Mesa: US-Bolivia Relations Depend on New Partner to Fight Drugs

By Matthew Schewel
September 14, 2009

Originally published in the Dialogue's daily Latin America Advisor.

WASHINGTON—Repairing the fractured relationship between the United States and Bolivia will likely hinge on finding a new partner to supplant US anti-drug efforts in the South American nation, former Bolivian President Carlos Mesa said last week.

Mesa said Bolivia is unlikely to allow a wholesale return of the US Drug Enforcement Administration, which President Evo Morales expelled last year along with the US ambassador, alleging they conspired with opposition forces. "I think the United States will end up renewing relations [with Bolivia] on the assumption that there will be a third party, probably Brazil, that will occupy the role the US had," Mesa told reporters on Wednesday.

As a major transit point for Bolivian cocaine and also a significant consumer, Brazil has a direct interest in curbing the flow of illegal drugs from Bolivia, Mesa said. He called for a military and police agreement that would allow the two countries to cooperate in a wide range of anti-narcotics efforts, with a specific emphasis on interdiction. Mesa said an expanded role for Brazil in combating the drug trade was part of a larger trend in the region. "This also has to do with the fact that the US is delegating to Brazil the responsibility of fulfilling the role that the US used to have in Latin America," he said.

The former president, who served from 2003 to 2005 in an interim capacity, spoke on the sidelines of a two-day conference on trade and investment co-hosted by the Andean Development Corporation, the Inter-American Dialogue and the Organization of American States. He was reacting to comments by US Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske, who said the United States was still open to anti-narcotics cooperation with Bolivia and Venezuela.

Bolivia is the world's third-largest producer of cocaine and last year saw cultivation of coca, the drug's main ingredient, increase by 6 percent. The US government blames Morales, a former coca farmer who still heads Bolivia's major coca growers' union, for the increase. It says his policies have expanded the amount of coca cultivation allowed for traditional uses while failing to regulate coca markets.

Bolivian officials argue drug interdictions have increased significantly since Morales took office and cite his slogan of "Coca si, cocaina no." But, Mesa said, "it's not easy for the president to ask his own constituents—as executive secretary [of the coca growers' union], a position from which he's still not resigned—to reduce production."

Following Morales' expulsion of the US ambassador and the DEA, former President George W. Bush suspended trade preferences for Bolivia, noting it had "failed demonstrably" to live up to its obligations under international anti-narcotics treaties. President Barack Obama has so far largely affirmed that position, refusing to revive Bolivia's trade preferences following a review in June.

As part of an eventual rapprochement, Mesa said both the US and Bolivia will have to acknowledge a fundamental change in their bilateral relationship. "The US has to recognize that it went too far, that it exercised a pressure almost unsustainable for [Bolivian] governments more allied with the US," he said.