UPDATE: Peru's Cocaleros on the March
Cabieses, Hugo
FARMERS AND LOCAL ORGANIZERS from Peru's prominent coca-cul- tivating regions staged a mass demonstration last April. Led in large part by women, the cocaleros (coca farmers) cornered the...
...Immediately, the cocaleros of that valley blocked the region's main arteries, and cocaleros elsewhere took similar action...
...Executive Order 44 also promised to halt the forced eradication of coca crops, recognized coca cultivation for legal consumption as a beneficial industry and proposed legislation regarding the gradual, voluntary and participatory reduction of coca crops...
...In that period, the government aimed to discredit the cocaleros with baseless accusations of the movement's association with elements of the Shining Path...
...What is clear, however, is that the government now recognizes both CONPACCP and the organizaA sign advertises coca leaves in Villa Rica...
...At that point, prominent cocaleros from the Upper Huallaga, Aguaytia and Apurimac Valleys, led by Nelson Palomino, decided to establish a national union of coca cultivators...
...Under tremendous pressure from Washington, however, the Toledo administration quickly did an about-face...
...They reportedly reached an agreement with these officials, though the details are murky...
...In the proposal, the government promised to push for the removal of the coca leaf from the UN's official list of narcotic drugs...
...It also provided for the participation of coca farmers in designing alternative sustainable development schemes...
...Agency for International Development (USAID) funds that were intended for alternative development projects in the Apurimac Valley Palomino's arrest provoked widespread indignation throughout Peru's coca-growing valPresident Bush pressured Peru to adopt a 'zero tolerance' stance on coca cultivation, leading to widespread strikes, marches and road blockades by cocaleros...
...Cultivators and their organizations, they assert, must play a role from the very outset in designing and implementing an alternative agrarian project, which would entail economic and ecological zoning, soil analysis and the restructuring of small landholdings...
...This is largely attributable to the bloody insurgency of the Shining Path guerrillas in the 1980s and the state's violent reaction...
...They also demanded the integration of their coca-growing communities into the national economy, to prevent their further descent into poverty and oblivion...
...roadblocks and strikes became common...
...Guillen and Morales are widely considered the more radical of cocalero leaders...
...His only other option is to move in the opposite direction: a return to the violence of the "War on Drugs" promoted by the U.S...
...The plan also called for a new census of coca growers and proposed that regional governments, with oversight by local cocaleros, administer ENACO, Cocaleros from different regions have found it difficult to maintain unity in the context of mounting government pressure...
...Social, because preceding any solution to the crisis, the government must recognize that cocalero demands are rooted in their social exclusion and classification as criminals or, worse yet, terrorists...
...and Peruvian governments...
...Leaders from the two areas, however, contend that fumigation with both the brandname chemical herbicide Spike and the coca-killing fungus Fusarium oxysporum have been used to eradicate coca in Apurimac and Monzon...
...Among other things, the order required that the government conduct a survey of the country's internal legal demand and consumption of the coca leaf...
...The protestors had several demands...
...After two days of debate, the congress issued a five-point "Plan of Immediate Action...
...Upon taking office, President Toledo named Ricardo Vega Llona the Drug Czar of his administration...
...Repeated denunciations to government offices by cocaleros concerning these actions fell on deaf ears...
...To date, however, no reliable evidence supports these claims...
...On the political front, the cocaleros are asking their government to reject the draconian coca policies promoted by Washington, which only aggravate the disease and prevent a cure...
...He formed the National Commission for Development and Life Without Drugs (DEVIDA) to replace Contradrogas, the previous antidrug agency Contradrogas was a bastion of corruption and inefficiency, created with Washington's blessing by Peru's National Intelligence Service under the command of the shadowy spy chief Vladimiro Montesinos...
...Leaders from the various valleys agreed to organize road blockades and strikes if forced eradication were imposed on any CONPACCP-affiliated area...
...Internationally, the new policy would seek the help of both producing and consuming nations jointly responsible for the drug trade, while pushing for a reevaluation of the plant's traditional consumption and industrial benefits...
...In its PR campaign, DEVIDA accused the cocaleros of not truly eradicating productive fields, saying they were only "eradicating" overgrown or abandoned fields...
...On the technical level, the cocaleros insist that the rural agricultural crisis that has spawned the growth of coca production requires redress...
...Responding to the unrest, DEVIDA launched a massive public relations campaign arguing that the government had complied with the stipulations of Executive Order 44 of 2003...
...As their demands make clear, the cocaleros advocate Peru's most profor addressing coca ductive cocacultivation as a human, growing valleys are political and technical shaded in gray...
