Stand Up for Your Rights: A Quechua coca farmer and union leader describes her struggle against Bolivia’s forced eradication policies: Roxana Argandoña, as Told to the Andean Information Network

KATHRYN LEDEBUR

The Chapare is one of Bolivia’s main coca-growing regions, and it is home to the Quechua and Aymara Indigenous peoples, many of whom work as coca farmers. Although coca can be used to make cocaine, for centuries Bolivians and other Andean peoples have used it in medicine, as a mild appetite suppressant, and as a central element in religious ceremonies. Between the late 1980s and 2004, when Evo Morales was elected president, the U.S. war on drugs had a devastating effect on Chapare coca growers. During that period, U.S.-funded forced eradication policies led to violent conflicts between Indigenous farmers and government troops. The ascension of Morales, who took power in 2005 as the first Indigenous Bolivian president, brought that policy to an end. Since then, the administration has implemented a regulatory model for coca cultivation known as social control, which is based on cooperative coca reduction efforts and shared responsibility between the state and growers. Roxana Argandoña is a Quechua coca farmer whose family has lived in the region for generations.

My name is Roxana Argandoña. I come from the Chapare province in the Cochabamba department of central Bolivia. I have lived in the Chapare most of my life. In the past, its hills and vegetation generated a tropical climate, but logging and deforestation have made it much drier. There also used to be fewer people here, and they were all locals. Over time, people from other parts of Bolivia started colonizing the area. Even the coca has changed: The plants we grew used to be healthier, and there were bigger yields. We would wrap them in blackberry and banana leaves and carry the harvest to local markets on foot. Traders bought coca from us for next to nothing. The market was smaller then, and the money we earned was only enough for us to feed our families. Now, prices are much higher, and we supplement our income with other crops.

Over the past several decades, different governments have come to power and, under intense U.S. pressure, criminalized coca growing. The crackdowns were worst under Victor Paz Estenssoro (1985–89), Hugo Banzer (1997–2001), and Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga (2001–02). The confrontations started in the early 90s, when the Chapare was completely militarized and U.S.-backed security forces began to wipe out our coca crops. Without coca, we had no means of subsistence. We were forced to react, to fight. We had to. During those years, U.S. and Bolivian soldiers had no shame; they would kill people like animals. Women were often sexually assaulted—it didn’t matter whether you were single or married, it happened either way. The military would barge into our homes whenever they wanted. We would run away, only to come back later and realize they had eaten all our food. Those were difficult times.

While our sons and husbands were being beaten and imprisoned, women decided to go to the front lines. We left our homes and became union members. Evo Morales arrived in the Chapare around this time; he wasn’t president yet, but he opened our eyes through union meetings, which we would hold at different locations. These gatherings were forbidden at the time, but we didn’t back down.

Today, women have more experience with union matters, but at that time we used to encounter a lot of machismo. Men hardly paid attention to us at meetings. They would say that we should stay at home with the children or go back to the kitchen. I was about 21 years old when I first got involved, and I remember thinking: “Why aren’t women allowed to participate in unions? We, too, have the right to do so.” My husband wasn’t too keen on going, so I would go in his place. “I’ll go anyway, even if they end up throwing me out,” I’d...