Latin
America:
Cocaine
Production
on
the
Increase,
UN
Says
6/17/05
After five years of declines, cocaine production in South America is once again on the rise, the United Nations Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC) reported Tuesday. Although cocaine production continued to diminish in Colombia, down 7% from 2003 to 2004, that decline was more than offset by increases in production of 23% in Peru and 35% in Bolivia, marking a 3% overall increase in cocaine production in the region. Those figures demonstrate the both the resiliency of the coca-cocaine economy and the continuing power of the balloon effect. In the 1980s, Bolivia dominated coca leaf production. When it was repressed there, Peru became the global leader in the early 1990s, and when it was repressed there, production boomed in Colombia. Now, with the Colombian crop under a five-year sustained attack, farmers in Bolivia and Peru are taking up the slack. While Bolivian production remains below peak 1980s levels, Peruvian production is now back where it was in 1998. Between them, the two Andean nations produced 327 tons of cocaine last year, while Colombia produced 430 tons. UNODC executive director Antonio Maria Costa said last year's increase should not be viewed as marking the end of a downward trend that has seen overall production decline of about one-thired since 1999. "This small hike should not yet be construed as a structural change," he wrote in the report. "Should cultivation continue to increase, of course, it would have to be perceived as a threat to the gains made in the last five years." The UNODC figures on Colombia were more optimistic than those released by the Bush administration in March. Those numbers, quietly released on a Friday afternoon, showed that despite massive aerial herbicide spraying, the acreage devoted to coca production in the country had remained unchanged from the previous year. Still, UNODC executive director Costa qualified the effort in Colombia as a success and praised the US-backed crop-spraying program. "Efforts to reduce coca cultivation in Colombia continue to succeed," said Costa. "In 2004, cultivation dropped by 7% to 80,000 hectares. Since 2000, cultivation was reduced by half, one of the most sustained reductions in illicit crops in recent history." But the increases in Bolivian and Peruvian production concerned the UN narcocrat. "We are worried about the situation in Bolivia," where a popular uprising led in part by coca grower leader turned national political figure Evo Morales forced the nation's president out of office last week, he said. "Narcotics is a byproduct of the crisis," he told a news conference. "The weaker the government, the greater the amount of land cultivated for narcotics." Bolivian production was up 17% over the previous year, the report found. Similarly, Costa complained that the Peruvian cocaine production increase of 14% was due to "lawlessness" in two of the country's eight coca growing regions. The answer, said Costa, was more money for alternative development, but that would require a "stable and secure" environment. "It is imperative, therefore, to strengthen governance and development programs in Peru and Bolivia, where recent increases in cultivation have occurred."
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
