Development Policy Review, 2005, 23 (2): 183-198
Overseas Development Institute, 2005.
Published by Blackwell Publishing, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
When international development policy prioritises goals determined by the
donor’s domestic policy concerns, aid agencies not only fail in their
development objectives but can also generate conflict in the recipient
country. In the Bolivian Chapare, where the United States is driven by the
need to demonstrate success in controlling cocaine production, policies to
eradicate coca leaf have led to programmes with limited development
impact that increase conflict both locally and nationally. In contrast, the
European Union’s successful collaboration with local governments which
began in 1998 provides insights into generating sustainable development
and de-escalating conflict in drug-producing regions worldwide.
‘Alternative Development projects are sown at a table, cultivated on a blackboard,
harvested on a computer and sold in publicity campaigns on radio and television.’
Azucena Vermandi, coca grower from the Monzon Valley in Peru (Noticias Aliadas, 2004)
1 Introduction
Since the attacks on the United States on 11 September 2001, the United States Agency
for International Development (USAID) has added ‘conflict vulnerability assessments’
to the requirements its missions around the world must complete when they enter a new
budgetary cycle. While these assessments focus on conflicts internal to the countries
where USAID operates, they ignore the role US policies can play in exacerbating or
generating conflict. Where US domestic policy agendas trump policy objectives
promoting sustainable local development and democracy, the domestic agenda can
actually sabotage stated foreign policy goals. As a consequence, not only does
economic development fail but USAID’s commitment to strengthening local democracy
and stability is compromised.
Since the 1980s, in the Bolivian coca-growing Chapare, US policy has aimed
simultaneously to eliminate the production of coca destined for cocaine and to develop
economic alternatives for coca growers. While all agree that coca eradication will fail
without economic alternatives, USAID has excluded local community leaders from
participating in development planning. US official financial and technical support for
forced eradication by police and military forces has led to human rights abuses and
contributed to widespread mistrust and suspicion of USAID’s economic development
projects (Human Rights Watch, 1996; Ledebur, 2002). The European Union’s approach
has differed significantly, as the EU has collaborated with local governments controlled
by the coca-growers’ union since 1998. Its experience offers ideas for how collaboration
with local communities in drug-producing regions can lead to sustainable development
and assist in the long-term goal of reducing drug-related agricultural production.
This article begins by introducing the Chapare and its history of Alternative
Development. It then looks at the US model of Alternative Development and the growth
of opposition to coca eradication. It notes how this opposition has been strengthened by
a national administrative decentralisation programme that has given new powers to local
governments. It then compares European Union projects with those supported by
USAID. Finally it suggests that USAID might have greater success in achieving its
agendas if it collaborated with, rather than fought against, democratically elected local
officials.
2 The coca boom in the Chapare
The Chapare, also called the Tropics of Cochabamba, lies in the Bolivian department1 of
Cochabamba. It includes four provinces (or counties), Carrasco, Tiraque, Chapare and
part of Ayopaya, encompassing 3,379,000 hectares of which only 410,000 are suitable
for cultivation, as soils are generally poor. Its ecosystem is classified as semi-tropical to
tropical and generally considered fragile, with significant biological diversity and high
annual rainfall. Forest covers most of the land (Viceministerio de Desarrollo
Alternativo, 1999).
Coca production and its subsequent processing into cocaine or coca paste or base
(unrefined cocaine) dominate the Chapare, which until 1999 produced 85% of Bolivia’s
coca leaf and made the country the third largest coca producer in the world after Peru
and Colombia.2 Before the 1950s, the majority of the Chapare’s population were
indigenous nomads, who, despite the efforts of Roman Catholic and other missionary
groups to settle them forcibly into villages, maintained much of their traditional way of
life.
After the 1953 agrarian reform gave many of the country’s indigenous rural
majority title to small parcels of land in the densely populated highlands, the
government promoted the colonisation of the lowlands to relieve population pressure.
This began in the 1960s in the Chapare, leading to the first significant wave of
campesino3 migration, establishing an agricultural production system characterised by
small landholdings, mostly under manual production, and a family-based labour force.
As the land and climate were suitable for the hardy coca bush, whose medicinal and
magical use has been part of indigenous culture in Bolivia for thousands of years,
colonisers planted it along with other largely subsistence crops. By 1967, the population
of the Chapare had grown to 27,000 (Riley, 1996: 110).
