Posted on 11/25/2005 11:12:37 PM PST by neverdem
CHIPIRIRI, Bolivia - In nearly 50 years of growing coca, José Torrico has seen army soldiers swarm across his fields to pull up his plants and heard threats from successive Bolivian governments determined to destroy his crop.
And like thousands of other coca farmers in this verdant, tropical region of central Bolivia, Mr. Torrico has refused to stop growing coca, the main ingredient in cocaine, even in the face of a relentless United States-financed effort to stamp it out.
Now, after years of persistence, he and his fellow farmers say they are eagerly anticipating the advent of a new era, one in which growing coca will finally be made legal. That is, they say, if Evo Morales is elected president on Dec. 18.
"It will be legalized," Mr. Torrico, 69, said with a broad smile as he showed off an orange nylon tarp loaded with freshly picked coca leaves. "This is good for us. Evo can do us favors."
Mr. Morales, a onetime leader of the coca growers federation, has steadily become revered by the left around Latin America as an unbending opponent of globalization. That is worrisome enough to the Bush administration. But more alarming to American officials is that a man who promotes coca farming - an industry central to cocaine production - may soon lead this Andean nation.
Rising in part on his pledge to legalize coca, Mr. Morales has become the top presidential candidate in Bolivia, and he now leads his closest adversary, Jorge Quiroga, an American-educated former president, by 33 to 27 percent, according to a poll conducted earlier this month.
Mr. Morales's ascent now, at a time when President Bush holds the lowest standing of any United States leader ever in Latin America, has intensified a clash of cultures with Washington that shows some...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
leave it to the bolivians to strive for the legalization of bolivan marching powder
Oh, no. Not one of those WOD conservatives.
:) Hehe!
WOD?
War on Drugs.
Ah no.... just had to find a thread to use the Bolivan marching powder comment...
The war on drugs is a lost cause and a waste of money at this point... we would be better served by trying to sink the money into rehab and education here instead of fighting losing battles outside our borders
In Peru and Bolivia they sell tea made from coca leaves. It 's a bit more stimulating than coffee or tea.
There are people who will hold to the WoD like those Japanese soldiers we found decades after the war on remote Pacific islands... the world will move on and they will keep fighting, bitterly, in their own little worlds.
Geez, who sounds bitter now?
Here where I'm at in SE Tennessee meth was huge until they started forcing pharmacies to sell psuedoeffedrine from behind the counter. Meth busts have gone way, way down. Before the change cops were busting several meth labs a week around here.
Then again, when one drug dries up, another ones comes out. I know a couple of Pharmacists and a couple of doctors who refer to the area between Chattanooga, Nashville and Knoxville as the "codeine triangle". Apparently, the area has the highest number of prescription drug users of anywhere in the country, mostly codeine based drugs. Tenncare has a lot to do with it, too.
The New York Times is a communist organ and I think they're slanting views. This coca guy may still lose. A lot of people cannot stand him.
You get it. He just won the Summit in Argentina, taking 29 out of 34 votes, and four of the five dissidents are willing to climb onboard in time. That just leaves Hugo Chavez all by his lonesome.
If you think Bush's approval numbers are low in South America, check out Chavez's. He is the most feared and detested leader in Bolivia and Ecuador.
I'm sure some of the rich landowners down there arn't thinking Coca Tea, Im sure they are in it for Cocaine.
Anyone who can read above the eighth grade level should know that the NY Times has a left wing slant. But the simple fact is that for many stories, if the NY Times doesn't cover a story, then it gets no coverage in the MSM.
That being said, how do you explain the following from Che's Second Coming?
When you spend time with Morales, it is hard not to conclude that he wants to have it both ways where his links with Chávez and Castro are concerned. For while he denies any particular affinity with either regime, there is no doubt that these two "radical" leaders are the ones to whom he has turned time and again for advice. Certainly, Hugo Chávez has made no secret of the sympathy he feels for Morales's campaign, while the state-run Cuban press has lavished a great deal of attention on Morales. MAS seems unsure of how to present these links. In Morales's campaign biography, there are angry sentences denying a connection to Chávez. But on the same page where these lines appear, there is a photograph in which Morales and the Venezuelan strongman are posed together.
Is that supposed to reassure conservatives in the U.S.? I don't think so.
If coco is illegal should I sell my Starbucks stock?
It's significant that the guy who wrote that stuff about Morales was a different - and better - writer than Forero. Forero is a bonafide shill, this other guy writes stuff that's closer to the truth.
I don't agree with you that if the Times doesn't cover somethihng it doesn't get reported. The Times is typically two days late on any big story and compiles a lot from what's already run on the wires. Reuters, believe it or not, does the best job among the wire services but if you really want the juicy scoop, Agencia EFE, in English, is the place to go. Best-kept secret in journalism, they do a really good job. http://www.efenews.com/
That's not what I wrote: "But the simple fact is that for many stories, if the NY Times doesn't cover a story, then it gets no coverage in the MSM."
By that I meant reporting the news on broadcast TV, radio and major newspapers. I find wire services good for breaking news, but not much good except for superficial coverage. I'm not trying to say that if the Times' doesn't report it, that it doesn't happen. But if the Times doesn't report about it, you're probably going to have to hunt for it in more hard to find sources. Using a search engine such as Google isn't that easy if you get thousands or more of results to scan.
You're overstating the Times' importance. On Venezuela in particular its credibility has dropped. The Miami Herald and Washington Post and FT and WSJ; the Texas papers - and occasionally the LA Times - all - are making a far bigger splash than the NYT on Venezuela news. They have done far more important work and their stories have frequently been copied by the NYT several days late. The Times lost credibility when it came out and said Hugo Chavez's recall referendum was fair. Nobody else did. Not a single other newspaper. The WSJ and FT in particular were extremely skeptical and the others have made that kind of skeptical noise too. The NYT is frequently a behind the times outlier on Latam. They really aren't that important in the Age Of The Blogosphere.
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