Bolivia's `Coca Diplomacy' Rankles U.S. And U.N. Officials -- Bid To Market Products Abroad Meets Resistance

LA PAZ, Bolivia - Poor, isolated Bolivia has looked at its resources and made a controversial decision: Coca is the real thing.

The country wants to export coca tea, coca toothpaste, coca skin cream, coca gum and coca wine - all made from the plant that had mystical values for ancient Indians. Manufacturers say coca can ease everything from altitude sickness to asthma while appealing to those who want natural products.

Coca already is Bolivia's leading crop, but most of it leaves in clandestine shipments, as cocaine. The government insists that legitimate coca products can bring in far more money than cocaine paste. Coca tea alone can triple the gross national product, the Foreign Relations Ministry calculates.

But there's a big problem: Exporting coca is illegal.

Complicating matters, Bolivia has signed three international agreements since 1961 saying that the coca leaf is a narcotic and should not be sold abroad. The government receives more than $80 million in international aid each year to reduce its coca plants and develop other crops.

Still, in the past six months, President Jaime Paz Zamora has confused international donors by contending that coca is under "house arrest." At July's Ibero-American summit in Spain, the president wore a coca pin on his lapel and said the little leaves are healthful when not processed into cocaine.

The president's "coca diplomacy" rankles the United States, which has given Bolivia millions of dollars to get out of the coca trade. The United Nations finds itself caught between fighting drug trafficking and trying to help Bolivia get out of poverty. In the strangest twist, Bolivia's largest union has called for fighting the coca boycott with a Coca-Cola boycott.

It didn't help matters in November when the Foreign Relations Ministry put out pamphlets extolling coca's benefits to the soil, to coca-tea drinkers and to Bolivia's balance of trade. When foreign diplomats questioned the statistics, the government denied that it had ever published the pamphlets.

Then Bolivia requested that a World Health Organization expert, Dr. Tokuo Yoshida, come to talk about coca. When the government saw an advance copy of his speech - which included remarks such as "cocaine can be readily extracted from coca tea bags" - the invitation was withdrawn.

IT'S `LIKE A SOAP OPERA'

"This is like a soap opera, except that it's real," said Dr. Sandro Calvani, director of the U.N. drug-control program in Bolivia.

It certainly is not the usual free-trade battle. Coca is tied up with Bolivia's self-image as well as its economic well-being. The leaves have had a special place in Andean countries since Inca high priests chewed them for a mild stimulant. Pre-Columbian artifacts include men with bulging cheeks, filled with coca leaves. In the 1500s, the Spaniards used coca to dull the hunger and pain of Indians working in Bolivia's mines.

Today, fortunetellers read coca leaves. Bolivia - which produces 30 percent of the world's coca - abounds with "cocalogists" who study the plant's uses and history.

Everyone in this country of 8 million, it seems, can recall how Pope John Paul II, Queen Sofia of Spain and Vice President Dan Quayle sipped coca tea when visiting La Paz, the 12,000-foot-high capital.

The nation's ire was raised when 18 pounds of coca leaves were seized last spring at Spain's World's Fair. The leaves were to be featured in an agricultural exhibit at Bolivia's pavilion. Last month, the Drug Enforcement Administration impounded coca tea sent to a Virginia store. In Uruguay, a Bolivian union leader was arrested for carrying coca toothpaste when he arrived for a conference.

Samuel Doria Medina, the minister of planning, says that confusing coca with cocaine is like associating grapes with wine. He can reel off figures to demonstrate that coca tea, sold at prices such as those for exotic teas from Asia, would earn Bolivia millions of dollars more than cocaine exports.

For example, he said, 150 kilograms of coca make 1 kilogram of cocaine that sells for $20,000 in the United States - and that is including the vast profits that go to middlemen. Those same 150 kilos of leaves, dried and crushed, could make 75,000 tea bags. If each bag sold for 50 cents, the total would be $37,500.

Of all the coca products, the government has especially high hopes for coca tea, known as "mate." The Foreign Relations Ministry estimates that the country can capture 10 percent of the world's tea market - a figure Calvani calls "ridiculous."

BOLIVIA WILL LOSE AID

David Dlouhy, deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy, says the United States and other countries have no intention of helping coca exports. Quite the opposite, he says. Bolivia will lose $22 million in aid this year because it is behind on promises to cut down coca acreage.

Holding up a 1986 article from the "Journal of the American Medical Association," Dlouhy says, "People who drink `mate de coca' can test positive for cocaine use - and that's fact."

Dozens of studies on coca products have drawn conflicting conclusions. Bolivia's National Laboratory Institute found that coca is more nutritious than meat, eggs and milk. A new government commission of scientists says coca helps with 39 sicknesses, from stomach aches to asthma.

Yet a book to be published this month, "Bibliography of Coca," by Gregoria Loza, a leading "cocalogist," finds nothing healthful about coca. The U.S. Embassy and the United Nations maintain that coca actually increases malnutrition of peasants by decreasing their appetites. At a luncheon with the Bolivian-American Chamber of Commerce, U.S. ambassador Richard Bowers called coca "the leaf of slavery."

Coca-growers associations and the Bolivian Workers Confederation responded to the anti-coca forces by calling for a boycott of Coca-Cola, which uses non-narcotic coca flavoring. Coca-Cola is a "symbol of the imperialist domination of our countries," the unions say.

Sitting under portraits of Fidel Castro and insurgent Ernesto "Che" Guevera, Guido Tarqui, a union leader from the coca-producing Chapare jungle, said the United States is hypocritical for allowing Coca-Cola sales while banning coca sales.

"It's obvious that Coca-Cola contains drugs - that's the reason for its massive consumption," he said.

At Coca-Cola headquarters in Atlanta, a spokesman said the soft drink has no cocaine, and the Bolivian boycott has not affected sales. "Poor Coca-Cola has to go back and keep straightening this out," said Dlouhy of the U.S. Embassy. He added: "This boycott is contradictory to everything the union is trying to accomplish, like finding industrial uses for coca leaves. They should be trying to sell more Coca-Cola."

All the rhetoric has obscured a key point. Eero Yrjo-Koskinen, a U.N. field worker who wrote a graduate thesis on coca, says leaf prices are high because the crop is illegal and must be grown in remote areas.

Even if the Bolivian government could get international laws changed, Peru, the leading producer of the leaf, will be in a position to flood the market. Colombia and other countries would follow.

Prices probably would plummet. And landlocked Bolivia will be the least able to export its coca tea, Yrjo-Koskinen said.