The coca boom in Bolivia began in the 1980s as demand for cocaine increased in
northern countries, particularly the United States. The most brutal military dictatorship
in Bolivia’s modern history (under Garcia Meza from 1980 to 1982) was closely linked
to the burgeoning drug trade, and controlled the export of semi-refined cocaine paste to
Colombia, where it was processed and exported northward. In 1971, coca made up 25%
of the Chapare’s agricultural production; by 1985, it had skyrocketed to 66% (Riley,
1996: 110). Coca produces four harvests a year, making it very easy to grow. Its
relatively high value to weight ratio is also a plus in an area where farmers have to carry
most crops to the road. With little understanding of cocaine and its effects,
impoverished campesinos responded to growing northern demand by increasing
production, and the leaf quickly became the most lucrative cash crop available. To date,
few campesinos have become involved in more lucrative and riskier cocaine processing
or transport activities.
The spiralling international demand for cocaine came at a time of political and
economic crisis in Bolivia. Hyperinflation, severe drought, and the adoption of
neoliberal structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) that closed state tin mines in 1985,
all created a desperate situation for thousands of Bolivia’s poorest people (Klein, 1992).
The national economic crisis paralleled a land crisis in the valleys and highlands, where
most rural Bolivians live. The small holdings created in 1953 had been divided among
one or two generations and by the mid-1980s many parcels amounted to less than a
quarter of a hectare. In addition, in the 1980s prices for national agricultural products,
which accounted for 70% of the nation’s food, plummeted when neoliberal policies
opened the country’s borders to cheaper imports. Campesinos and miners, drawn by the
greater opportunities for survival, went to the Chapare to grow coca. By 1983, the
Chapare population had grown to 142,000, peaking in 1989 at between 215,000 and
350,000 inhabitants (Painter, 1994: 16). Currently the population is estimated at
150,000 (CONCADE, 2003).
The coca-cocaine economy became central to the country’s ability to weather the
worst of the crisis provoked by structural adjustment. At its peak during the late 1980s
and early 1990s, production was estimated to equal the legal export economy in size –
between US$450 million and US$635 million or 4-6% of GDP (Painter, 1994: 49). The
Cochabamba department’s regional economy was dependent on coca/cocaine, with
important multiplier effects, the most obvious being the boom in luxury housing
construction in the cities of Cochabamba and Santa Cruz, generating an architectural
style we call narco-baroque.
While larger than the land holdings in highland Bolivia, the average 10.5 hectare
Chapare farm is minimal at best for family survival, given the combination of fragile
soils and limited agricultural technology. On average, families cultivate less than 3 ha
(Cardoza et al., 1999: 182). Apart from coca, the principal crops are rice, bananas, and
citrus fruits. Many families also have a few cattle or chickens. Over 50% of the Chapare
is classified as primary forest, but indiscriminate and unsustainable logging of the most
valuable species, along with slash-and-burn agricultural practices by recent migrants, is
leaving behind devastated areas, especially close to the major roads (UNDCP, 2004).
Living conditions are poor for the vast majority of the Chapare’s inhabitants,
although, because of coca income and international aid, they are better than in other
rural areas in the country. A 1998 study in one part of the Chapare revealed that life
expectancy averages 56 years, average annual income per capita is approximately US
$560, infant mortality averages 100 per 1000 live births and literacy for those fifteen
and older averages 77%. While most residents own their own homes, the majority of
houses contain an average of seven people in two rooms with dirt floors (CIDES, 2001).
Since the government’s presence in the region during the 1960s, 1970s and early
1980s was virtually non-existent, campesino unions assumed the role of local
government, assigning land, resolving disputes and undertaking community projects,
such as building schools or roads (Recasens, 1996: 168). As a result, six powerful
campesino federations of the Cochabamba Tropics now represent approximately 45,000
families organised into almost 700 local unions (Mancomunidad del Trópico de
Cochabamba, 2002). Since 1996, women in the Chapare have been organised into the
Coordination Commission of the Six Federations of Women of the Tropics of
Cochabamba (CCFNTC) (Potter, 2002: 23).4 Both the men’s and the women’s
federations have consistently opposed coca eradication policies and are organisationally
and ideologically linked to national worker and peasant organisations.
3 History of ‘Alternative Development’ in the Chapare
The US government began its first efforts to control coca-cocaine in the late 1970s, but
these were dropped during the Garcia Meza dictatorship, to resume after 1982 when the
country returned to civilian rule. USAID/Bolivia has financed four major projects since
then. Reliable figures on the extent of this funding are hard to find: the US Government
Accounting Office (GAO) estimates that a total of US$229 million has been spent by
USAID since the beginning of the 1980s (GAO, 2002: 6), the Wall Street Journal puts
the figure at US$270 million (Lifsher, 2003), and Bolivian government publications
state that US$310 million will have been spent by 2004 (Araníbar and Alarcón, 2002).
