Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T19:35:01.091Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Contesting the ‘War on Drugs’ in the Andes: US–Bolivian Relations of Power and Control (1989–93)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 May 2019

Allan Gillies*
Affiliation:
Research Fellow in the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Glasgow.
*
*Corresponding author. Email: allan.gillies@gla.ac.uk.

Abstract

The implementation of President George H. W. Bush's 1989 Andean Initiative brought to the fore competing US and Bolivian agendas. While US embassy officials sought to exert control in pursuit of militarised policies, the Bolivian government's ambivalence towards the coca-cocaine economy underpinned opposition to the ‘Colombianisation’ of the country. This article deconstructs prevailing top-down, US-centric analyses of the drug war in Latin America to examine how US power was exercised and resisted in the Bolivian case. Advancing a more historically grounded understanding of the development of the US drug war in Latin America, it reveals the fluidity of US–Bolivian power relations, the contested nature of counter-drug policy at the country level, and the instrumentalisation of the ‘war on drugs’ in distinct US and Bolivian agendas.

Spanish abstract

Spanish abstract

La implementación de la Iniciativa Andina de 1989 dio como resultado agendas en competencia entre los EEUU y Bolivia. Mientras que funcionarios de la embajada estadounidense buscaron ejercer control en busca de políticas militarizadas, la ambivalencia del gobierno boliviano alrededor de la economía de la coca-cocaína apuntaló la oposición a la ‘colombianización’ del país. Este artículo deconstruye los análisis de arriba-abajo y desde el punto de vista estadounidense de la guerra contra las drogas en América Latina para examinar cómo el poder estadounidense fue ejercido y resistido en el poco estudiado caso boliviano. Avanzando un entendimiento del desarrollo de la guerra estadounidense contra las drogas en América Latina apoyado en la historia, el artículo revela la fluidez de las relaciones de poder EEUU–Bolivia, la naturaleza contestada de la política contra las drogas a nivel de país, y la instrumentalización de la ‘guerra contra las drogas’ sobre agendas dispares de EEUU y Bolivia.

Portuguese abstract

Portuguese abstract

A implementação da Iniciativa Andina de 1989 trouxe à tona as conflitantes agendas dos EUA e da Bolívia. Enquanto funcionários da embaixada dos EUA procuraram exercer controle nas busca de políticas de militarização, a ambivalência do governo da Bolívia no que dizia respeito à economia gerada pela cocaína fundamentava oposição à ‘Colombianização’ do país. Este artigo desconstrói análises ‘do topo para a base’, predominantemente centradas nos Estados Unidos sobre a guerra contras as drogas na América Latina, e procura examinar como o poder dos Estados Unidos era exercido e resistido como no caso, pouco estudado, da Bolívia. Propondo um entendimento um pouco mais fundamentado historicamente sobre desenvolvimento da guerra contra as drogas dos Estados Unidos na América Latina, o artigo revela a fluidez das relações de poder entre os Estados Unidos e a Bolívia, a natureza combatida da política de combate às drogas em nível nacional, e a instrumentalização da ‘guerra contra as drogas’ nas distintas agendas da Bolívia e dos Estados Unidos.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Interview with Charles R. Bowers, US ambassador to Bolivia (1991–4), 12 April 2013.

2 Interview with Jaime Paz Zamora, president of Bolivia (1989–93), 26 April 2014.

3 Securitisation refers to a process through which specific issues are transformed into matters of ‘security’. This transformation typically occurs through public discourse: relevant audiences are convinced of the ‘existential threat’ posed by the issue. In the case of the ‘war on drugs’, key US state actors viewed the issue of drug use and the drug trade through the lens of security, rather than through those of public health or development, for example. For more on securitisation, see Buzan, Barry, Wæver, Ole and de Wilde, Jaap, Security: A New Framework for Analysis (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1997)Google Scholar.

4 Mansfield, David, A State Built on Sand: How Opium Undermined Afghanistan (London: Hurst, 2016), p. 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 See Annex A for a full list of interviewees.

6 In line with research institutional ethical approval (College of Arts, University of Glasgow), I provided participants with a written summary of the research and its aims, how their data would be used, and options around anonymity/direct quotes. Before each interview, I allowed time for questions and gave participants my contact details. Some requested the opportunity to sign off on the use of direct quotes. In these cases, participants were duly contacted. All approved the use of quotes.

