Since the vice president of Bolivia, David Choquehuanca, spoke of the need to “share” the lands in the east of the country, the government once again promoted a massive invasion of the department of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, although its threats also extend to Beni and Panda.
Why such an obsession with the Bolivian east when there are huge extensions of uninhabited territories in the highlands?
In the early 1980s, Roberto Suarez Gómez, the king of Bolivian cocaine in that decade, mentioned that coca was the resource with the greatest export potential in Bolivia. It is clear that the charismatic drug trafficker was not wrong at all. He, however, forgot about the risks associated with the coca business. Let’s see.
Dr. John D’Auria, assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Texas Tech University, has conducted several studies on coca. In his work he came to interesting conclusions. For example, some illegal plants, like cannabis, can be grown quite easily almost anywhere. However, with coca it is different.
Coca generally thrives at an altitude between 500 and 1,500 meters above sea level and in a microclimate common to the Amazon rainforest. This gives the shrub a rather unusual preference for high humidity and low air pressure, and such conditions are found, outside of South America, in very few places in the world. This makes growing the plant elsewhere challenging, though not impossible, as coca trees already exist in Australia.
However, the greatest difficulty lies in the large amount of coca needed to satisfy the ever-increasing demand for cocaine. Well, according to the United Nations World Drug Report, about 297 grams of dried coca leaves are needed to produce one gram of cocaine. In other words, to produce cocaine on a large scale, enormous extensions of territory are required.
For all of the above, it should not be surprising that, in September 2011, under the pretext of building a highway, the Movement Toward Socialism attempted to split the Isiboro Sécure Indigenous Territory and National Park (TIPNIS) in two. In addition, of forcibly removing the natives from their habitat, and handing over those lands to the coca producers – Evo Morales’ private shock group.
TIPNIS showed us, Bolivia and the world, the hypocrisy of a government that called itself “protector” of La Pachamama. But that his hand did not shake to colonize territories of the Yuracarés, Mojeños and T’simanes ethnic groups. So dear reader, the “indigenous” government of Bolivia did not hesitate for a second to repress the indigenous people, many of them mothers with small children, from the lowlands.
Likewise, the journalist Manuel Morales Álvarez, in his book Narcovínculos, mentions another detail that would explain the constant attacks on the east:
Bolivian cocaine does not have the United States as its final destination, but Asia, the Middle East and Europe. Hence the need to have faster access to Brazil, which is the point from where the merchandise leaves for its final destination.
For this reason, it would be too naive to think that it is “humble” peasants who subjugate the properties of ranchers and farmers. The actions of these groups are so organized that INRA authorities recognized that the assailants have access to confidential information on lands in the process of regularization.
It is evident that the MAS does not want to lose power again. Therefore, he is willing to use any strategy to finish off his opponents. We are witnessing an invasion that has two objectives: First, to expand the coca border. And second, to undermine the strength of the department of Santa Cruz, until now the bastion of opposition to the MAS project.
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