Early USAID/Bolivia-financed Alternative Development programmes sought to
substitute the coca-cocaine economy directly with other crops, but both USAID and the
Bolivian government were aware that no other crop could directly compete with coca
(Painter, 1994: 107). Between 1983 and 1992, the Chapare Regional Development
Project (CRDP) spent over half its budget, with little success, to curb migration from
the high Cochabamba valleys that provided the labour necessary for coca cultivation
(Potter, 2002: 35). Beginning in 1994, the focus of the new programme, the
Cochabamba Regional Development Project (CORDEP) in what had come to be called
‘Alternative Development’, shifted to concentrate almost entirely on the Chapare, where
the programme focused on five agricultural crops (Viceministerio de Desarrollo
Alternativo, 1999).
US Alternative Development programmes have always been conditioned on coca eradication,
either at the individual or at the community level, and conditionality is generally perceived
by US policy-makers as the key for successful eradication programmes (USAID, 2003: 5).
Another fundamental characteristic of USAID programmes is that they have consistently
demonised the Chapare’s campesino unions. Contrary to generally accepted dictates of
good development practice, USAID has ignored and undermined the representatives of the
coca growers, some of whom now sit in the Bolivian Congress.
The bulk of US funding in the Chapare is not directed at the ‘carrot’ of Alternative
Development, but rather finances the ‘stick’ provided by special police and military
units which fight the coca/cocaine trade. While ostensibly aimed at the peces gordos
(big fish) of this trade, much of the military and/or police action is directed at cocagrowing
families, resulting in human rights abuses and harassment (Human Rights
Watch, 1996; Kohl and Farthing, 2001; Ledebur, 2003; Petersson and Mackay, 1993).
This policy is backed up by Law 1008 adopted in 1988 which has led to the
incarceration of campesinos for up to three years without trial (Farthing, 1997). The
almost constant conflict makes development programmes difficult, because cocagrowing
families are unlikely to differentiate between the goals of US-funded military
and police actions and US-funded development programmes. In fact, this distinction is
rarely made by the US itself; almost every government document makes it clear that
coca eradication, not economic development, is the primary goal of all programmes in
the Chapare (see, for example, GAO, 2002; USAID, 2003).
For most of the eighteen-year history of USAID/Bolivia’s Alternative
Development, it has been perceived as a failure by coca growers and many outside
observers (Painter, 1994; Potter, 2002). Criticisms centre on the absence of markets for
alternative crops, the lack of adequate technical assistance, poor inter-agency coordination,
the conditions placed on participation, and the failure to involve coca
growers and their leaders in programme design and implementation. Coca grower
frustration and distrust are reinforced when they see Bolivian professionals earning in a
month what campesinos earn in a year, accompanied by US supervisors paid four times
more again, racing back and forth in new jeeps from the Chapare to offices in one of
Cochabamba’s most luxurious office buildings. This distrust is further compounded
when agreements between the six federations of coca grower unions and the Bolivian
government regarding Alternative Development are regularly ignored. The US embassy
complicates matters further, as it frequently insists that the government take a hard line
against any compromises with the growers. In response, the growers insist that they
should negotiate directly with the US embassy, who they argue has the real decisionmaking
power in the Chapare (AIN, 2003).
4 Eradication and resistance
Plan Dignidad (the Plan for Dignity), instituted by the Banzer government in 1997 with
full US support, succeeded in eradicating 45,000 hectares of coca – virtually all the
production from the Chapare – by 2000. Touted by US officials as a huge victory in the
‘War on Drugs’, the military carried out forced eradication, which led to increased
repression and human rights violations against growers (Ledebur, 2002).
USAID’s economic development programmes failed to keep pace with the forced
eradication, placing 45,000 to 50,000 families in the Chapare in severe economic crisis
(GAO, 2002). Compensation promised for giving up coca production was provided to
only 25% of those eligible (Potter, 2002). The Chapare human rights ombudsman
reported increased malnutrition and prostitution in the zone (Reinicke, 2003). Total
eradication proved temporary in any case; by 2002, US Ambassador David Greenlee
estimated that coca production in the Chapare had increased by 30% during the previous
year (AIN, 2003). Eradication continued, however, and in both 2001 and 2002 the
Bolivian government destroyed a total of 17,000 hectares of coca (USAID, 2003).
