DEA set to return to Bolivia as US revives anti-drug coordination

Summary

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has resumed intelligence coordination with Bolivia, according to a senior Bolivian official, restarting cooperation nearly two decades after a Morales administration expelled U.S. anti-drug agents. The renewed engagement is taking shape as Bolivia’s newly inaugurated centrist President Rodrigo Paz restores full diplomatic relations with Washington, and as U.S. officials rework counternarcotics policy toward the Western Hemisphere. Bolivian officials said the cooperation began with information-sharing and assistance that includes vetting and training.

Bolivia’s Vice Minister of Social Defense and Controlled Substances Ernesto Justiniano, speaking in an interview late Thursday, said the U.S. has started sharing intelligence with Bolivian law enforcement on transnational criminal networks and has begun helping vet and train officers. Justiniano told The Associated Press that Bolivia was “already receiving support in various ways, in the training and integrity analysis of personnel,” and that “there is a lot of intelligence, resources, they can provide us, and we need it.”

Justiniano said the resumption is still in the process of being finalized, describing further meetings and an agreement to be completed by Bolivia’s foreign ministry. The DEA did not respond to a request for comment on Justiniano’s remarks, which Justiniano described as his first to foreign media about U.S. counternarcotics assistance already underway in Bolivia.

The backdrop for the shift is diplomacy: the resumption arrives after Paz restored full diplomatic ties with the United States following nearly two decades in which Morales’ Movement Toward Socialism party distanced itself from Washington and emphasized relationships with China, Russia, Cuba and Iran. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio praised Paz’s election as a “transformative opportunity for both nations,” according to the AP report.

Analysts and former U.S. officials described the DEA’s return as a foreign policy gain and as a way to reopen access that Bolivian governments say they lacked. Retired U.S. diplomat Daniel Foote, who worked counternarcotics policy in Bolivia after serving in the Peace Corps, said Washington had “little idea what’s been going on these past 20 years” and that DEA presence could “open a lot of other doors” for the U.S., while adding, “This is as much about helping Bolivia as it is keeping the U.S. safe.”

Justiniano acknowledged the political and historical sensitivities that surround U.S. involvement in drug enforcement, particularly in the coca-growing jungle region near Cochabamba. In comments that reflected the lingering concerns, Justiniano said Bolivia had to be careful about how such cooperation is described, saying, “In Bolivia, when it comes to language, you have to be very careful.” He added, “Are we going to have bases full of gringos here? No, that’s not going to happen.” Justiniano said Bolivia “would welcome” the DEA and other regional forces taking a direct role in interdiction operations on the ground, and said Bolivia “do[es] need to conduct joint operations.”

The report said the tropical Chapare region’s coca growers and farmers are preparing for what they see as potentially tougher policies that could affect legal coca production. Coca growers’ leader Aquilardo Caricari said at a recent press conference, “We will not allow the establishment of any military base in the Cochabamba tropics,” citing arrests and killings from the 1990s tied to earlier U.S.-backed operations.

The Morales era remains a key part of the story. The AP report said Morales, the first indigenous president of Bolivia, promoted coca as central to his political agenda and resisted foreign meddling; it also said he sought to legalize the leaf’s traditional use and allotted coca plots of 1,600 square meters to farming families while empowering unions to limit excess production. Officials told AP that the legal market did not stop coca’s illicit processing into cocaine, and Justiniano said obtaining data on drug trafficking in Bolivia had been almost impossible since Morales kicked out U.S. anti-narcotics agents in 2008. Justiniano claimed that over 90% of Chapare coca was diverted into the cocaine trade.

The report said Bolivia had become a “blind spot” in part because the DEA’s footprint shrank after Morales’ expulsions, and it described how the once-sleepy city of Santa Cruz has become a traffickers’ hub. The Associated Press also connected the current shift to the political context around Paz’s return to cooperation with the U.S., and noted that Morales has not appeared publicly since a Jan. 3 U.S. seizure of his ally, former Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, amid speculation that Morales may have slipped out of the country.

In explaining how earlier U.S. cooperation with Bolivia unfolded, the AP report cited memories of former President Jaime Paz Zamora’s 1989 term, when the report said Colombia’s Medellin and Cali cartels were using Bolivia as an air bridge. It said Paz Zamora invited the U.S. military to train Bolivia’s security forces, extradited cocaine kingpins to face charges in the U.S., and dismissed officials accused of taking drug money. The report also cited former U.S. ambassador Robert Gelbard, who said he hoped that under Paz there would not be a repeat of what he described as the aggressive approach of the 1990s, while another former Bolivian ambassador, Jaime Aparicio, said he expects Trump to be different because “Drugs are his main enemy in this region.”

Even with any desire for renewed enforcement, the report said the details may be shaped by constraints in U.S. agencies. It said the Biden administration ordered the closure of more than a dozen DEA offices worldwide, and it framed the renewed coordination as part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to make the U.S. more influential in the Western Hemisphere.

As Bolivian officials press for intelligence and operational coordination, Justiniano said the key issue now is to finalize agreements without importing what coca growers and farmers say they rejected in the past—particularly the fear that renewed U.S. involvement could bring military presence in coca regions.

The Associated Press reported that DeBre contributed from Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Joshua Goodman contributed from Miami.