BOLIVIA, A NARCO-STATE WHOSE FOREIGN POLICY DEFENDS NARCOTICS’ TRAFFICKING

Carlos Sánchez Berzaín
March 20, 2019

(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) The head of the coca growers Evo Morales, has turned Bolivia into a narco-state with the backing of the illicit coca harvesters’ unions and cocaine manufacturers as his political base.  There has been an increase of coca harvesting and cocaine production by over two thousand percent, facilitated by the expelling of foreign counternarcotic assistance and that of the United States’ Ambassador, along with the confirmed existence of an official drug trafficking circuit comprised by Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua, and the existence of an official cover-up and impunity for those involved.  A “Foreign Policy” based on the principle that the “fight against narcotics’ trafficking and terrorism is the creation of North American imperialism to oppress the nations”.  Today, Bolivia is a narco-state whose “Foreign Policy” defends narcotics’ trafficking.

Foreign policy is “that part of the general policy comprised by the set of decisions and actions through which objectives are determined and for which the means of a State are used, in order to generate, modify, or suspend its relationships with other actors from the international community”.   This is shown by “the set of governmental decisions taken by the government of a State in regard to its national interests and its relationship with the remainder of actors from the international community”.

The Head of State is the top representative of Foreign Policy.

The “term narco-state is applied to all such countries whose institutions are heavily and significantly influenced by narcotics’ trafficking and whose leadership are, simultaneously; governmental officials and members of illicit narcotics’ trafficking networks, shielded and protected by their legal immunities”.   Narco-politics is “such political activities in which the State’s institutions are gravely influenced by narcotics’ trafficking”.

Evo Morales ascended to the presidency of the Republic of Bolivia for a five-year mandate without the option for reelection, he has been there for 13 years and is implementing –once again- the Castroist Chavist ritual for dictatorships with the façade of democracy, to compel his indefinite reelection, thus replicating the actions of Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela and those of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua.  Morales’ political career has been characterized by his violent defense of the harvesting of illicit coca, turning the harvesters of coca leaf and manufacturers of cocaine paste and cocaine base from the tropical area of “Chapare” in the Cochabamba department of Bolivia into a massive political movement.

The birthing of Castroist Chavist doctrine as an international undertaking initially known as “the Bolivarian Movement” or “ALBA” and then as 21^st Century Socialism, made possible the empowerment of Morales who passed from actively toppling a democratically elected government in October of 2003, to the counterfeiting of a constitutional reform in 2004.

Morales and his coca leaf harvesters had been wrecked by the reduction of illicit coca harvesting from 123,457 acres in 1994 to a meager 7,407 acres in 2003 and by the ensuing reduction in cocaine production and Bolivia’s withdrawal from the huge narcotics’ trafficking mafias.  Today, however, in Bolivia there are nearly 148,148 acres of illicit coca leaf harvesting and Morales has promulgated legislation that allows the increase of legal coca leaf harvesting from 29,630 to 54,321acres, when reports from the United Nations and the European Union certify that Bolivia only needs a dismal 14,815 acres of coca leaf harvesting for its legal consumption.

Following his pro-narcotics’ trafficking agenda and policies, Morales expelled the U.S. Ambassador and antinarcotics agency known as DEA, thus unilaterally breaking international agreements and avoiding any type of serious oversight.  At the U.N., in 2016 and 2018, Morales set as his Foreign Policy principle that “the fight against narcotics’ trafficking and terrorism is an invention of the United States in order to subject the nations” and that “the U.S. uses its antinarcotics’ policy to intervene countries”.  Recently, he ratified this at the U.N. meeting in Vienna –while defending Venezuela’s dictator Maduro- thus placing at the fore front of his foreign policy the defense of narcotics’ trafficking.

Bolivia with Evo Morales has been expressly identified as a narco-state since 2008 by the acclaimed Times’ journalist Jean Friedaman-Rudovsky, by an investigative journalism report of journalist Gerardo Reyes from Univision in 2011, by Ghost Recon Wildlands the video game that features Bolivia as a narco-state (the most sold video game at the U.K. in 2017), by journalist Leonardo Coutinho in his 2018 book about Hugo Chavez and the existence of a “cocaine bridge” between the regime from Caracas, Morales, and others.

Faced with a growing increase of narcotics’ trafficking from Evo Morales’ Bolivia, bordering nations such as; Argentina, Brazil, and Chile have strengthened antinarcotics’ measures at their border.  Venezuela has been turned into a hub for narcotics’ trafficking with the FARC and ELN from Colombia and the coca and cocaine production from Bolivia.  Drug consumption in Bolivia is overwhelming and Morales continues using the discourse that there will always be drugs as long as there is consumption.

*Attorney & Political Scientist.  Director from the Interamerican Institute for Democracy.

Published in Spanish by Infobae.com on Sunday, March 17, 2019