Ultra-nationalist Peruvian presidential candidate Ollanta Humala is challenging the role of the US in Latin America by embracing the line of his fellow populist leaders and endorsing the cessation of coca eradication programs within Peru . Humala and Bolivian President Evo Morales (see photo right) state their prime motivations for terminating eradication programs reflect their cultural sensitivities regarding the historic cultivation of coca by indigenous communities for medicinal and consumptive purposes. However, with only 30,000 families in Peru cultivating coca among a population of 28 million, Humala’s motivations might appear influenced by ideology rather than his desire to champion the cause of Peru’s indigenous communities. Such assumptions are invalid, however, due to the nature of Humala’s ideological belief system, which has been formed directly through the lessons of his father, Issac Humala, and are directly linked to the Peruvian indigenous community.
Born into a well-off middle class family, Ollanta’s father raised eight children to lead the Peruvian people in an indigenous revolution, believing that only Incas could lead Peru out of economic plight and break the chains of the “white man’s” economic repression. Issac Humala is recognized as the creator of Peru’s “ethno-nationalist” movement, which is termed “ethnocacerism” after General Andr?s Avelino C?ceres , the heroic Peruvian general who refused to accept Peru’s surrender in the War of the Pacific and continued a guerrilla-type insurgency against Chilean occupiers. Ethnocacerism is a “form of extreme nationalism rooted in the vindication of the indigenous roots of the majority of Peru’s population. It is based on the view that only the country’s Andean indigenous peoples will be capable of freeing Peruvians from the system of exploitation put in place by the Spanish colonial power” (Intel Report and Intel Report).
Ollanta Humala, long championing an anti-US nationalist political line, has chosen the cessation of US-led coca eradication as a means of achieving sovereignty from US policies. Although both Morales and Humala insist that a zero tolerance approach will be taken toward the production of coca leaves into cocaine, both men insist that Peruvian and Bolivian policy toward the cultivation of coca will be decided in Lima and La Paz and not in Washington, DC.
Considering the impact coca legalization will have on the production and distribution of cocaine is difficult to forecast. US counternarcotics officials have become more accepting of the so-called “balloon effect”?the shifting of narcotics production from one area to another. The balloon effect advocates the belief that coca cultivation and cocaine production will shift from those areas that are under eradication and prevention programs to areas more hospitable to operations. Thus, the balloon effect suggests that Colombian narcotics operations will shift to Peru and Bolivia, having come under increasing pressure from the Colombian military.
US policymakers should expect further alterations in US-Peruvian relations if Humala is victorious in the May run-off elections. Humala has campaigned aggressively on a platform similar to Bolivia’s Morales that includes tighter central control over Peru’s energy assets, anti-globalization and anti-neoliberalist polices, limited investment in Peru by Chilean companies, and the nationalization of all industry (or “Peruvianization” as it has been coined). Such ideas are a reverberation to the social science idea of dependency theory that challenged the standard development theory of the mid-20th century but in a slightly altered form. Those Latin American leaders who have found economic progress to be minimal with large segments of their populations are increasingly dismissing the neo-liberalist paradigm that garnered adherents in Latin America with the end of the Cold War.