The eradication of the Chapare’s coca has had severe economic effects in the
department of Cochabamba and the country as a whole, fuelling opposition to all USbacked
policies in Bolivia, including the economic liberalisation policies which have
sought to achieve the privatisation of basic services and natural resources. The well
organised coca-growing campesinos have become the most powerful popular social
force in the country. Their political party, the MAS (Movimiento al Socialismo –
Movement towards Socialism), consolidated in 1998, won over 80% of Chapare votes
in the 1999 municipal elections. In 2002, support for the MAS spread to campesino
communities and poor urban areas throughout the country, and the party won almost a
quarter of the seats in Congress, coming in a close second in the Presidential elections.
Coca-grower unions played a key role in forcing the President to resign in October 2003
during protests over the sale of natural gas reserves to a multinational corporation
(Rother, 2003).
5 Administrative decentralisation: the law of popular participation
Bolivia’s Law of Popular Participation (LPP), adopted in 1994 as part of an ambitious
decentralisation and privatisation programme called el Plan de Todos (the Plan for
Everyone), grew out of a long effort to shift resources to long neglected rural
communities (Molina Monasterios, 1997; Urioste, 2002). The LPP assigned 20% of
national tax revenues to municipal governments, along with responsibility for the
maintenance and construction of schools, health clinics, secondary roads, microirrigation
systems, and sports facilities. It mandated both participatory planning and
fiscal oversight by neighbourhood and indigenous organisations. Seventy-one
Mancomunidades, groups of municipalities united to co-ordinate on regional issues,
have been formed, although criteria for their formation, management and role are not
found in the original law (DDCP Project, 2003).
The designers of the LPP assumed that effective participatory planning would be
embodied at the municipal level in five-year Municipal Development Plans (MDPs)
broken down into Annual Operating Plans (AOPs). In practice, AOPs reflect the longterm
planning represented by the five-year MDPs only 33% of the time (Antezana,
2003; DDCP Project, 2003). Because government revenue-sharing funds, the most
important source of income for most municipalities, have proved highly sensitive to
economic changes, municipalities have little ability to do long-term planning (DDCP
Project, 2003).
Non-governmental organisations have provided much of the technical support to
develop the plans in small municipalities lacking administrative skills (Kohl, 2003a).
Aid agencies and international programmes have spent over US$50 million on training
and technical assistance in the past ten years, but this has mostly been directed to shortterm
programmes, rather than long-term systematic training to create a municipal civil
service. Some municipalities have no NGOs working with them; others, especially those
close to large urban areas, have ten or more (DDCP Project, 2003).
The LPP’s recognition of traditional grassroots organisations (TGOs) including
urban neighbourhood organisations, pre-Hispanic indigenous organisations, and modern
campesino unions, is one of its major accomplishments.5 The government registered
almost 15,000 TGOs between 1994 and 1997 and gave them responsibility for creating
community development plans. The TGOs also assigned local leaders to serve on
municipal Oversight Committees (OCs – Comités de Vigilancia) that were to ensure
that municipal budgets were fairly distributed between urban and rural sectors, and
more important, to reduce corruption at the municipal level by signing off on budgets.
Experience to date shows that where local organisations are strong and/or are backed by
NGOs able to provide technical expertise while supporting grassroots leadership, the
LPP has, to a limited degree, functioned as hoped (Kohl, 2003b).
However, consistent with decentralisation elsewhere in the world, the LPP has yet
to create transparent, efficient local governments, as the accusations of corruption and
financial mismanagement in two-thirds of the municipalities demonstrate (Ayo, 2003;
Oyugi, 2000). Other difficulties include: internal squabbles between government
officials, often along party lines; problems with the legal recognition of elected
authorities; excessive and unrealistic expectations of the LPP; and conflicts between
popular participation and traditional community decision-making systems (Beckett,
2003). In some municipalities, communities distant from the municipal seat get little
attention while the mayors located in the principal town decide far too much (Ayo,
2003). The OCs have been described as demonstrating ‘a mediocre performance due to
resource scarcity, lack of technical expertise, a tendency to concentrate tasks onto the
OC President, or overadherence to central political power’ (DDCP Project, 2003).
Most municipal investment has gone to health, education, sanitation and urban
infrastructure, with less than 3% assigned to productive activities (DDCP Project,
2003). While economic development was never an explicit goal of the LPP, it was
implied that, by improving rural infrastructure, economic growth would follow. Some
promoters of the LPP have argued that, in a country as poor as Bolivia, the municipality
should play an explicit economic role as a ‘productive municipality’ (Antezana, 2003).
Others reject this as impractical or impossible, given funding limitations (Hoffman,
2003) and the lack of relationships between the municipality and the private sector
(Ayo, 2003).