7 Most participants were semi-retired and hence felt that there was little to lose in speaking to me. Many seemed to enjoy the opportunity to reflect on the past and explore their role in the period. Perhaps they also saw me as a keeper of the historic record and wished to advance their perspective. For more on this latter theme, see: Robben, Antonius C. G. M., ‘The Politics of Truth and Emotion among Victims and Perpetrators of Violence’, in Nordstrom, Carolyn and Robben, Antonius C. G. M. (eds.), Fieldwork under Fire: Contemporary Studies of Violence and Survival (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995), p. 97Google Scholar.

8 For example: Bagley, Bruce M. and Rosen, Jonathan D. (eds.), Drug Trafficking, Organized Crime, and Violence in the Americas Today (Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Reiss, Suzanna, We Sell Drugs: The Alchemy of US Empire (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Youngers, Coletta and Rosin, Eileen (eds.), Drugs and Democracy in Latin America: The Impact of US Policy (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner, 2005)Google Scholar.

9 Latin American leaders, past and present, have more recently advocated for a change of tack, presenting a distinct Latin American vision for counter-drug responses. For example, the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy included former-presidents Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, César Gaviria of Colombia and Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico. The commission came together in 2008 to evaluate the impacts of the ‘war on drugs’ in the region and explore alternatives.

10 Thoumi, Francisco E., Illegal Drugs, Economy, and Society in the Andes (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), p. 27Google Scholar.

11 For example: Frydl, Kathleen J., The Drug Wars in America, 1940–1973 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Reinarman, Craig and Levine, Harry G. (eds.), Crack in America: Demon Drugs and Social Justice (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

12 Gootenberg, Paul, ‘Talking about the Flow: Drugs, Borders and the Discourse of Drug Control’, Cultural Critique, 71 (Winter 2009), p. 37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Reflecting its post-WWII hegemony, the United States successfully transposed this prohibitionist model onto the international drug control regime. See Bewley-Taylor, David, The United States and International Drug Control, 1909–1997 (London: Continuum, 1999)Google Scholar.

14 Crandall, Russell C., ‘Explicit Narcotization: US Policy towards Colombia during the Samper Administration’, Latin American Politics and Society, 43: 2 (2001), p. 100CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Meehan, Patrick, ‘Fortifying or Fragmenting the State? The Political Economy of the Opium/Heroin Trade in Shan State, Myanmar, 1988–2013’, Critical Asian Studies, 47: 2 (2015), p. 259CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 For example: Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), National Drug Control Strategy (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1990)Google Scholar.

17 Loveman, Brian, ‘US Security Policies in Latin America and the Andean Region, 1990–2006’, in Loveman, Brian (ed.), Addicted to Failure: US Security Policy in Latin America and the Andean Region (Plymouth: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006), pp. 152Google Scholar.

18 McCoy, Alfred W., The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade (Chicago, IL: Lawrence Hill, 2003), p. 443Google Scholar.

19 For example: Keefer, Philip and Loayza, Norman (eds.), Innocent Bystanders: Developing Countries and the War on Drugs (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Eric Gutierrez (ed.), ‘Drugs and Illicit Practices: Assessing their Impact on Development and Governance’, Christian Aid Occasional Paper, Oct. 2015.

21 Rosen, Jonathan D. and Kassab, Hanna S., ‘Introduction: Fragile States in the Americas’, in Rosen, Jonathan D. and Kassab, Hanna S. (eds.), Fragile States in the Americas (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2017), pp. xiixiiiGoogle Scholar.

22 For example: Tullis, Lamond, Unintended Consequences: Illegal Drugs and Drug Policies in Nine Countries (Studies on the Impact of the Illegal Drug Trade) (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner, 1995)Google Scholar.

23 Juan Camilo Castillo, Daniel Mejía and Pascual Restrepo, ‘Scarcity without Leviathan: The Violent Effects of Cocaine Supply Shortages in the Mexican Drug War’, Center for Global Development Working Paper 356, Feb. 2014, available at http://www.cgdev.org/sites/default/files/scarcity-leviathan-effects-cocaine-supply-shortages_1.pdf (last access 16 Jan. 2019).

