The coca diplomacy as the end of the war on drugs. The impact of international cooperation on the crime policy of the Pl
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The coca diplomacy as the end of the war on drugs. The impact of international cooperation on the crime policy of the Plurinational state of Bolivia Jörg Alfred Stippel 1 & Juan E. Serrano-Moreno 2,3 # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract This study analyses the way social problems evolve, and could be overcome by policy decisions, taking Bolivia as a case study. The international cooperation that began with the Single Convention of 1961 opened the door to the militarization of Bolivian crime policy, inspired by the “war on drugs” US paradigm. Foreign intervention weakened Bolivian institutions, creating an opportunity for social movements in defence of the coca leaf in rural areas. Policy change started in 2006 after Evo Morales’ election as President. A new policy paradigm was adopted and the “coca diplomacy” was deployed allowing the government to avoid the repressive foundation of international law and, at the same time, to nourish a new national narrative. The latest step on the “nationalisation” of crime policy was the criminal law adopted at the end of 2017 and abrogated a month later showing the limits of the impact of the “coca sí, cocaína no” paradigm. Keywords Bolivia . Crime policy . Narcotics . International cooperation . International law
Jörg Alfred Stippel & Juan Enrique Serrano Moreno 21st May 2019
* Juan E. Serrano-Moreno [email protected] Jörg Alfred Stippel [email protected]
1
Universidad Autónoma de Chile, Santiago, Chile
2
Universidad de la Frontera, Temuco, Chile
3
Facultad de Ciencias Jurídicas y Empresariales, UFRO, Uruguay, 1720, Temuco, Chile
Stippel J.A., Serrano Moreno J.E.
Introduction The war on drugs and the way it wafvs partially overcome through the Bolivian “coca diplomacy1” [1] is a showcase of how social problems can be generated and overcome by legal means. As the German criminologist Sebastian Scheerer [2] points out, social problems are the sum of facts and problematization. Thus, a social problem consists of a certain configuration of actors and structures, and this configuration, in order to become a “social problem” in the first place, must be defined and treated by relevant third parties as requiring intervention. In the case of Bolivia, the relevant third parties who defined the need for intervention are found on an international level. Their actions transformed situations into problems, a process that has been partially overcome by the means of coca diplomacy. The “war on drugs” can therefore be understood as an externally induced problem, and one that destabilized the country. We find this particularly true considering the criminalization of the traditional production and possession of the coca leaf, as its most visible effects were an increase in violence, the presence of the United States troops on Bolivian soil, the adopting of laws of a doubtful constitutionality and an explosion in the prison popuation [3–5]. A comparable process was studied by Paley [6, 7] in Colombia and Mexico, where the hegemonic antinarcotics discourse provided the j
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