"Per favore, vai a dire ai tuoi amici che usano cocaina, che ogni volta che loro si divertono, io rischio la vita. Digli che stanno sfruttando la nostra disperazione." Pedro, 20 anni, produttore di cocaina nella regione del Chapare, Bolivia.
foto di Marco Vernaschi - vedi qui il reportage completo
Bolivia, Chapare: una intera regione di persone disperate e senza scelte, che portano, letteralmente, sulle spalle gli effetti dell'aumento della richiesta di cocaina in Europa e negli USA. Sono costretti a condizioni simili ala schiavitù, convivono con minacce, morte e paura. Migliaia di famiglie e bambini rischiano la loro vita per costruire una felicità artificiale, minacciati costantemente dalla polizia antidroga, e dalla grande bugia di 45 anni di "guerra al narcotraffico". C'è chi dice che la cocaina sia glamour e che sniffare una striscia non sia niente di che. Vogliamo svelare la verità mai raccontata prima.
Lo scopo di questo progetto è di mostrare l'effetto del narcotraffico sulla popolazione indigena in Bolivia e sulle loro prospettive di vita e futuro. L'aumento della richiesta di cocaina anche in Italia ha ripercussioni devastanti: i trafficanti ed i produttori locali pagano
con sudore e morte il prezzo dello sballo nel mondo occidentale.
La storia si concentra sulla fatica del quotidiano e sulle contraddizioni legate alla War on drugs, concentrandosi sugli scontri fratricidi generati da questa guerra, dimostrando la realtà dei fatti di un mondo tanto famoso quanto sconosciuto e mal documentato. I personaggi del documentario sono le nostre guide attraverso questo mondo inesplorato, di disperazione e dignità, dove la cocaina è l'unico lavoro possibile.
La comunità indigena del Chapare ci aiuterà a fare in modo che la nostra società privilegiata e viziata sappia che cos'è la droga.
trailer, 6'30" - un progetto di documentario di Marco Vernaschi e Seba Vitale
A bitter leaf articolo di Patrick Symmes con foto di Marco Vernaschi, Mother Jones, luglio/agosto 2008
Marco Vernaschi: Cocaine, intervista alla radio californiana KZSC (in inglese, 30')
"BOLIVIA, BROKEN PROMISES"
The Truth Behind the Coca Leaf and the So Called War On Drugs.
The First thing that must be clear is that coca and cocaine are two different things. I’m surprised to see how many people still confuse the plant with the drug, so: cocaine is the drug and doesn’t have ANY medicinal value, while coca – which is a plant - does.
Behind the coca leaf there’s a big issue: the billionaire interests of the pharmaceutical industry, especially in the US, and the interests of the political lobby behind the pharmaceutical industry.
An international UN law bans the trade (import/export) of the coca leaves, as the plant is listed as a primary ingredient to make narcotic.
For this reason, the US Gov. provides a unique license issued by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to a US based chemical company, which name is Stepan. This license is in total contrast with the international agreements.
An Illinois-based chemical company, the Stepan Company, is the only one on the planet allowed to import coca leaves from South America. Stepan Chemical Company have a special license issued by the DEA that allows the exportation of tons of coca leaves every year, mostly form Peru and Bolivia.
Stepan sells the coca syrup to Coca-Cola, which use it to flavor the popular soft drink, after processing the leaves to extract the alkaloid of the cocaine. Coca-Cola makes almost 500.000 bottles of beverage per day, turning the cheap leaf into gold. Moreover, Stepan makes more billion selling the cocaine alkaloid to the pharmaceutical industry, in the US and in Germany.
At this point, some big contradictions need answers:
First, why should the US Administration fight to eradicate the coca crops, being the coca plant the essential base for a billionaire market that makes the USA rich, and fuel some of the strongest lobbies that endorse the Government?
Second, how the US Administration would explain the contradiction of the same Federal Agency, the DEA, simultaneously trying to destroy every single leaf of the "holy plant" and then granting a chemical Company with a unique license that allows to trade the same plant?
Beside the previous questions to be answered, the former coca-farmer and current President of Bolivia, thought it would make sense for his Country to enter this exclusive business, being Bolivia one of the three only Countries in the world where coca grows. How to blame him?
