Andean Drug War

The Peruvian government's US-backed forced coca eradication campaign is running into serious problems in the Upper Huallaga Valley. Clashes with police, roadblocks, and a general strike have all broken out in the past few days.

Peru is currently the world's second largest producer of coca and cocaine, and the coca growers' movement there is gaining steam, but it still faces many hurdles, some internal, some external.

The "coca, si; cocaine, no" policy of Bolivian President Evo Morales has brought peace to a region long riven by conflict and repression. But while coca farmers need no longer worry about violent conflict with the state, they are still having a hard time making enough money to survive. Plans are underway to do something about that.

Just a little over a year into his term, Bolivian President Evo Morales is engineering a "coca, yes; cocaine, no" policy that is reducing tension there and leading to cooperative eradication efforts with farmers. Will the US government go along with it?

On the eastern slopes of the Andes, as the mountains edge down into the jungles of the Amazon, hundreds of thousands of Peruvian peasants are growing coca as a cash crop to survive. But they face considerable obstacles. Here is a first report from the region.

A Colombian senator is calling for a debate on legalizing the drug trade. His father, a leading presidential candidate, was assassinated by Medellin Cartel hit men in 1990.

Peruvian President Alan Garcia asks for the death penalty for terrorism after Shining Path guerillas attack police and anti-drug workers trying to wipe out illicit coca crops. The following day, he says coca is great in salads.

Congress has passed a measure that will allow for the testing of potentially dangerous mycoherbicides to be used to destroy illicit drug crops. But in a victory for reformers, the okay will be limited to labs in the US -- not fields in Latin America.

The Bush administration used its annual drug certification exercise to lash out at Bolivia and Venezuela, and those two countries returned the favor.

In an unusual communique, Colombia's leftist FARC guerrillas called for the global legalization of drugs.