Report

OVER THE PAST 500 YEARS A HANDFUL of deities has played havoc with Latin America. They have swept through nations, uprooting communi- ties and transforming the lay of the land.
Jo Ann Kawell
What fuels the guerrilla presence in Peru's coca-growing Huallaga Valley is not the drug traffickers, but the U.S. drug control policy itself. It has failed to stem the growth of the cocaine industry, and threatens to draw the United States into a vast and bitter war.

Article

What do you think caused the war ? I think that it has a lot to do with Soviet expansionism, especially as practiced by Fidel Castro, which seeks a Marxist take- over by force of arms. And they justify it by citing the social problems that plagued the country back in the 1970s.
Stanley A. Gacek
At the state-owned Volta Redonda steel mill in the state of Rio de Janeiro, conditions were hellish. Workers en- dured extremes of heat and noise as iron struck iron endlessly and blast furnaces spewed toxic dust into the air.
Raúl González
JANUARY 19, 1988. THE ENTIRE POPULATION of Barranca is in the village square, along with resi- dents of 15 other towns visited by the column of Sen- dero Luminoso guerrillas.
Readers are invited to address letters to the editor, NACLA, 475 Riverside Drive, Suite 454, New York, NY 10115. Letters may be edited for length and clarity.
Jo Ann Kawell
WHEN POPE JOHN PAUL II VISITED BOLIVIA last year, the press published daily accounts of the number of cups of coca tea he consumed. Does the Pope do dope? Nope.
Jo Ann Kawell
COCA BLANKETS THE HILLS SURROUNDING Peru's Huallaga Valley and carpets much of Bolivia's Chapare. These two regions, now a drug enforcement offi- cial's nightmare, were thought not so long ago to be the scene of a shining future.
Ken Silverstein
Ever since Josd Napole6n Duarte's Christian Democrats were defeated in municipal and legislative elections last spring, U.S.
Coca and Cocaine: Effects on People and Policy in Latin America edited by Deborah Pacini and Christine Fran- quemont. Cultural Survival Report No.
John Womack & Larry Rohter & Alan Riding
Last August and September, histo- rian John Womack of Harvard Uni- versity wrote a series of letters to the editors of The New York Times, pro- testing the coverage of Mexico pro- vided by correspondents Larry Rohter and Alan Riding. Not intended for publication, the letters were circulated among editors and passed on to the correspondents themselves.
MF
Castroika THE PHOTOGRAPH SHOWS FIDEL CASTRO'S face just above the tweed shoulder of the man he is embracing; his beard hangs down the back of the man's coat. The man's face is not visible, but the caption assures us it is Nicanor Costa M6ndez, Argentina's for- eign minister.
Jo Ann Kawell
DEEP INSIDE BOLIVIA'S SIGLO XX TIN MINE, three men get ready to begin their day's work. Not long ago, this mine was the country's biggest and busi- est; every day some 5,000 miners swarmed through its tunnels.
Sidney W. Mintz
AS UNIQUELY PERPLEXING AS THE SCOURGE of cocaine may seem, it is but the youngest of a long lineage of substances which provide novel sensory experiences. The economic forces driving cocaine's pro- duction and generating hostility toward it are no differ- ent today from what they were three centuries ago when the rising flood of commerce in tea, coffee, sugar and tobacco linked Western Europe to its tropical colonies and revolutionized world consumption.
Jo Ann Kawell
IT IS THE DRUG WARRIOR'S DREAM: A chemical applied from the air that makes coca plants shrivel up and die. No need to dig them up by hand, as now.
Jo Ann Kawell
ON JUNE 28 OF LAST YEAR, SHORTLY BE- fore Bolivia passed a new law aimed at control- ling coca production, a crowd of protesters gathered at the drug police post in Villa Tunari, a small town in the coca-growing Chapare region. An hour-long video tape made by a crew from a local television station docu- mented the scene: Hundreds of marchers, dressed in shabby work clothes and carrying no visible arms, not even sticks, approach the post.