24 For example: Youngers and Rosin (eds.), Drugs and Democracy in Latin America.

25 Thoumi, Illegal Drugs, Economy, and Society in the Andes, p. 309.

26 US Congress established the process of ‘certification’ as part of the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act. This act obligated the president to report to Congress on the performance of partner governments in the area of counter-drug policy. Partner governments deemed to have failed in their drug control obligations would be ‘decertified’, which potentially entailed a range of economic sanctions. Marcy, William L., The Politics of Cocaine: How US Foreign Policy Created a Thriving Drug Industry in Central and South America (Chicago, IL: Lawrence Hill, 2010), pp. 87–8Google Scholar.

27 Buxton, Julia, The Political Economy of Narcotics (London: Zed Books, 2006), p. 140Google Scholar.

28 For example: Joyce, Elizabeth, ‘Packaging Drugs: Certification and the Acquisition of Leverage’, in Bulmer-Thomas, Victor and Dunkerley, James (eds.), The United States and Latin America: The New Agenda (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 207–26Google Scholar.

29 Mansfield, A State Built on Sand, p. 5.

30 Rouse, Stella M. and Arce, Moises, ‘The Drug-Laden Balloon: US Military Assistance and Coca Production in the Central Andes’, Social Science Quarterly, 87: 3 (2006), pp. 540–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 Snyder, Richard, ‘Does Lootable Wealth Breed Disorder? A Political Economy of Extraction Framework’, Comparative Political Studies, 39: 8 (2006), p. 951CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Grisaffi, Thomas, ‘From the Grassroots to the Presidential Palace: Evo Morales and the Coca Growers’ Union in Bolivia’, in Lazar, Sian (ed.), Where Are the Unions? Workers and Social Movements in Latin America, the Middle East and Europe (London: Zed Books, 2017), pp. 4463Google Scholar.

33 Mansfield, A State Built on Sand, p. 47.

34 Siekmeier, James, The Bolivian Revolution and the United States, 1952 to the Present (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania University Press, 2011)Google Scholar.

35 Tate, Winifred, Drugs, Thugs and Diplomats: US Policymaking in Colombia (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015), p. 4Google Scholar.

36 Mansfield, A State Built on Sand, p. 6.

37 Interview with David Miller, National Security Council (NSC) deputy assistant secretary (1988–92), 3 May 2014.

38 US State Department, Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, International Narcotics Control Strategy (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1990)Google Scholar.

39 Although President Richard Nixon had declared a ‘war on drugs’ in 1971, US counter-drug interventions into Latin America during this period were sporadic as Cold War goals dominated US foreign policy in the region. With the end of the Cold War, the ‘war on drugs’ rose up the political agenda, setting in motion a new era of US counter-drug policy in Latin America.

40 Walker, William III, ‘The Bush Administration's Andean Initiative in Historical Perspective’, in Bagley, Bruce and Walker, William III (eds.), Drug Trafficking in the Americas (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner, 1994), pp. 119Google Scholar.

41 NSC, ‘Andean Drug Summit’, NSC discussion paper, 1 Nov. 1989, in: National Security Archive, George Washington University, Washington, DC (hereafter NSA), ‘War in Colombia: Guerrillas, Drugs and Human Rights in U.S.–Colombia Policy, 1988–2002’, NSA Electronic Briefing Book No. 69.

42 Interview with John Carnevale, ONDCP official (1988–2002), 26 April 2013.

43 Kathryn Ledebur, ‘Bolivia: Clear Consequences’, in Youngers and Rosin (eds.), Drugs and Democracy in Latin America, p. 145.

44 US Office of the Inspector General (OIG), Report of Audit: Drug Control Activities in Bolivia, 2-CI-001 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1991), Appendix AGoogle Scholar.

45 This trend was evident from the US reaction to the Bolivian Revolution in 1952. For example, see Lehman, Kenneth D., Bolivia and the United States: A Limited Partnership (Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 1999), pp. 106–7Google Scholar.

46 Interview with Robert S. Gelbard, US ambassador to Bolivia (1988–91), 13 May 2013.

47 For examples of this inter-agency friction, see Malamud-Goti, Jaime, Smoke and Mirrors: The Paradox of the Drug Wars (Oxford: Westview, 1992)Google Scholar.