One of the answers to such questions has to be searched in the multibillionaire machine that feeds the lobby close to the US Gov. through a 660.000 million per year contract given to the DynCorp, a paramilitary private contractor that works in the Coca region (Bolivia – Colombia – Peru – Ecuador). As for Bolivia, DynCorp is officially training “police forces”.
Such police forces are actually some paramilitaries loyal to the extreme right-wing Bolivian party “Nation Camba” led by Branko Marnkovic who is preparing to destabilize Morales’ Gov.
Morales’ aim is to enter this market, turning the coca crops into one of the Nation’s economical strengths. Before Morales was elected, Stepan Chemical used to buy huge quantities of leaves from Bolivia, and they also built a factory/storage in the Chapare region on this purpose. But after the indigenous President came into office the Company moved on to Peru to buy most of the leaves, turning Bolivia into a marginal supplier.
In order to offer to the chemical and pharmaceutical industry – and to Coca-Cola – the essential element which is at the base of their business, Morales’s Government – with the aid of Hugo Chavez – invested 400.000 USD to build the first factory ever to process the coca leaf in the Bolivian region of Chapare, and he’s working to change the UN law that bans its trade.
The UN response to his efforts, however, is discouraging. The UN released an official act in March 2008 asking the Bolivian and Peruvian Gov’t to ban even the traditional use of the coca leaf in their territories, transforming an already complicate political issue into a cultural issue. In the same time International Crisis Group released in late March 2008 an historical report about the failure of the War on Drug in South America.
If the Nation may rely on a legal and rewarding coca-based business, it would be logic to think that the indigenous people of Chapare would gradually move toward a legal business, leaving the cocaine production behind, not to mention the interest of the foreign pharmaceutical companies to invest in the Country.
Morales’ controversial friend Hugo Chavez and the revolutionary changes brought by the policy of nationalization of Bolivia’s natural resources – including the coca crops – led the US Gov’t. to study a special plan, in order to keep control over the nation.
If Morales should achieve his goal on the legal coca market, the US would lose a billionaire market and the chemical and pharmaceutical industry that lives on the cocaine alkaloid may choose to invest in Bolivia, dealing with better prices and a more flexible tax regime.
This would virtually cut the US out of the heart of Latin America: Peru may follow the example of Bolivia. Colombia would remain the only South American Nation where the US still have control, but surrounded by enemies in and out of its borders.
To avoid this scenario, the Bush Gov’t sent a special person in Bolivia: the current US Ambassador Philip Goldberg. Goldberg was the Department’s Bosnia Desk Officer who studied and organized the fragmentation of the Balkans in the 90’s, known as Balkanization. He was previously based in Pristina – Kosovo – and he was suddenly displaced in Bolivia few months after Morales came into office.
He brought with him a lobby of investors from the Balkans, who are represented in Bolivia by Branko Marinkovic (Bolivian leader of the Morales opposition) – …but not a typical Bolivian name.
The goal is to replicate the fragmentation scheme of the Balkans in Bolivia.
The indigenous President is facing now facing a political war in his own Country, against the right-wing opposition. Their strategy is to move the Capital City from La Paz to Sucre, creating a block of Eastern regions (called the Half Moon) that would isolate the left-wing, western regions that support Morales.
The Half Moon is the rich area of Bolivia, where oil and gas reserves supply Brazil, Argentina and Chile, and where a flourishing agriculture makes the difference between the poor regions of the Altiplano and Tropic of Cochabamba.
The Half Moon is mostly inhabited and ruled by mestizos and European descendents who literally hate the indigenous. The strategy to achieve the separation of the Country is throwing fuel on the burning fire of racial hate. Just like it happened in the former Yugoslavia, in early the 90’s.
Despite Evo Morales won the August 2008 referendum, that re-confirmed him with the 68% of electoral consensus, the scenario is getting more and more complicated rising the reaction of the Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who said he “would transform Bolivia in the Southern American Vietnam if this secession should happen”.
In the meantime, the opposition party La Nacion Camba is secretly training Bolivian paramilitaries in Colombia with the suspected endorsement of the US Gov't and the on-site supervision Philip Goldberg.
Posted by marco vernaschi on
http://www.marcovernaschi-cocaine.blogspot.com