Latin America: Bolivian Cocaine Production Increasing, Official Says

Cocaine production in Bolivia is on the rise, Bolivian anti-drug police chief Óscar Nina told the Associated Press in an interview last week. Colombian and Mexican drug trafficking organizations are contracting to have Bolivian coca paste processed in situ rather than exporting the paste for processing Colombia, he said.

Coca leaf is typically harvested by poor farming families. While much goes to traditional markets in this region where the leaf has been chewed for centuries, coca leaf destined for the black market is crushed and processed into coca paste, which is then smuggled abroad to be further refined into cocaine at sophisticated labs in Colombia and elsewhere.

But now, said Nina, middle men from Colombia, Peru, Brazil, and Bolivia are being hired by drug traffickers to do the final processing into cocaine in Bolivia. From there, the popular drug is smuggled by plane to Colombia and on to the insatiable markets of Europe and North America, or smuggled by men carrying backpacks walking into Peru or Brazil.

"There is more interest and investment in purifying coca paste here and exporting it, rather than sending it to Colombia for purification" as in years past, Nina said.

Police have raided three sophisticated cocaine labs in Bolivia's eastern lowlands this year, Nina said. In one bust, they seized 660 pounds of cocaine and arrested two Colombians. In other raids, no Colombians were found, but evidence of their presence was, said Nina without elaborating.

Bolivia is the world's third largest producer of coca. While Bolivian President Evo Morales, a former coca grower union leader, has supported continued coca cultivation, he has opposed cocaine production and trafficking under a policy of "zero cocaine, not zero coca."

Bolivian police last year busted some 3,000 smaller labs and seized a record 27 tons of cocaine. This year, they have already seized another nine tons and arrested 992 people.