ABSTRACT
Coca is the essential ingredient in cocaine, and without it the traffickers would be driven out of business. Despite Colombia's growing role, Bolivia and Peru grow most of the world's coca, the woody bush from which cocaine is derived. The primary coca growing regions, and indeed most of rural Peru, consists of extremely rugged terrain with limited links to urban manufacturing and commerce centers. The Chapare is an area approximately the size of New Jersey, bounded by the Andes mountains and the traditional highland coca cultivation areas to the west and south and lowland jungle to the north and east. Coca farming in Bolivia has strong historical roots, but the commercialization of it parallels the process that occurred in Peru. The Bolivian government committed itself to modest eradication objectives in 1983 as well. Commercial agriculture proved to be a tenuous base on which to build regional development.
