30-10-2009, 01:27 AM
David Guyatt Wrote:[/QUOTE]Ruben Mundaca Wrote:Not really, Jan...
For me, is far more likely that any drug trade is keeped out of my country.
Ruben, while you are, of course, entirely entitled to your views, I cannot help but observe that in this respect they are very unworldly and naive. Once the narcotics trade is established in a country the immense power of the cartels and those others in foreign governments and business who are complicit in it will never allow it to be eradicated. Why should they? It generates well over $1 trillion annually. And that figure is at least a decade and a half old - which was when I last checked it out.
I would direct you to professor Peter Dale Scott's book: Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies and the CIA in Central America. Ditto prof. Alfred McCoy's: The Politics of Heroin - CIA Complicity in the Global Drugs Trade.
Besides these two books the DPF has a fairly decent archive on this subject.
Quote:The habit of chewing was encouraged by spanish conquerors in order to extend the laboral journey. So, chewing coca is not "traditional". Actually, It's "colonial".
I also would direct you to post-WWII history and the development of the drug trade in Bolivia and other Latin nations thanks to the remnants of Nazis who escaped justice at Nuremberg. SS-Hauptsturmführer Klaus Barbie being one of them. Barbie worked for US intelligence post WWII during his sojourn in Bolivia. Yes, the "Butcher of Lyons" was protected by the US who went out of their way to hinder him being brought to justice in France.
Quote:The truth is that coca is a big millonaire business controlled totally by coca farmers, mostly indigenous, so you will hear a lot of more justifications for his production, because the millions it yields. That's ok. with me and most of bolivian people, unless is not tranformed in cocaine. Sadly, it happens with nearly 80% of the coca produced.
The truth is that coca is a truly global business that impacts upon every developed and undeveloped nation in the world; that it continues - virtually unimpeded - because of western political and financial considerations and because it generates billionaires by the score. By far the greatest profit stream is retained not by indigenous coca farmers but by geographically external drug lords, big businessmen and other movers and shakers. This fact is easily established by the vast street value mark-up in western cities.
Forgive me for speaking plainly, but you clearly are very poorly informed on the international reverberations on this trade. But at least you're in the right place to become a great deal more informed about it if this is your ambition?
Thank you David.
I think we are all learners in life, and we are here to share knowledge and experiences, isn't it ?..... I really don't like monologues (Socrates dixit). If a man want to fly, is better to run his plane against the wind...
If we are not able to share and respectfuly discuss different ideas, information, knowledge, experiences and different point of views, this will soon became a chorus, not a forum....
Now to your post:
1.- It's true about cartels. What I was trying to state is a desire, that ANY drug trade where performed in my country. Too late. All can we do is try to lower comsumtion and trade by implementing several measures: Lowering illegal crops, putting in jail traffickers, better educating and controlling our children, etc., etc.
What we CAN'T do is to give up "because drug cartels are more powerful that us". It's a war we MUST fight. I don't think that is naive.....
2.- First apperance of cocaine in Bolivia is reported before WWI actually. There are custom reports of an englishman (sorry, it's true) trying to export cocaine to England. In his discharge, I think that cocaine was not illegal in those early years. During the campaign against Che Guevara, there where also reports that trafficking was more active, but still very little. Bolivian army has find little factorys while searching Che guerrilla.
Trafficking increases dramatically in the decade of 1980-1990 during frequent cup d' etats by militaries, specillay during government of Luis García Mesa. There was the first time that bolivian government was clearly with traffickers due to lack of support of USA and other countries to those dictators, following the Carter policyes. Latelly CIA was involved also, using it to fund central america counter-guerrilla. They pay a high price for that in a big scandal. I know. I knew proffessor Noel Kepmff Mercado.
Seems that averybody has funded their dirty opperations with drugs. Cuban-related guerrillas has done too. Not shure about cubans traffiking directly, but there are a lot of stories here that I can't say, due to lack of proofs.
-The most notorius actual examples are the FARC in Colombia and Sendero Luminoso in Peru. Nobody can claim to be innocent and clean hands, believe me.
Post war Nazis?....yes. Klaus Barbie was one of them (and the worst here in Bolivia) that was notoriusly involved in cocaine trafficking and other felonies. But it will be a lie if somebody say all of them where a drug cartel or trafficants. I just knew one of them when I was a kid: Hitler's photographer, who lived in a very humble way and die in poverty. I barely remember him.
3.- Now don't be confused: You are writing about cocaine as a millionary business, I am writng about coca leafs as a millionary business. Is true that both are very related. Is truth also that farmer usually gets the little piece of the cake, but is true that many farmers evolve to become traffikkers also. Anyway, the farmer piece is not so little. An hectarea of coca crop can yield thousands of dollars annually.
Anyway, that still represent a little amount of the final value of a kilo.
I Might be poorly informed about CIA relations with trafficants and his dark ops, but believe me, I am informed about trafficking, production and his nasty effects in society. I MUST. I am living in a country that suffers everyday with.