6 Administrative decentralisation and popular participation in the Chapare
When the LPP gave coca growers a reason to participate in formal government
structures for the first time, they won elections in the three municipalities of Villa
Tunari, Puerto Villarroel and Chimoré and the two sub-municipalities of Shinahoata and
Entre Rios.6 The newly elected municipal governments contracted with NGOs
sympathetic to coca-grower concerns to elaborate their first five-year Municipal
Development Plans (MDPs) in 1995. Between 1999 and 2004, the municipalities wrote
new five-year plans. In marked contrast to USAID/Bolivia documents for the Chapare,
which focus on coca eradication, the MDPs take an integrated approach to human and
economic development. For example, the 2002-7 PDM for Villa Tunari identifies nine
principal problems: a weak productive base, low agricultural productivity, low
agricultural investment, undeveloped animal husbandry, poor health coverage, high
levels of malnutrition, precarious housing lacking basic services, low educational levels
and weak public administration (Villa Tunari, 2002).
In the Chapare, municipal spending has been balanced between projects serving
the urban and rural population. Spending has included the construction of classrooms
and housing for teachers, building secondary roads, investment in water systems, and
the maintenance of urban electrical grids. However, the Chapare municipalities have
had no more success than other municipalities in incorporating their MDPs into their
AOPs; in Chimoré the AOP includes about 70% of the MDP but this drops to 25% in
Puerto Villarroel (Hoffman, 2003). This weakness in planning and project formulation
means that muncipalities have had difficulties in executing their AOPs and have had to
reformulate them during the course of the year (ibid.). Felipe Caceres (2003), mayor of
Villa Tunari, explained that he would have preferred to see more of the municipal funds
directed to productive activities, including working with the private sector, but he
needed to respond to the immediate demands of the population instead.
Municipalities used participatory rural appraisal techniques to write their MDPs
(Chambers, 1994; CIDES, 1997: 8-9), and relied heavily on community and union
leaders to gather information. In Villa Tunari, leaders held workshops at community,
district and municipality-wide levels (Antezana, 2003). Planning in the Chapare in
general had higher levels of community involvement than in most of the rest of the
country, in large part due to the presence of the unified, sophisticated coca-grower
unions. While NGO employees played a key role in co-ordinating the studies, union
leaders expected the NGOs to transfer specific planning skills to municipal employees.
In addition, a degree of horizontal mobility between the municipalities and the NGOs
has developed, providing the Chapare with greater access to a skilled labour pool for
community planning and development than comparable municipalities in other parts of
the country.
In the Chapare, almost all observers agree on the need for independent oversight,
as one political party (MAS) controls all but one of the municipal seats and members of
OCs are often financially dependent on the municipality. Many of the grassroots
representatives on the OCs lack the necessary skills to oversee municipal projects.
Instead, unions serve the function of the OC. Because the union leadership chooses the
mayor and the president of the OC, some observers see them as co-opted, but note that
the union does ensure transparency. Observers agree that the Chapare municipalities
function better and more honestly than in any other part of the country (Antezana, 2003;
Hoffman, 2003; Reinicke, 2003). The logic of a peasant union, however, differs from
that of a budgetary oversight committee, although the actors may not always be aware
of the difference (Castro, 2003).
The urban sectors of these largely rural municipalities present the greatest
opposition to Chapare mayors. Residents of the towns of Villa Tunari and Chimoré
expressed dismay that their municipality had been ‘taken over by campesinos’,
The Politics of Development Aid in Drug-Producing Areas 191
reflecting the traditional disdain of Bolivian town dwellers (vecinos) for their rural
neighbours (Kohl, 2003b). Like the populations of small towns throughout the country,
they resent this flow of funds to rural areas (Reinicke, 2003).
7 The European Union Chapare Assistance Programme: PRAEDAC
In 1998, the European Union programme initiated the Plan de Apoyo a la Estrategia de
Desarrollo Alternativo en el Chapare (Assistance to the Chapare Alternative
Development Strategy Plan – PRAEDAC). Originally conceived as a five-year plan to
support land titling, strengthening municipal administrative capacity, natural resources
and access to credit, it has recently been extended for an additional two years. The
municipal strengthening plan has directed $5.86 million to the Chapare’s newly formed
municipalities with no coca-related conditions attached, and is widely considered
PRAEDAC’s most successful component, functioning at full capacity since 2000.
PRAEDAC provides the municipalities with an average of 30% of their funds
(Hoffman, 2003).
