This essay is one of the strongest and sincere I have ever seen.
The cocaine issue should be a priority in the international media's agenda, more than China's growth and more than the Iraq War.
The demand for cocaine is growing in our the developed countries as never before, but still very few talk about this issue. The problem is not the Bolivian peasants making cocaine, or the Colombians. they just have to, or they would starve.
The problem is the total lack of efforts in our society to make people understand that using cocaine is a choice someone else will pay.

Hi, I'm the author of this photo essay.
against my own interest, I decided to publish here a story that nobody in the US seems to be interested to talk about. Why? Read and you'll understand.

I apologize for my English, just remember that I'm Italian....

The First thing that must be clear: coca and cocaine are two different things. Cocaine doesn't have ANY medicinal value, while the coca leaf does.

Behind the coca leaf there's a big issue that nobody talks about: The billionaire interests of the pharmaceutical industry, in the US.

An international UN law bans the trade (import/export) of the coca leaves, as the plant is listed as a primary ingredient to make narcotics.

For this reason, the US Gov. provides a unique, special license issued by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to a US based chemical company, which name is Stepan. This license is in total contrast with the international agreements.

An Illinois-based chemical company, the Stepan Company, is the only one in the planet allowed to import coca leaves from South America. Stepan Chemical Company have a special license issued by the DEA that allows the exportation of tons of coca leaves every year, mostly form Perù and Bolivia.

Stepan sells the coca syroup to CocaCola, which use it to flavour the popular soft drink, after processing the leaves to extract the alkaloid of the cocaine. CocaCola make almost 500.000 bottles of beverage per day, turning the cheap leaf into gold. Moreover, Stepan makes more billions selling the cocaine alkaloid to the pharmaceutical industry, in the US and in Germany.

At this point, some big contradictions need answers:

First, why should the US Administration fight to eradicate the coca crops, being the coca plant the essential base for a billionaire market that makes the USA rich, and fuel some of the strongest lobbies that endorse the Government?

Second, how the US Administration would explain the contradiction of the same Federal Agency, the DEA, simultaneously trying to destroy every single leaf of the holy plant and then granting a chemical Company with a unique license that allow to trade the same plant?

Beside the previous questions to be answered, the former coca-farmer and current President of Bolivia, thought it would make sense for his Country to enter this exclusive business, being Bolivia one of the three only Countries in the world where coca grows. How to blame him?

One of the answers to such questions has to be searched in the multi-billionaire machine that feeds the lobby close to the US Gov. through a 660.000 million per year contract given to the DynCorp, a paramilitary private contractor that works in the Coca region (Bolivia – Colombia – Peru – Ecuador). As for Bolivia, DynCorp is officially training “police forces”.
Such police forces are actually some paramilitaries loyal to the extreme right-wing Bolivian party Nacion Camba led by Branko Marnovich who is preparing to destabilize Morales’ Gov.

Morales aims to enter this market, turning the coca crops into one of the Nation’s economical strengths. Before Morales was elected, Stepan Chemical used to buy huge quantities of leaves from Bolivia, and they also built a factory/storage in the Chapare region on this purpose. But after the indigenous President came into office the Company moved on to Peru to buy most of the leaves, turning Bolivia into a marginal supplier.

In order to offer to the chemical and pharmaceutical industry - and to CocaCola - the essential element which is at the base of their business, Morales’s Government - with the aid of Hugo Chavez - invested 400.000 USD to build the first factory ever to process the coca leaf in the Bolivian region of Chapare, and he’s working to change the UN law that bans its trade.

The UN response to his efforts, however, is discouraging. The UN released an official act in March 2008 asking the Bolivian and Peruan Gov’ts to ban even the traditional use of the coca leaf in their territories, transforming an already complicate political issue into a cultural issue. In the same time International Crisis Group released in late March 2008 an historical report about the failure of the War on Drug in South America.

If the Nation may rely on a legal and rewarding coca-based business, it would be logic to think that the indigenous people of Chapare would gradually move toward a legal business, leaving the cocaine production behind, not to mention the interest of the foreign pharmaceutical companies to invest in the Country.

Morales’ controversial friend Hugo Chavez and the revolutionary charges brought by the policy of nationalization of Bolivia’s natural resources – including the coca crops – led the US Gov’t. to study a special plan, in order to keep control over that nation.
If Morales should achieve his goal on the legal coca market, the US would lose a billionaire market and the chemical and pharmaceutical industry that lives on the cocaine alkaloid may choose to invest in Bolivia, dealing with better prices and a more flexible tax regime.
This would virtually cut the US out of the heart of Latin America: Perù may follow the example of Bolivia. Colombia would remain the only South American Nation where the US still have control, but surrounded by enemies in and out of its borders.

To avoid this scenario the Bush Gov’t. sent a special person in Bolivia: the current US Ambassador Philip Goldberg. Goldberg was the Department’s Bosnia Desk Officer who studied and organized the fragmentation of the Balkans in the 90’s, known as Balkanization. He was previously based in Pristina - Kosovo - and he was suddenly displaced in Bolivia few months after Morales came into office.

He brought with him a lobby of investors from the Balkans, who are represented in Bolivia by Branko Marinovich (Bolivian leader of the Morales opposition) – ...but not a typical Bolivian name.

The goal is to replicate the fragmentation scheme of the Bakans in Bolivia.

The indigenous President is facing now facing a political war in his own Country, against the right-wing opposition. Their strategy is to move the Capital City from La Paz to Sucre, creating a block of Eastern regions (called the Half Moon) that would isolate the left-wing, western regions that support Morales.
The Half Moon is the rich area of Bolivia, where oil and gas reserves supply Brazil, Argentina and Chile, and where a flourishing agriculture make the difference between the poor regions of the Altiplano and Tropic of Cochabamba.

The Half Moon is mostly inhabited and ruled by mestizos and European descendants who literally hate the indigenous. The strategy to achieve the separation of the Country is throwing fuel on the burning fire of racial hate. Just like it happened in the former Yugoslavia, in early the 90’s.

The opposition party, La Nacion Camba, is secretly training some paramilitaries with the suspected endorsement of the US Govt., and the on-site supervision Philip Goldberg.

THAT'S ALL - hope it helps to have a more clear idea of the real situation.

Marco Vernaschi