The Chapare's population has already fallen: perhaps by as much as 50, 000 people, to around 100, 000.

ECONOMIST: A crop that refuses to die

But Jose Guillermo Justiniano, the development minister, says that in the Chapare, zero tolerance will continue.

ECONOMIST: Politics in Bolivia: Progress or collapse | The

In the Chapare, coca was planted on flat land and could be harvested in its first year.

ECONOMIST: Bolivia

Many Bolivians came to accept coca eradication in the Chapare as a necessary attack on organised crime.

ECONOMIST: Bolivia

In Bolivia, the Chapare is split uneasily between those who have embraced the new ways and those who still follow the cocalero unions.

ECONOMIST: A crop that refuses to die

The Chapare accord works out to one cato (a measure equal to 1, 600 square metres) for each of the 23, 000 families who signed up to it.

ECONOMIST: Coca and cocaine in the Andes

Mr Morales's demand for more coca in the Chapare region does not resonate in the parts of the Yungas where coca is grown legally for traditional use.

ECONOMIST: Fragile states in the Andes (2)

Troops have now been sent to the Chapare in number.

ECONOMIST: Bolivia

After the shrinkage of the industry in the mid-1980s, many of the miners left their highland homes, encouraged by government resettlement programmes, to become farmers in the tropical Chapare lowlands, east of the Andes.

ECONOMIST: Bolivia

They have already won a small victory: an American-financed army unit set up last year to clear coca farmers' roadblocks in the Chapare (formerly the main growing area) is being disbanded, after several mistakes by trigger-happy troops.

ECONOMIST: Politics in Bolivia: Progress or collapse | The