...The 16-day march to Lima in April 2003 involved more than 8,000 participants...
...leys and moved the cocaleros to march on Lima to demand the release of their leader as well as official attention to ten other points of grievance...
...That night, Toledo visited a contingent of cocaleros camped at Lima's "La Victoria" soccer stadium...
...In the context of mounting government pressure, the organization has experienced difficulty in maintaining unity among the different regions...
...Lastly, they demanded the abolition of the existing coca law-passed in 1978 under the military regime-which criminalized coca, and the creation of a new national law regulating the plant's industrialization and commercialization...
...Two columns, one from the north led by Flavio Sanchez and Elsa Malpartida and the second from the south led by Marisela Guillen and Nancy Obreg6n, converged in Lima after traveling nearly 500 miles each...
...Some 1,200 delegates founded the National Association of Peruvian Coca Producers (CONPACCP) in January 2003...
...The cocaleros maintain that the coca problem in Peru can only be resolved through a strategy that takes into account the social, political and technical dimensions of the issue...
...The protests eventually forced the government to the negotiating table in November 2000, on the eve of Fujimori's inglorious downfall...
...In the early 1990s, the few surviving coca-related organizations chose to follow bureaucratic procedures and to operate politically within official avenues...
...They want the rights and duties of all citizens and, accordingly, demand a role in shaping the policies directly affecting their lives...
...They hope to convince the administration to return to the 2001 guidelines for jointly crafting a national coca and drug policy independently of the U.S...
...The cocaleros also succeeded in convincing the government to shift responsibility for overseeing coca's "chain of production" to the Ministry of Agriculture, as opposed to DEVIDA, USAID or the private firm Chemonics International-USAID's main executor of alternative development projects in Peru's coca-growing valleys...
...tion led by Guillen-the National Junta of Peruvian Agricultural Producers-as legitimate negotiators on coca issues...
...Because the funding for the study came from USAID, however, the report's findings are under "reserve," and have not yet been made public...
...The coca of both goes primarily into the manufacture of cocaine: somewhere around 70% of production in Apurimac and 60% in Monz6n is destined for illicit ends...
...Led in large part by women, the cocaleros (coca farmers) cornered the U.S.-leaning administration of President Alejandro Toledo into a veritable checkmate...
...When Palomino was returning from Lima to organize more mobilizations, government agents detained him and charged him with "apologetics for terrorism" and other, still-unproven offences...
...Fujimori's Minister of the Interior reinstated the forced eradication of coca in 1996, under the auspices of the entirely U.S.-funded Coca Eradication Project in the Upper Huallaga Valley (CORAH...
...The Fujimori Doctrine intended to formalize and license the informal coca sector in order to ally coca-growing campesinos with the government and against the Shining Path...
...At the end of 2001, after seven months of dialogue, the government submitted to the cocaleros a relatively progressive proposal for a new national drug and coca policy...
...As promised, at the end of the grace period in April, the cocalero protests began and continued through May, provoking often-violent responses from authorities...
...Palomino and other cocalero leaders believe DEVIDA and the international humanitarian relief organization CARE were behind his arrest...
...They oppose the gradual and state-assisted eradication of their crops that was accepted by CONPACCP in 2003...
...Vega Llona sought to continue the dialogue with the cocaleros that had begun under the transitional government that replaced Fujimori's...
...The two valleys share certain characteristics...
...Toledo is beset with a profound social and political crisis and has little recourse but to appease the cocaleros...
...The radicalization of the cocaleros' proposals stemmed from over three years of inaction by the Toledo administration...
...The delegates chose Palomino, who is from the Apurimac Valley, as the organization's Secretary General, and Nancy Obreg6n as Vice Secretary...
...The outcome of the march signified a partial victory for the cocaleros...
...The proposal included a strategy that tackled production, trafficking and consumption as integrated problems...
...Rather than eradication, the Fujimori Doctrine promoted crop substitution with support from international bodies, particularly the UN's International Drug Control Program...
...The government refuses to work alongside CONPACCP in eradicating coca fields that are not registered with the state coca company, also required by the 2003 agreement...
...Together, these forces destroyed social organizing, thereby preventing the maturation of a cocalero movement in that period...
...To divide the movement, DEVIDA signed agreements with parallel or nonexistent cocalero organizations...
...They proclaim a desire to be part of the solution, not part of the twin problems the government is ostensibly trying to combat: poverty and the illicit drug trade...
...government...
...Government officials repeatedly slandered the organizers of the march and, in direct violation of the law, excluded cocaleros from DEVIDAs directorship...