PRAEDAC is similar in style and staff composition to other bi- and multi-lateral
development institutions, with no shortage of well paid international staff, new jeeps
and attractive offices. What distinguishes it markedly from USAID/Bolivia, however, is
its willingness to work with already established local organisations and offer assistance
without demanding coca eradication. Carlos Hoffman, Director of Municipal
Programming, explains:
Our approach is radically different from that of the United States. Our attitude is that
we will help campesinos improve their lives and then they will abandon drugs. Our
philosophy is to support popular participation through the municipalities. The
government made it very clear that the municipality is the planning unit in the
country. USAID carries out projects that the municipality doesn’t know anything
about, which makes a real planning process absolutely impossible. (ibid.)
The municipalities contract PRAEDAC to execute projects from their MDPs, most
commonly the construction of a school, health post or town hall. PRAEDAC also trains
the municipalities and the Chapare Mancomunidad in all aspects of public
administration, including improving the functioning of OCs. This training has paid off:
PRAEDAC determined that the municipalities could execute infrastructure projects,
independently, beginning in 2004.
8 Current ‘Alternative Development’ in the Chapare
The Counter-Narcotics Consolidation of Alternative Development Efforts
(CONCADE), referred to as USAID’s most recent development effort in the Chapare,
emphasises (i) agricultural technology transfer, (ii) agribusiness marketing and private
sector investment, (iii) strengthening Alternative Development organisations, and (iv)
road maintenance. This programme began in 1998 with a five-year total budget of $110
million, and has since been extended to 2005. Agricultural technology transfer is
conducted from the La Jota research station run by the Bolivian government agency
IBTA since the late 1980s. Always considered production- not market-driven, it has
been far more successful in producing model alternative crops with its technical
expertise than in transferring these skills to Chapare farmers or finding markets for
crops. At times, it has had as few as forty extension agents for 45,000 families, and
frustrated farmers have dumped crops on its doorstep more than once since the project
began (Kohl and Farthing, 2001).
Agricultural marketing and private investment emphasise developing export
systems for the Chapare’s five main alternative crops – bananas, passion fruit, palm
hearts, black pepper and pineapple. With considerable economic support from USAID,
several private investors have established agricultural processing facilities just outside
the city of Cochabamba. None of the new firms are headquartered in the Chapare,
which means that, while they provide some benefits to the Cochabamba region, there is
little direct impact on the livelihoods of coca growers (Reinicke, 2003). Export
agriculture, in a landlocked country with weak transportation infrastructure and farmers
unaccustomed to growing for export, is a difficult proposition at best, and to date it has
produced few tangible rewards for most Chapare farmers. In addition, there have been
accusations of misappropriation of funds, inadequate accounting practices, and conflicts
of interest.7
CONCADE’s reliance on the private sector for improving the economic
circumstances for campesinos ignores historic patterns. The private sector in Bolivia has
tended, since the founding of the Republic in 1825, to focus on quick profits, given the
chronically unstable political and economic environment (Morales, 1992). The GAO
called the Bolivian private sector ‘weak and cautious’ and argued that it ‘did not fulfill
the role envisioned by USAID in the project design’ (GAO, 2002: 29). Because of their
strong unions and communal traditions, coca growers are organised along lines that tend
to emphasise co-operation rather than competition. While they do not have the skills
and knowledge to develop markets for their products, they have long been subject to
mistreatment by the wealthy Bolivians who do (Albó et al., 1990).
Because it refuses to work with coca-grower unions, USAID/Bolivia has created
alternative organisational structures called Associations. These have generated
considerable campesino suspicion, in part because this tactic mirrors the various
attempts by Bolivian governments since the 1950s to create parallel organisations to
control rural populations (Albó et al., 1990). By 2004, USAID/Bolivia had created a
total of 413 Associations (Natiello, 2004).
Association members receive technical support to produce the five main alternative
Chapare crops, but even politically conservative campesinos who oppose the coca unions
are not optimistic about the Associations, citing the repeated failures of past
Alternative Development programmes (Sotomayor, 2003). Some associations exist
on paper only, and many members often maintain their ties with the coca-grower unions,
keeping a foot in both camps to minimise their risk (Antezana, 2003; Caceres, 2003;
Potter, 2002: 27).8 In other cases, campesinos drop out of the Associations but leave
their names on the rolls (Reinicke, 2003). USAID’s strategy does little to reduce the
often counterproductive conflict within communities and among families that Association
membership can provoke. Father Eugenio Coter, representative of the
Bolivian Bishops’ Conference in the Chapare, observed:
The faulty design of Alternative Development projects constantly provokes conflict
and confrontation between coca growers and Associations. Any gain in Alternative
Development is perceived as a loss for the union movement. With this structure no
progress is possible. (AIN, 2003)
The one exception to USAID’s rejection of working with the Chapare
municipalities has been CONCADE’s road maintenance programme, which began in
2002 with Villa Tunari and Chimoré municipalities. The programme has been highly
successful to date, and the Villa Tunari municipality is pleased with the results, even
though there was a widespread initial reluctance to participate, as the campesinos
believed that the programme would somehow be tied to forced eradication (Caceres,
2003; Sotomayor, 2003).