48 Interview with Gelbard.

49 Eduardo Gamarra, ‘US–Bolivian Counternarcotics Efforts during the Paz Zamora Administration: 1989–1992’, in Bagley and Walker III (eds.), Drug Trafficking in the Americas, p. 238.

50 Interview with Bowers.

51 Ibid.

52 George H. W. Bush to Charles R. Bowers, 23 Aug. 1991, personal archive of Charles R. Bowers.

53 Kenneth D. Lehman, ‘A “Medicine of Death”? US Policy and Political Disarray in Bolivia, 1985–2006’, in Loveman (ed.), Addicted to Failure, p. 132.

54 Interview with David Greenlee, deputy chief of mission to the US embassy in La Paz (1987–9) and US ambassador to Bolivia (2002–6), 26 April 2013.

55 Interview with Bowers.

56 Conaghan, Catherine M. and Malloy, James M., Unsettling Statecraft: Democracy and Neoliberalism in the Central Andes (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994), p. 198Google Scholar.

57 Grisaffi, ‘From the Grassroots to the Presidential Palace’, pp. 51–2.

58 Sanabria, Harry, ‘Consolidating States, Restructuring Economies, and Confronting Workers and Peasants: The Antinomies of Bolivian Neoliberalism’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 41: 3 (1999), pp. 548–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59 Ochoa, Ursula Durand, The Political Empowerment of the Cocaleros of Bolivia and Peru (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 106–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

60 Under pressure from the United States to consolidate the country's drug laws, President Víctor Paz Estenssoro passed Law 1008 in 1988. For more detail see Healy, Kevin, ‘Political Ascent of Bolivia's Peasant Coca Leaf Producers’, Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, 33: 1 (1991), pp. 87121CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

61 US embassy La Paz to secretary of state, ‘A Revised and Expanded Anti-Narcotics Strategy: We Need More Interdiction, Military Assistance and USAID-Financed Education’, cable 199, 8 Jan. 1986: in NSA, Narcotics Collection, box 10.

62 Lehman, Bolivia and the United States, p. 201.

63 US embassy La Paz to secretary of state, ‘International Narcotics Control Report 1986 – Bolivia (INSCR)’, cable 10212, 23 Dec. 1985: in NSA, Narcotics Collection, box 10.

64 US General Accounting Office (GAO), Drug Control: US-Supported Efforts in Colombia and Bolivia: Report to Congress (Washington, DC: GAO, 1988), p. 49Google Scholar.

65 Gamarra, Eduardo, ‘Fighting Drugs in Bolivia: United State and Bolivian Perceptions at Odds’, in Léons, Madeline Barbara and Sanabria, Harry (eds.), Coca, Cocaine and the Bolivian Reality (New York: State University of New York Press, 1997), p. 224Google Scholar.

66 US embassy La Paz to secretary of state, ‘Continued Bolivian Waffling on Counternarcotics Assistance to the Army’, cable 14219, 10 Oct. 1990: in NSA, Narcotics Collection, box 5.

67 US OIG, Report of Audit, pp. 41–2.

68 Gillies, Allan, ‘Theorising State–Narco Relations in Bolivia's Nascent Democracy (1982–1993): Governance, Order and Political Transition’, Third World Quarterly, 39: 4 (2018), pp. 731–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

69 Malamud-Goti, Smoke and Mirrors, pp. 73–4.

70 Gamarra, ‘US–Bolivian Counternarcotics’, p. 228.

71 US Embassy La Paz to Secretary of State, ‘Continued Bolivian Waffling on Counternarcotics Assistance to the Army’.

72 Painter, James, Bolivia and Coca: A Study in Dependency (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner, 1994), p. 99Google Scholar.

73 US OIG, Report of Audit, p. 54.

74 Ibid, p. 2.

75 Interview with Gelbard.

76 Bowers (in his interview) argued that cultural differences were important in this regard: ‘the Anglo-Saxon, American view of what is appropriate, and what is moral, and what is ethical – inherited from our UK brethren – does not fit totally with what that view might be in Latin America’.

