Bolivia & Coca: Lindsay Interviews President Mesa

His interview with Bolivian President Carlos Mesa appears today in the Toronto Star.

Here are some excerpts, below.

Read the whole thing. Excerpts from the Reed Lindsay interview with Carlos Mesa:

Bolivia's divisions grow deeper

President exudes confidence after referendum win but polarization threatens Mesa's centrist posture

By REED LINDSAY
SPECIAL TO THE STAR

LA PAZ—Bolivian President Carlos Mesa knows as well as anyone the precarious nature of his office.

In 1983, shortly after the nation's dictatorship had given way to democracy, Mesa published Presidents Of Bolivia: Between Ballot Boxes And Guns, a book that examined a tumultuous history marked by nearly 200 coups and counter-coups.

Lately, democracy has hardly provided better job security for Bolivia's head of state.

Last October, thousands of poor, indigenous Bolivians finally drove Mesa's predecessor, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, from power.

But Mesa, the vice-president who replaced his boss on Oct. 17 after weeks of bloody street clashes that left an estimated 70 people dead, is brimming with confidence after last month's passage of a referendum on which he had staked his presidency.

"Another October? No," says Mesa, a large man who appears very much the intellectual with his graying beard, frameless glasses and habit of making nearly everything he says into a little lecture.

"Problems, roadblocks, demonstrations, strikes, threats, shouts, what have you. There'll be more than you can imagine. But another movement like that of October? No...

Lindsay also notes that the coca growers are growing restless, and may well lead the next challenge to the U.S.-dominated status quo in this landlocked, majority indigenous, nation of eight million people...

Evo Morales, an Aymara Indian coca farmer and outspoken foe of the United States who nearly won the presidency in 2002, had become a key pillar of support for Mesa, abandoning the roadblocks that had become his trademark and endorsing the referendum.

But in recent days, he and his coca farmer supporters, called cocaleros, have threatened to return to street protests, announcing a nationwide demonstration to be held on Aug. 30.

"The people will mobilize if there's no nationalization," Morales said at a recent news conference. "We can't accept a law that is pro-business, pro-oligarchic, pro-imperialist."

Mesa has further angered the cocaleros by continuing with the U.S.-funded eradication of coca, the base ingredient in cocaine and a mild stimulant chewed by indigenous Bolivians on a regular basis.

He says the government has no plans to discontinue coca eradication...

"Bolivia is undergoing a very strong polarization drawn on ethnic, class and regional lines," warns Alvaro Garcia, a La Paz-based analyst.

"If the centre fails, if Carlos Mesa, with his centrist measures like the constituent assembly and referendum, cannot channel social discontent, and cannot stabilize society, the poles are going to grow and the possibility opens that the only resolution between these poles will be through civil war."

Developing...