Three children from the Bolivian coca-growing region of Chapare were rushed
urgently to medical centers in the city of Cochabamba. All three suffered
bullet wounds from shots fired by officers of the Combined Task Force (FTC
in its Spanish acronym), in the town of San Isidro, 175 kilometers from the
city.
�A soldier was hitting a woman on the ground and I called him a faggot; for
that, he shot me,� Miguel Medrano Moya, 16, said between sobs. Medrano had
been hit by a bullet in the stomach, and was fighting for his life in
Viedma Hospital.
Coca farmers hold a vigil
in Cochabamba's main plaza
Photo D.R. Alex Contreras 2003
On Sunday, March 9, dozens of military officers raided the small town to
eradicate the coca crops belonging to the area�s residents; the reaction
was automatic: children, women and men confronted the troops� firearms with
sticks and rocks.
Miguel and his friends witnessed the violence a soldier used against a
woman who sells chicken in the market and questioned him. In response, they
were dispersed with gunshots.
The boy felt a pain in his stomach, the hot blood running down his body,
and collapsed on the spot. He had been hit. His friends dragged him away
and carried him to a main street where they could get him to a hospital.
Sandra Laura Coca, 12, was also hurt in the shootout, with a bullet wound
to her collar bone, as was Victor Al� Perez, 15, who had an injury in his
right leg.
Neither child was participating in the mobilization. They were only
observing. Two adults, Paulo L�pez Mej�a, 32, and Teodoro Pe�arrieta Soliz,
53, were hit by pellet-gun shots.
A Fake War
The mother of the injured girl said that human rights abuses happened
constantly in the towns of the Chapare region but that now the people are
getting tired of it. �The government says that it is fighting drug
trafficking, but it�s a lie. This eradication is just a pretext to abuse
our rights and occupy our land. But the coca farmers won�t surrender. We
have decided to die fighting rather than die on our knees,� she said.
Despite the forced elimination of coca crops, official figures from the US
State Department say 24,400 hectares of coca exist in Bolivia. They do not
specify the amount of coca in the Yungas region or in the Chapare.
Coca producers say that the fight against drug trafficking �is a fake war�
because it doesn�t directly attack drug traffickers. Instead, it attacks
the small farmers of these regions. The population of the Tropico de
Cochabamba � the official name for the coca-growing Chapare region - is
estimated at more than 120,000, of which around 35,000 belong to cocalero
organizations.
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