Bolivian Is an Uneasy Ally as U.S. Presses Drug War

[groovedaddy]

CHIMORÉ, Bolivia — The refrain here in the Chapare jungle about Americans is short but powerful: “Long Live Coca, Death to the Yanquis!”

So when President Evo Morales recently came to the area, raising his fist and shouting those words before his supporters, the irony was not lost on an elite wing of the Bolivian military that survives on American support.

“We depend on the Americans for everything: our bonuses, our training, our vehicles, even our boots,” Lt. Col. José Germán Cuevas, the commander of a Bolivian special forces unit that hunts down cocaine traffickers, said at a military base here in central Bolivia.

With Vietnam-era Huey helicopters donated by the United States swirling above the base and dozens of Bolivian officers who have been trained alongside the Green Berets at the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Ga., Bolivia ranks among the most muddled fronts of the Andean drug war.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/29/world/americas/29bolivia.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

[ixion]

1. end the bogus 'war' on drugs

end it now, and let's try and repair the damage it has done to our society.