Bolivia is a land of gaunt mountains, cold desolate plains, and semi-tropical lowlands situated in the central part of South America. Straddling the Andes mountains, Bolivia's 424,165 square miles occupy an area about the size of Texas and...

Coca eradication is a controversial strategy strongly promoted by the United States government as part of its "War on Drugs" to eliminate the cultivation of coca, a plant whose leaves are not only traditionally used by indigenous cultures but also, in...

As early as 1925, the U.S. government advocated the destruction of crops used in drug production, including coca, opium poppy, and cannabis. U.S.-sponsored drug crop eradication started in Mexico after President Nixon's war on drugs was launched in 1968. When a 1995 National...

In their customary fashion, Rowland Evans and Robert Novak have confused counterproductive repression with tough-mindedness {"The War in the Andes," op-ed, June 22}. A genuinely "no-nonsense" policy to reduce U.S. cocaine abuse and the violence of drug trafficking has no place for forced coca...

Colombia's vice president said Sunday that a U.S.-backed program to fumigate coca fields is failing to stem cocaine trafficking and called for anti-drug efforts to shift away from the practice.Vice President Francisco Santos' comments were Bogota's strongest critique yet of Washington's multibillion-dollar anti-narcotics strategy here,...

Always Coca-Cola? Not if Bolivia's coca growers have their way. The farmers want the word "Coca" dropped by the U.S. soft drink company, arguing that the potent shrub belongs to the cultural heritage of this Andean nation, where the coca leaf infuses everyday life and...