Taking the Side of The Coca Farmer

To understand why Evo Morales has come within a llama's hair of being President of Bolivia--and why his formidable political power is giving U.S. officials fits--pay attention when he and his top advisers open their mouths. That is, see what they're chewing: coca leaves, treasured by Andean Indians like Morales as a sacred tonic and as their most lucrative cash crop but better known to Americans as the raw material of cocaine. Over the past five years, the U.S. has got Bolivia to uproot almost all of its coca shrubs--only to see Morales, 42, and his left-wing Movement to Socialism engineer an astonishing protest this year that could force Bolivia's next government to let the plants flourish again. "The coca leaf," says Morales, whose party took the second largest bloc of seats in parliamentary elections in June, "is our new national flag."

To the dismay of the Bush Administration, it's a banner waving over a large swath of South America. Coca eradication is the linchpin of Washington's antidrug strategy. The widening revolt against it is the loudest sign yet of a new resentment toward the U.S. in Latin America, where free-market reforms pushed by Washington have left much of the region's 500 million people poorer. A former parliamentary Deputy from Bolivia's central coca-growing region, Morales in the past was often dismissed as a radical relic in the land where Che Guevara died. But today he's strong enough to have made it into this week's presidential runoff vote in the new parliament, facing front runner Gonzalo Sanchez, a former President. More than that, Evo-speak--"The drug war is just a U.S. excuse to control our countries"--resonates beyond Bolivia's borders. Next door in Peru, irate coca farmers have successfully pressured the government to suspend eradication. In Colombia, the coca crop has grown fivefold in five years, to more than 400,000 acres, despite almost $1 billion in U.S. eradication funds. Authorities now say they will spray only "industrial-size" coca fields and not those of smaller farmers, who are, of course, the voters. If Morales can thwart the U.S. in Bolivia--South America's poorest nation but Washington's eradication showcase--it means the elimination effort has been a washout.