77 Oral history of James C. Cason, political counsellor, US embassy La Paz (1987–90) (interviewed 13 Nov. 2009): in The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training – Foreign Affairs Oral History Project, Bolivia Reader, available at http://adst.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Bolivia.pdf (last access 17 Jan. 2019).

78 Ibid., pp. 61, 63.

79 Nadelmann, Ethan A., Cops across Borders: The Internationalization of US Criminal Law Enforcement (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), p. 204Google Scholar.

80 Quintana, Juan Ramón, ‘Bolivia: Militares y policías. Fuego cruzado en democracia’, in Belay, Raynald et al. (eds.), Memorias en conflicto: Aspectos de la violencia política contemporánea (Paris: Institut Français d'Etudes Andines, 2004), para. 117Google Scholar.

81 Jacqueline Williams, ‘Waging the War on Drugs in Bolivia’, Washington Office on Latin America Background Paper, 28 Feb. 1997, p. 26.

82 Interview with Terry Burke, deputy administrator and acting administrator of the DEA (1989–91), 23 April 2013.

83 Interview with Paz Zamora.

84 For more information see Malamud-Goti, Smoke and Mirrors, pp. 30–2.

85 Gootenberg, Paul, ‘Cocaine Histories and Diverging Drug War Politics in Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru’, A Contracorriente, 15: 1 (2017), p. 5Google Scholar.

86 Lehman, Bolivia and the United States, p. 133.

87 Gamarra, ‘US–Bolivian Counternarcotics’, p. 221.

88 Paz Zamora raised these issues when addressing the UN General Assembly in Sept. 1989, for example.

89 Interview with Gonzalo Torrico, vice-minister of social defence (1989–93), 2 May 2014.

90 The Washington Consensus refers to neoliberal policy reforms – advanced by institutions including the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the US Treasury – attached to economic rescue packages for crisis-hit countries in the Global South during the 1980s and 1990s.

91 Gamarra, Eduardo, ‘Bolivia: Managing Democracy in the 1990s’, in Domínguez, Jorge I. and Lowenthal, Abraham F., Constructing Democratic Governance: South America in the 1990s (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), pp. 7298Google Scholar; and Sanabria, ‘Consolidating States’, p. 537.

92 Conaghan and Malloy, Unsettling Statecraft, pp. 186–7.

93 US OIG, Report of Audit, p. 2.

94 Menzel, Sewall, Fire in the Andes: US Foreign Policy and Cocaine Politics in Bolivia and Peru (Lanham, MD: University of Press of America, 1996), p. 11Google Scholar.

95 Interview with Carlos Saavedra, interior minister (1991–3), 15 April 2014.

96 Interview with Paz Zamora.

97 Lehman, Bolivia and the United States, p. 199.

98 ESFs are administered by the US State Department to provide funds to governments in areas of US strategic interest. They can be used for a variety of purposes. In this case, funding was used primarily to relieve external debt.

99 Painter, Bolivia and Coca, p. 137.

100 Interview with Paz Zamora.

101 Ibid.

102 Interview with senior minister of the Paz Zamora government, 7 May 2014. Several interview participants requested anonymity.

103 For detailed analysis, see Painter, Bolivia and Coca, pp. 105–38.

104 Interview with Paz Zamora.

105 Interview with Guillermo Capobianco, interior minister (1989–91), 16 April 2014.

106 Concerns regarding political instability caused by challenging state–narco networks also formed part of this dynamic. See Gillies, ‘Theorising State–Narco Relations’.

107 Banzer's military dictatorship spanned the years 1971 to 1978.

108 Interview with Paz Zamora.

109 Interview with Capobianco.

110 Ibid.

111 Ibid.

112 Oral history of James C. Cason, p. 65.

113 Interview with Paz Zamora.

114 Ibid.

115 In February 1981 the US TV programme ‘60 Minutes’ broadcast a TV special on the ‘Minister of Cocaine’. See also Cynthia Gorney, ‘Bolivia, Internationally Islolated [sic], Is again Rife with Coup Rumors’, The Washington Post, 22 March 1981, available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1981/03/22/bolivia-internationally-islolated-is-again-rife-with-coup-rumors/e43489d1-e6d5-4a6a-a4f5-2aee5e0c24c8/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.2abe204deb73, last accessed 15 Feb. 2019.

