* Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting’s “Untold Stories”: The U.N. Verdict, 03.24.08: Shortly after winning the presidency in 2005, Evo Morales went on a whirlwind world tour and brought a few small coca leaves with him to New York. It is illegal to travel with coca leaves, so it’s been said that the president stuck them inside a book he was reading at the time, to conceal them from the customs officials. During his landmark speech at the United Nations Security Council, he brought out the leaves and held them with his right hand, as he tried to make his case about coca in front of hundreds of dignitaries.
http://pulitzercenter.typepad.com/untold_stories/2008/03/bolivia-the-un.html
* Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting’s “Untold Stories”: La Asunta (or the Next Frontier), 03.14.08: La Asunta held a mysterious quality for us even before we began our project on coca. The town is considered to be a no man’s land in the middle of a dense forest, where anyone looking for a patch of soil and coca plants on steroids — that can be harvested up to five times a year — could easily set up shop.
http://pulitzercenter.typepad.com/untold_stories/2008/03/bolivia-la-asun.html
* Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting’s “Untold Stories”: Tentación, 02.29.08: We left Chulumani early in the morning, looking for Hernán Justo. He’s the newly-elected president of the Departmental Association of Coca Producers or ADEPCOCA, an increasingly powerful organization that represents the rights of cocaleros to sell their coca in the legal market. People around town had told us that Justo was a young and charismatic farmer-turned-union leader — just the man to talk to us about the commercialization of coca and how it’s faring so far.
http://pulitzercenter.typepad.com/untold_stories/2008/02/bolivia-the-ten.html
* Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting’s “Untold Stories”: Carlos’ Cocal, 02.19.08: Out of the many cocaleros we’ve met in Los Yungas, Carlos is, by far, the most forthcoming of them all. He has candidly shared with us his feelings about Evo Morales’ coca policy and how he believes it’s benefiting farmers like him, and he’s also told us stories from the time, before Evo, when cocaine production was a common business throughout the region.
http://pulitzercenter.typepad.com/untold_stories/2008/02/bolivia-rene-an.html#more
* Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting’s “Untold Stories”: Coca Cero?, 02.04.08: “Forced eradication” is a loaded term in Bolivia, and among cocaleros, it calls to mind the abuses and conflicts of the past few administrations. These days, the preferred word is “rationalization”, used equally by government officials, military, police, and even the cocaleros themselves, to refer to the limits placed on coca cultivation. Under president Evo Morales’ “Coca Si, Cocaina No” plan, there’s a rightful place and treatment for all kinds of coca — whether it’s grown in legal, so-called “excess”, or illegal zones.
http://pulitzercenter.typepad.com/untold_stories/2008/02/bolivia-coca-ce.html
* Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting’s “Untold Stories”: Chulumani, Chicaloma, Ocobaya, Irupana, 01.24.08: The bus drops us off at the non-descript Chulumani “tranca” — the name given here to the place where all traffic comes to a halt, and where the trucks and buses stop to pick up passengers and unload. It’s raining. The town is sleepy as always, but especially so now because it is noon-time and most villagers are either in the fields tending their crops, or they are back at home, having lunch.
http://pulitzercenter.typepad.com/untold_stories/2008/01/bolivia-chuluma.html#more
* Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting’s “Untold Stories”: The Road to Los Yungas, 01.18.08: Because there are no good roads and little reliable transportation between the different farming communities in Los Yungas, we had to backtrack to La Paz from the town of Coroico in order to get to Chulumani — an important center for coca production in this jungle region. It’s the middle of the rainy season, and there are quite a few landslides and muddy patches on the old dirt road. We’re on the 8 a.m. bus, driving through the fog. Our driver, who appears to be in his mid-twenties, is making the sign of the cross repeatedly with his right hand, while he maneuvers the big wheel with his left.
http://pulitzercenter.typepad.com/untold_stories/2008/01/bolivia-the-roa.html#more
* Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting’s “Untold Stories”: The Villa Fátima Market, 01.14.08: A block up from the Plaza del Maestro, in the middle of La Paz’s red light district, is the Mercado de Villa Fátima, the largest legal coca market in Bolivia. The building is a faded and weathered green-like color and it bears no sign above the door. The only way to identify the market is by the rows of buses and pick-up trucks parked outside that are loading and unloading bags of coca around the clock.
http://pulitzercenter.typepad.com/untold_stories/2008/01/bolivia-the-vil.html#more
* Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting’s “Untold Stories”: Evo’s New Year, 01.04.08: On the eve of his second year in office, Evo Morales remains as controversial and polarizing a figure now as he did when he was elected president. But he continues to push through the many social and political reforms that he vowed to take on, when he became the first indigenous president of this poor South American country. If there is one thing that will help people on the outside understand Bolivia, we believe it is the coca leaf.
http://pulitzercenter.typepad.com/untold_stories/2008/01/bolivia-evos-ne.html#more
