BOLIVIA´S CRAZY KINGDOM OF COCA / THE ECONOMIST

Ever-present Evo

Bolivia’s crazy kingdom of coca

Former leader Evo Morales is hiding out there

Evo Morales's supporters push for null votes in Bolivia's elections / Photograph: Reuters

After a few drinks, Feliciano Mamani hoicks up his trouser leg to show where the police shot him 30 years ago, when he was a young coca farmer resisting the government’s eradication programme, leaving a purplish crater in his leg. 

Yet when he recounts the two times he came even closer to death, this wound barely makes the cut.

War stories abound in the Chapare, Bolivia’s coca kingdom. 

It has been peaceful since Evo Morales emerged from its coca farmers’ union to lead the Movement to Socialism (MAS) to power in 2006. 

But that may soon change. 

Torn into factions, the MAS looks set to lose the coming election. 

Mr Morales was forced out of the MAS and is now in the Chapare evading arrest for alleged statutory rape. 

He says the charge is politically motivated and wants supporters to spoil their ballots to protest his exclusion from the poll by a court ruling. 

His future hangs in the balance. 

So do the prospects for the Chapare—and for Bolivia.

The split in the MAS goes back to 2019, when Mr Morales resigned after a disputed election in which he sought an unconstitutional third consecutive term in office. 

He went into exile, only to return when Luis Arce, his former finance minister, retook the presidency in 2020. 

Mr Morales wanted another run at the top post. 

But it soon became clear Mr Arce wanted to keep it.

After years of infighting, neither man has got onto the ballot this time. 

An economic crisis, with fuel shortages and inflation likely to hit 30% this year, ruined Mr Arce’s electoral chances, so he withdrew. 

Mr Morales’s candidacy was blocked by a court ruling on term limits. 

In the process the MAS’s reputation was wrecked.

The election Bolivia faces on August 17th is its most unpredictable in 20 years. 

The front-runners are Samuel Doria Medina, a centrist tycoon, and Jorge Quiroga, a right-wing former president. 

Pollsters reckon neither will surpass 25% in a field of eight; a run-off in October is likely. 

The left’s only real hope is Andrónico Rodríguez, 36, the Senate’s president, who is running not for the MAS but for the People’s Alliance. 

Though he is polling at under 10%, the rural vote has strongly favoured the MAS and is often undercounted in polls: it could yet back him.

But Mr Morales stands in the way. 

Mr Rodríguez is part of the same coca farmers’ union and was considered his political heir. 

Now Mr Morales calls him a traitor and wants Bolivians to spoil their ballots. 

His plan is to delegitimise the poll, then lead a resistance from the Chapare again.

The road to the Chapare winds from arid highlands into tropical forest. 

About 260,000 people, many descended from internal migrants escaping drought and poverty, live there across five coca-growing municipalities. 

The newcomers turned to coca, which grows easily and can yield four harvests a year. 

There is a market for leaves that Andeans have chewed as a stimulant for millennia. 

But in the 1980s demand for coca to produce cocaine exploded.

Coca farmers say the union was forged in the repression that ensued. 

When forced eradication backed by the United States began, farmers fought back. 

Eventually they won the right for each union member to have a coca plot of 1,600 square metres. 

With Mr Morales as president, the unions took responsibility for stopping illegal production over the allotted limit.

Almost 50,000 coca farmers belong to an overarching body known as the Six Federations, still led by Mr Morales. 

They pay dues, take part in meetings and, if called upon, take to the streets. 

Now they also take turns protecting Mr Morales in the village of Lauca Eñe, where hundreds of people with sharp staves have formed a ragtag garrison ever since police fired on his car last October. 

Mr Morales accuses the government of trying to kill him; officials say his vehicle rammed through a checkpoint.

The Six Federations unofficially reigns over the Chapare and the five coca municipalities. 

It runs the coca trade, controls prices and taxes the proceeds. 

It controls much else, from land tenure to low-level justice. 

Its own media pump out propaganda. 

Mr Mamani, who was a mayor in the Chapare for ten years, says the union wants to have an international TV channel.

Under Mr Morales’s presidency the region flourished. 

Villa Tunari, the biggest municipality’s hub, now has hotels, gyms and karaoke. 

Coca farmers plant tropical fruits and dig ponds to farm tambaqui, a tasty fish. 

The price of land has rocketed. 

A hectare by the main road that cost $300 or so in the 1990s, says a coca farmer, now goes for $10,000. 

Many farmers also own property in the city of Cochabamba, where their kids go to university.

Not all this prosperity is legal in origin. 

Mr Morales kicked the US Drug Enforcement Administration out in 2008. 

Much of the region’s coca feeds the drug trade; many of its hotels and tourist ventures are said to be money-laundries.

But things have soured since Mr Morales left power. 

Public money no longer flows to the region. 

Drug labs have more often been busted. 

And the mood could worsen still after the election. 

Mr Morales’s loyalists are sure most Bolivians will spoil their ballots, though polls suggest no more than 15% of Bolivians overall plan to. 

But even 20% would be startling.

A shot in the foot

In any case, a big null vote makes the current opposition more likely to win. 

And Messrs Doria Medina and Quiroga have both said Mr Morales will go to prison if either of them is elected. 

“Evo would be a trophy,” says Iván Canelas, ex-governor of Cochabamba and a friend of Mr Morales. 

“They could kill ten people and grab Evo and lots of people in the city will say it’s what had to be done.”

The Six Federations is preparing to resist. 

María Eugenia Ledezma, its top female leader until a few months ago, says they will use guerrilla tactics against soldiers who venture into the Chapare, depriving them of sleep, then attacking with sticks and stones. 

She says miners have been teaching people how to make boobytraps with dynamite; sympathisers in the army have been training the young. 

“Many of us, many leaders, will surely die or be imprisoned,” she says, grim-faced.