Word: bolivian
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When a U.S. Air Force C-5A transport plane landed in the Bolivian city of Santa Cruz to launch the latest battle in America's war on drugs, the far-off town of Trinidad, 250 miles to the northwest, paid little heed. But the next day Trinidad Mayor Pedro Alvarez was summoned to the local Bolivian air force base for some unsettling news. The gringos are coming, he was informed; the base would need another well. Since that day, the tranquil cattle-farming community of Trinidad (pop. 40,000), capital of Bolivia's northeastern Beni region, has not been...
...presence of U.S. soldiers would be awkward for any South American country. The Bolivian government, already beleaguered by political opponents, was stung by local press reports that condemned the support from Washington. Overwhelmed by journalists' requests to go on a real raid, the government initially resisted because it feared that TV camera crews would zoom in on American G.I.s carrying machine guns...
...trip to a captured drug laboratory known as El Zorro. When reporters assembled at the air base last Tuesday, sputtering engine noises drowned out officials' attempts at a dignified briefing. Then DEA's DC-3 got stuck in mud up to its propellers while attempting to take off. Twenty Bolivian MPs finally had to push it out of the mire...
...tried disincentives. Last December the Paz Estenssoro government offered peasants $250 for every hectare of coca they did not harvest. It was all the government thought it could afford. But peasants, who can earn up to $10,000 a hectare by selling coca, were not enthusiastic. The joint U.S.-Bolivian operation against drug processing has a similar purpose: it is intended to force down the value of the leaves, making the crops much less profitable...
...There will be no major arrests and no political arrests. The effect will be zero. Within six months (Bolivian drug production) will be back to normal." That gloomy forecast about "Operation Blast Furnace" was offered last week by James Mills, 54, a veteran investigative reporter who has spent the past six years probing the shadowy world of international drug dealing and the seldom effective efforts of U.S. authorities to cope with it. Mills, author of the newly published The Underground Empire (Doubleday; 1,165 pages; $22.95), was in Washington to promote his book and appear before the House Foreign Affairs...