The reason, of course, is that the peasants are being pushed deeper and deeper into the bush by population pressures, urban growth, and commercialization of agriculture. In the case of Bolivia, this has been influenced by population pressures from Brazil. At the same time, the urbanized economy is at a profound disadvantage with respect to trade partners, since terms of trade are terrible and Bolivia must import a growing list of items. This places pressure on the national government to spend ever more on social services and public works, so it is eternally in a budget crisis. Insurgencies not only become a bigger headache, they are costlier to fight since there is now a large cohort of Indians in the cities; in the past, genocidal tactics and scorched earth tactics, coupled with indentured servitude and military conscription, solved the problem.

It's facile to argue that the USG—a main aid supplier, exporter, and importer for Bolivia, as for its neighbors—is maliciously conspiring to make matters worse. As we've seen elsewhere, these are dilemmas from which national governments must make unattractive choices, and for the most part the government of Bolivia has alternated between the populism of Paz Estenssoro and the technocracy of Sanchez de Lozada or Banzer. During the period immediately following WW2, substantial US aid flowed to Bolivia despite a radical populist government that nationalized much of the local economy. This aid probably did help the major urban centers of Bolivia absorb the massive influx of rural mestizo peasants. Several party factions hoped to bring quasi-Maoist or Marxist movements into the fold, and were thwarted by the Ocober '64 junta; yet one has to wonder if fundamentally anti-urban rebellions could ever have been reconciled with the modern nation state.

Yet the machinery of the liberal-authoritarian state, waging war to defend its New Deal-like programs in the burgeoning cities, was not sustainable either and soon gave way to the minimalist praetorian state—a minimal state, overwhelmed by the increasing expense of even sub-standard levels of public works and social welfare programs, constantly regurgitating the rhetoric of privatization, deregulation, and labor market flexibility. This is why many of the most fiery critics of the neo-liberal model in the '50's and '60's were obligated to submit to it in the '80's and '90's.

Now it is time to mention the narco-raffickers and their role in the Andean economy. In the North, we naturally suppose these men are marginal, perhaps terribly wealthy and flashy, but thugs with daggers between their clenched teeth. In reality, these men are—along with patriarchal heads of the mining combines like the two-term Pres. Sanchez de Lozada—the pillars of the economy. The local chambers of commerce are dominated by ranchers with close familiar relations to the same men, like Roberto Suarez. These are the merchant bankers of the Bolivian economy, the sympathetic loan officers and grandfatherly patrons of the barrios. They do not suffer from the eradication programs, since these programs never have much hope of entirely eradicating the crop; and ironic as it may seem, the drug barons are usually quite interested in defeating the cocaleros, or activists for the coca-growing peasants and Indians. Eradication efforts, doomed as they are to fail, only succeed in destroyng accumulated wealth of the growers, preventing any sort of stable organization, or political activism. The eradication project floods the Andean economies with US aid and used military equipment, criminalizes the main rival of the rancher/drug baron for land and water, and thereby ensures a perpetuation of his political hegemony.

When a mist of glyphosate descends on an Andean hillside, the loss of coca doesn't affect the rancher/drug baron; his financial stake in coca inventories begins long after the crop is harvested. In regions like Putamayo, Colombia, processed cocaine is often used as money among the bush communities long after it is processed into a compact form. Afterwards, it enters the narco-trafficker's inventory. When households are ruined by spraying of Roundup, they must cope in a variety of ways, such as emigrating to the city (leaving the land open to expropriation by the drug barons) or joining the guerrilla movements. Not surprisingly, movements like FARC and ELN have reacted by becoming obsessed with getting money, rather than effecting revolution.

The policy of drug eradication, as a part of the US government's DEA, is a terrible idea; the policy of defending it with massive military aid programs (MAP) is, however, too self-defeating to be dismissed as merely a bad idea. The ease with which the drug barons commandeer free helicopter gunships and the personnel of their governments' armies for use against the peasants and Indians, is obvious enough; one might arge that some fraternal respect has to be accorded to these governments—the USA cannot sneer at its neighbors as openly as that. But the fact is that the entire program of arming governments to wage a mjor war against a huge segment of their own populations, under pressure from Washington, with US-supplied equipment, is simply a formula for creating an enemy to fight.