...At the Lima congress, two member-valleys-the Apurimac near the city of Ayacucho and Monz6n near Tingo Maria-did not participate, revealing an evident rupture in the movement...
...Nonetheless, DEVIDA systematically violated even those narrow accords...
...The Monzon delegates attended the first day of the meeting, but left after accusing CONPACCP and its leaders of being "financed by the government and of trying to take advantage of cocaleros to serve their own political agenda...
...Most fundamentally, they called for the legitimization of the coca leaf as a cash crop and an end to the administration's U.S.-sponsored coca eradication policy...
...Palomino had accused CARE of misappropriating U.S...
...CONPACCP gained recognition as a legitimate interlocutor between the government and the farmers, and the government publicly asserted through the media that cocaleros are not narcotraffickers...
...Yet both met with the Minister of the Interior during the CONPACCP congress last February...
...Toledo met with them on April 23 and agreed to sign Executive Order 44, which incorporated many of the cocaleros' demands...
...issue, and not as a criminal, judicial, security or-worse still-military problem, as seems to be the preference of the U.S...
...government...
...Despite the absence of Palomino-its nominal leader-the Apurimac Valley broke with CONPACCP Led by dissident cocalera Marisela Guillen, the Apurimac growers formed their own cocalero federation and allied themselves with the Monzon cocaleros led by Iburcio Morales...
...A month after the first cocalero congress, CORAH and DEVIDA eradicated the crops of two association members in Aguaytia...
...Three years into CORAH, the 10 coca-growing valleys erupted...
...Negotiations with the government remain deadlocked as of this writing...
...For now, however, instability has returned to the valleys...
...TV and radio spots demonized the cocaleros and their crop...
...After months of government neglect, CONPACCP held its second National Congress on February 1812 20, 2004, in Lima, with the participation of more than 2,000 delegates from almost every coca-growing valley...
...Apurimac has 11,000 cocaleros and Monz6n 2,500...
...The cocaleros rejected a May 12 proposal from the government because it provided only a temporary halt to eradication efforts, pending the implementation of a comprehensive coca law...
...President Alberto Fujimori's "Doctrine on Drugs" suspended coca eradication from 1990 to 1995 and recognized that coca farmers and their organizations are not part of the drug trade's criminal chain...
...A few months later, the government reneged on its proposal...
...For the cocaleros, an agricultural credit program that subsidizes small-scale agricultural production would be indispensable to such a new approach, as would a shift from export-orientation to production for local, regional and national markets...
...The second CONPACCP congress gave the Toledo administration a 60-day grace period within which to respond to the organization's Plan of Immediate Action...
...The doors to the [Presidential] Palace are always open for whatever corrections that need to be made...
...Compared to their Bolivian counterparts, Peru's cocaleros arrived late onto the national scene...
...Unlike Huallaga and Aguaytia, these two areas have not, historically, been targets of eradication...
...Approximately 35,000 of Peru's estimated 50,000 cocaleros are now CONPACCP members, representing valleys throughout the country...
...Taking a handful of coca leaves from his pocket, 11NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS UPDATE Toledo proclaimed: "All of you, producers of coca-you are not narcotraffickers...
...They also had a second meeting in May of this year with the new Minister of the Interior and the Minister of Agriculture...
...He promised to uphold the agreement...
...Its demands included the release of Nelson Palomino, the immediate end to coca eradication in all forms, the deactivation of DEVIDA and the expulsion of non-governmental organizations operating in the cocagrowing valleys...
...the state-owned coca company...
...DEVIDA, CARE and Chemonics repeatedly undermined, distorted or simply violated the executive order...
...After the marchers camped out for four days on the lawns of the Palace of Justice and the adjacent Sheraton Hotel, the government finally agreed to meet with the cocaleros' 35 representatives...
...The death knell for the new agreement sounded with the visit of President George W Bush to Lima in March 2002, at which time he pressured Toledo's government to adopt a "zero tolerance" stance on coca cultivation...
...Before he was relieved of his post, then-Interior Minister Fernando Rospigliosi directly threatened Elsa Malpartida from Tingo Maria, saying she would share the fate of the still-incarcerated Palomino...
...The government responded to the unrest by engaging in dialogue on a case-by-case basis with different cocalero communitiessubduing the farmers with insignificant agreements that amounted to little more than window-dressing...
...The government then pursued forced eradication with renewed vigor, sparking widespread strikes, marches and road blockades by cocaleros...
...His 6% approval rating leaves him little, if any, breathing room...
Vol. 38 • July 2004 • No. 1