Measuring the success of current Alternative Development programmes is
problematic because figures are so unreliable. For example, in 2001, CONCADE
declared that its Alternative Development programmes had reached 17,864 families.
The Department of State’s 2001 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report
claimed 16,127 beneficiaries. In late November 2001, the Bolivian Viceminister of
Alternative Development declared that all programmes (including those not funded by
the US) had reached 12,000 families. Bolivian press accounts generally estimate 10,000
families. Finally, a 2002 General Accounting Office report claimed 7,300 beneficiaries.
While observers agree that in recent years Alternative Development has improved, they
still say that only about 10% of the money is bringing benefits to the local population
(Antezana, 2003; Hoffman, 2003; Reinicke, 2003).
9 USAID/Bolivia and municipalities
In 2004, the US$25 million USAID/Bolivia has targeted for Alternative Development in
the Chapare dwarfed the US$6.8 million combined budgets of the five Chapare
municipalities and sub-municipalities. Felipe Caceres, mayor of Villa Tunari, insists
that ‘in eight years, with one-fourth of the money, the municipalities have achieved ten
times what AID has accomplished in twenty years’ (Caceres, 2003).
USAID/Bolivia, which works with 84 other municipalities all over Bolivia, has
resisted working with Chapare municipalities, even though the municipal governments
are the designated planning unit (Ayo, July 2003). Despite steadily increasing coca
production in the Yungas coca-growing region, USAID has not developed an
Alternative Development programme there but has operated programmes through its
contractors such as Democratic Development and Citizen Participation (DDCP) and
Economic Opportunities. These have trained municipal governments and supported 56
projects including building potable water systems, funding college scholarships, and
strengthening coffee production.
USAID/Bolivia’s antipathy to the Chapare municipalities is reflected in the
pressure it has applied on PRAEDAC to work through their Associations and not
through the municipalities (Hoffman, 2003). Municipal officials resent the lack of coordination
by USAID and argue that, as the democratically elected municipal
representatives charged with planning, they should play a key role in determining
development priorities (Caceres, 2003).
Despite ongoing concerns, the coca growers are ready to work with USAID. Villa
Tunari’s mayor, Felipe Caceres, explains:
It would be wonderful if AID operated through the municipalities like it is supposed
to under Bolivian law. The road maintenance work has been a great success so far. I
have seen more flexibility lately – we are beginning to have meetings with DAI
[Development Alternatives Inc. – USAID’s principal contractor] to discuss how they
can work with us more directly. They have offered us $50,000 for an education
project – with us contributing 25%. This is the first time in twenty years that there is a
positive change. It would be great to work with them like we work with PRAEDAC –
without conditionality. If 100% of Alternative Development funds came through the
municipality on the basis of a planning process in which the campesinos themselves
decide the destination of the funds, I can assure you, excess coca would disappear.
Most cocaleros don’t understand drug trafficking and don’t want to have anything to
do with it, but they don’t want to eradicate the little that they have because they can’t
afford to lose this income. If there are real alternatives, the Federations will welcome
them. My whole life has been involved in this, and this awful situation has to change.
I really want something else for my children. (ibid.)
10 Conclusions
Throughout its history Alternative Development has been a political tool in the ‘War on
Drugs’, not an economic development programme. It has attempted to put a human face
on a frequently brutal policy to try to separate campesinos from their livelihood without
providing viable alternatives. The United States’ consistent and often single-minded
focus on eradication has meant that for almost twenty years it has virtually ignored the
significant negative impacts its domestically driven policies have had on local
populations and economies, as well as on Bolivia as a whole.
While causal connections linking economic development to conflict reduction are
tenuous at best (Miller, 1992: 202), USAID’s role in the Chapare has clearly failed to
ameliorate the tensions and conflict associated with the War on Drugs. In fact, its
actions have largely had the opposite effect. This contrasts with USAID’s ‘Vision
Statement on Conflict’ which asserts that ‘USAID’s development policy and portfolio
includes integrated interventions aimed at addressing the effects of underlying social,
economic and political problems that contribute to violent conflict’ (USAID, 2004).
Current USAID administrator Andrew Natsios has stated that USAID ‘must improve its
ability to promote conflict prevention’, which, he explains, must be done ‘mostly
through democracy’ (Muscat, 2002: 28). These policies have never been applied to the
Bolivian Chapare, where, since 1994, USAID has refused to support and strengthen
local democratic institutions.