116 Interview with Gelbard.

117 Ibid.

118 Interview with Capobianco.

119 For example: Dunkerley, James, Rebellion in the Veins: Political Struggle in Bolivia, 1952–1982 (London: Verso, 1984), p. 156Google Scholar.

120 Interview with Paz Zamora.

121 Interview with Torrico.

122 Interview with Gelbard.

123 Hargreaves, Clare, Snowfields: The War on Cocaine in the Andes (London: Zed Books, 1992), pp. 164–6Google Scholar.

124 Interview with Gelbard.

125 Ibid.

126 Ibid.

127 Interview with Capobianco.

128 The death of Chavarría as he awaited trial in 1995 left many questions unanswered.

129 Laserna, Roberto, 20 (Mis)Conceptions on Coca and Cocaine (La Paz: Clave, 1997), p. 190Google Scholar.

130 Gamarra, Eduardo, ‘Transnational Criminal Organisations in Bolivia’, in Farer, Tom J. (ed.), Transnational Crime in the Americas: An Inter-American Dialogue Book (New York: Routledge, 1999), p. 195Google Scholar.

131 Interview with Paz Zamora.

132 Ibid.

133 Ibid.

134 Gootenberg, Paul, Andean Cocaine: The Making of a Global Drug (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2008), pp. 282–4Google Scholar.

135 Morales, Hugo Rodas, Huanchaca: Modelo político empresarial de la cocaína en Bolivia (La Paz: Plural Editores, 1996), p. 128Google Scholar.

136 Roncken, Theo, ‘Bolivia: Impunity and the Control of Corruption in the Fight against Drugs’, in Transnational Institute (TNI), Democracy, Human Rights, and Militarism in The War on Drugs in Latin America (Cochabamba: TNI, CEDIB and Infopress Centroamericana, 1997), p. 50Google Scholar.

137 Interview with Gelbard.

138 Interview with Paz Zamora.

139 Painter, Bolivia and Coca, p. 28.

140 For example: Thoumi, Francisco E., ‘The Numbers Game: Let's All Guess the Size of the Illegal Drug Industry!’, The Journal of Drug Issues, 35: 1 (2005), pp. 185200CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

141 Gamarra, ‘US–Bolivian Counternarcotics’, p. 233.

142 US Congress, Stopping the Flood of Cocaine with Operation Snowcap – Is It Working? Thirteenth Report, House Committee on Government Operations (Aug. 1990) (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1990), p. 57Google Scholar.

143 James Painter, ‘Bolivian Military Leader Questions DEA's Role in Drug Bust Gone Awry’, Christian Science Monitor, 12 July 1991, available at https://www.csmonitor.com/1991/0712/12062.html, last access 12 Feb. 2019.

144 Menzel, Fire in the Andes, p. 56.

145 Coletta Youngers, ‘A Fundamentally Flawed Strategy: The US “War” on Drugs in Bolivia’, WOLA Issue Brief 4, 18 Sept. 1991, p. 14.

146 Interview with Saavedra.

147 Williams, ‘Waging the War on Drugs’, p. 16.

148 Interview with Saavedra.

149 Ibid.

150 Menzel, Fire in the Andes, p. 65.

151 According to Saavedra (interview), Gelbard's wife broke her leg during a family skiing trip to Chile, delaying the ambassador's return to Bolivia.

152 Interview with Saavedra.

153 Painter, Bolivia and Coca, pp. 83–4.

154 Medrano, Gerardo Irusta, Narcotráfico: Hablan los arrepentidos: Personajes y hechos reales (La Paz: Gerardo Irusta Medrano, 1992), p. 83Google Scholar.

155 For example: Ryan Grim and Nick Wing, ‘Operation Naked King: U.S. Secretly Targeted Bolivia's Evo Morales in Drug Sting’, Huffington Post, 15 Sept. 2015, https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/operation-naked-king-evo-morales_us_55f70da2e4b077ca094fdbe1?guccounter=1, last access 17 Jan. 2019.

156 See Grisaffi, Thomas et al. , ‘Bolivia's Integrated Development with Coca: Shifting the Focus from Eradication to Poverty Alleviation’, Bulletin on Narcotics, 61: 1 (2017), pp. 131–57Google Scholar.