Coca

For years, the Colombian government has allowed indigenous traditional coca growers to market coca products nationwide, but now it has changed course, and some are pointing the finger at Coca-Cola.

Tensions are rising in Peru's Upper Huallaga Valley coca fields, as government eradicators come under attack, growers go on strike, and the García government vows to take a hard line.

The Bolivian government is moving to "rationalize" coca production in the Yungas region.

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.

With the release of its annual report this week, the International Narcotics Control Board has set its sights on Bolivia and that country's pro-coca policies. The US is also preparing to make a decision on whether to decertify Bolivia as not cooperating in American drug war goals. The Bolivians don't seem to care.

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.

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