In April 2004, without changing its argument that coca growers are drugtraffickers,
USAID/Bolivia declared that it would expand its working relationship with
Chapare municipalities (Los Tiempos, 8 April 2004). This announcement reflected a
shift that began in 2003 with a USAID/Bolivia document which stated: ‘The municipal
governments, especially at the technical and administrative levels, need to become
involved in the local and regional development process and thus the Alternative
Development program, regardless of momentary political affiliation of their elected
officials’ (USAID, 2003: 5). The 2003 USAID Conflict Vulnerability Assessment
suggests that channelling funds through municipalities could help to de-escalate conflict
in the Chapare. Specifically the report recommends expanding the successful DDCP
municipal strengthening and training programme into the Chapare in co-ordination with
other funders (Gamarra et al., 2003: 62) Given USAID’s formal commitment to
decentralisation and strengthening local democracy, such a move makes sense. Current
plans, however, allow for only a small fraction of USAID’s overall budget to be
directed through the municipalities, with the orientation of most funds remaining
unchanged.
The European Union’s approach through PRAEDAC reflects the
recommendations of hundreds of experts on Alternative Development, including
participation by USAID, reached at an international conference in January 2002 (GTZ
and UNDCP, 2002). Its emphasis on strengthening local governments provides an
important model for programmes worldwide, By meeting coca growers on their own
terms, it recognises that solutions to dependence on the coca/cocaine economy are longterm
and must respect traditional leadership.
To increase the possibility of success, Alternative Development must no longer be
associated with eradication but needs to work in collaboration with the elected
representatives of its target population. The most effective way to do this is through the
municipalities. Such a move would be welcomed by coca growers, and would provide
an effective mechanism to reduce conflict in the Chapare and the country as a whole,
contributing to political stability and non-violent solutions to Bolivia’s deeply
entrenched problems. Across the development literature, strong local organisations are
considered an enormous asset in economic development programmes, and in the
Bolivian Chapare USAID is fortunate to have such organisations to work with. If
USAID can learn to work with rather than against coca growers, it increases the chances
of achieving economic development and US policy goals of reducing coca production in
the Chapare.
Linda Farthing is an editor and a journalist, who has worked on development and US drug policy since
1984, and is on the Board of Directors of the Andean Information Network. Benjamin Kohl teaches in
Geography and Urban Studies at Temple University, Philidelphia, USA. He has worked on a range of
planning and development issues in Bolivia since 1987. They wish to acknowledge support from a Research Fellowship and a Grant in Aid from Temple University, and also to thank Kathryn Ledebur and Juan Arbona for comments on different versions of this article, and Sara Shields for interview assistance.
Footnotes:
1. Bolivia has nine departments which are the equivalent of states in the US or provinces in Canada.
2. For an overview of the drug trade see Hargreaves (1992) and Thoumi (2004). For information specific to Bolivia see Painter (1994) and Léons and Sanabria (1997).
3. Campesinos are literally people who live in the countryside. The word is commonly translated as peasants,which is incomplete in Bolivia’s case as the word campesino also implies indigenous (Hahn, 1992). The vast majority of Bolivian campesinos are from Quechua, Aymara, or Guaraní ethnic or linguistic groups (Albó et al., 1990).
4. Like campesino unions in other parts of Bolivia, the male head of the family is normally considered the
formal union member.
5. See Platt (1982, 1999) and Albó et al. (1990) for a discussion of these and other indigenous forms of
organisation.
6. Reflecting a disturbing nationwide trend to fragment municipalities in order to press for a greater share of funding, Entre Rios was slated to become its own independent municipality in 2004, to be called Bulo
Bulo after the major town in its area. 84 requests for such subdivision of municipalities are currently under consideration by the Bolivian Congress (Ayo, 2003). Some see this trend as a threat to the development ofstrong local government, as smaller municipalities have fewer human and economic resources. 190 Linda Farthing and Benjamin Kohl
7. The former director of the Bolivian agency which works in the Chapare, PDAR, is also the owner of the agricultural processor, INDATROP, supported by PDAR. Not only is there an apparent conflict of interest, although USAID insists that the appropriate guidelines were followed, but there are also suggestions of other improprieties. For example, in 2003, a suit was brought against INDATROP by its employees for failure to pay wages (Cascán, 2003).
8. With 86% of the Chapare population voting for MAS, it is clear that not only Association members
support the party, but so also do townspeople and even local police forces (Coca, 2003). Many observers note that there is scarcely a campesino in the Chapare who has not participated in USAID Alternative Development at some time or other.
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