Natural Gas, Nationalism, and Narco-Trafficking

In the late 1960's, LNG became a major component of the Bolivian export economy; in the late '90's, it spiked upward relative to domestic consumption, creating an agreeable quandary of where to export the stuff. Unlike petroleum, for which transport is a negligible expense, LNG prices can vary tremendously precisely because it either must be liquified and then shipped, or else it must be compressed and pumped by overland pipe. British Petroleum's Chaco Division operates the main CNG field; it would prefer to merely pay the royalties to the government and operate in peace. In the July referendum, where the government got a mandate to nationalize the entire process of recovering and liquifying natural gas, the outcome certainly seemed populistic enough. But in fact there was a lot of leftist/nationalist outrage at the referendum, and demands that LNG exports be terminated entirely. This persisted long after the plan to export the gas through "unredeemed" Bolivian territory (viz., Chile's Atacama Desert) was scuppered. Why?

Also, what connection could this have with the war on drugs?

If the Bolivian government were to be radicalized and end all exports of LNG, it would probably destroy the country's fragile soereign debt. As it is, the country's internal and external debts are huge and growing, with no end in sight. As is usually the case in such circumstances, it would become isolated. The urban middle class would face inflation as many imports, denominated in dollars, surged in price against the bolivar. They must know this. But the country's sovereign debt has traditionally been a weapon of the oligarchy against the rest of the population. With LNG exports flowing to Mexico, Argentina, or Brazil, the option of defaulting on the sovereign debt is largely removed. Nationalization of the recovery, liquification, and distribution enterprise imposes fixed costs on the state, which it can only meet through exports and taxes. If the people on the other end of the pipeline cannot pay, or if the world price declines, then Bolivia's taxpayers are stuck footing the bill for nationalization. A majority of Bolivians obviously regarded this as the lesser evil. Another segment probably was opposed to nationalization for familiar liberal economic reasons. But another segment clearly felt that the Bolivian state had been bought out from under them. In the meantime, the militarization of the Bolivian state continues as part of Plan Colombia. Let's return to the narco-trafficking angle. Mr. Blixen writes

The establishment of a common enemy, transnational and dangerous, is vital for any strategy of hegemony. As with Communism before it, drug trafficking defined as the principal enemy of the democratic process tends to cover up the primary cause of destabilization in Latin America: the profound social injustices and insupportable levels of marginalization and poverty caused by neoliberal economic recipes. Just as "narco-terrorism" is a crude generalization to explain the social disruptions, rebellions, violence and uprisings, "narcotrafficking" provides an easy justification for the deployment of military strategies. In ...a wide spectrum of society that includes progressive parties, churches and social organizations, the definition of "drug-trafficking" as the main threat to democratic processes raises suspicions, in part because of the numerous precedents that link drug deals with the financing of undercover operations promoted by the CIA and other US agencies carrying out national security policies....Counterinsurgency strategies included the appearance of paramilitary groups, and the pursuit of political objectives.

Blixen's article focuses on the role of Argentine military advisors throughout Latin America; but he points out the peculiar deception of narcotics trafficking in accumulating endless spending power for the oligarchies of countries like Bolivia. This spending power will, with the LNG boom, be augmented for a little bit longer.

SOURCES: Library of Congress, Country Reports, Bolivia (see also security info) Frank E Smith, "More Latin America, to the Death of Che Guevara" (Bolivia) "BP Resumes Operations in Bolivia, But Other Conflicts Continue" (Rigzone) "People power: globalization resistance brings down a President - Bolivia" (New Internationalist) "Peasants occupy oil fields in Bolivia" (Swissinfo) Department of Energy (DOE) Country Analysis Brief for Bolivia—comprehensive description of energy resources for all countries, including LNG and electricity