic crisis, ironically caused by the very success of his antidrug plan.
A revolt by 35,000 angry coca growers had paralyzed Bolivia, and widespread
street protests had caused at least 10 deaths and $200 million in economic
loss. According to Bolivian government estimates, Bolivia has lost $700
million in illegal drug income over the past two years.
There is a near unanimous consensus in Latin America that U.S.-financed
programs to help coca growers switch to other crops are not providing
enough funds to help growers make up for their lost income. To make things worse,
Europe and the United States are making it increasingly difficult for Latin
American countries to export their legal crops.
In addition to greater efforts to curb drug consumption, the United States
and Europe should also do more to curb their own exports of chemicals used
to produce cocaine, he said. These chemicals are being dumped into Amazon
jungle rivers, creating an ecological damage without precedent in the
region.
At a Sept. 1 summit of South American presidents in Brazil, some countries
such as Venezuela and Brazil also expressed growing uneasiness with U.S.
military aid to Colombia, which includes 500 U.S. military trainers.
My own conclusion: Unless the next U.S. president comes up with new
antidrug plans with greater responsibilities for drug-consuming countries, there
will be a growing confrontation over the drug war. And even the closest U.S.
allies will be on the other side of the fence.

Andres Oppenheimer is a Latin America correspondent for The Miami Herald.