by Melissa Clegg-Tripp
In 2001, I was on my third tour in the Foreign Service, excited to be serving for the first time as the “Information Officer” as it was then termed in La Paz, Bolivia. (The job title sounded fancier when translated into Spanish; I was the “Agregada de Prensa.”) Counternarcotics dominated the bilateral agenda because Bolivia, then the poorest country in Latin America, was a major producer of coca leaves, raw material for cocaine. The drug was trafficked to the United States and Europe and fueled addiction and violent crime.
A big part of my job was to work with the Bolivian media to showcase US-Bolivian cooperation in eradicating coca and to profile the success of the “alternative development” programs the United States was funding. Those programs included health and educational assistance as well as support to farmers who elected to grow legal trade crops such as bananas and pineapples. It was a bit of a hard sell in that Bolivia, like other Andean countries, had a tradition of using coca leaves for medicinal, spiritual, and social purposes. Coca, a mild stimulant, also has nutritional value, helps with high altitude headaches, and is consumed either by way of chewing or by being made into a tea.
Many Bolivians did not like the demonization of the leaf. Also, frankly, it was harder to grow bananas and pineapples. They took a long time to mature; they were susceptible to disease; they had to be carefully transported on bad roads to foreign markets. Furthermore, not many Bolivians seemed to be addicted to cocaine, and there was a sentiment out there that Bolivia produced cocaine only because “North Americans” wanted it, and the social ills accompanying the drug were really our problem, not theirs.
Still, my Bolivian colleagues and I felt good about our inroads. We arranged to helicopter media down to the coca areas to witness eradication efforts and to interview farmers now engaged in legal farming.
We partnered with a Bolivian TV station to fund a high brow weekly program that examined the many downsides of a drug-based economy. We also supported a weekly popular radio program that entailed two friends meeting for coffee (a new crop, incidentally, supported by USAID) to catch up. They would get around to talking about the new economic, health, and educational improvements being made in the community as it moved away from the coca economy. And, of course, we had our ambassador, Manuel Rocha, out talking to the media and influential audiences about the US partnership with Bolivia.
I rather liked Ambassador Rocha. I thought he was an articulate and personable proponent of US policy. His native Spanish was a plus for outreach purposes. He graciously hosted many public diplomacy events at his residence, and I would see him at school events as our children were close in age. I recall in particular one exchange with him about a thorn in the side of the embassy: a firebrand socialist, anti-American coca leaf defender/trade union leader and member of Congress named Evo Morales. I had been invited to a reception at the presidential palace, and it was crowded. I remember stepping backwards and feeling the heel of my shoe land on something that wasn’t the floor. I turned around and there was Evo Morales in the flesh. I’d speared his foot. I stammered, “Lo siento, señor,” and he graciously replied, “De nada, señora.” When I later informed Ambassador Rocha about the incident, he said with cheerful spite, “I hope it hurt!”
I was on leave in the United States when in June 2002 Ambassador Rocha gave a controversial speech days before the Bolivian presidential election. Evo Morales was in the running but was a distant prospect. Ambassador Rocha essentially warned the Bolivian electorate not to elect Morales. He came very close to saying all US assistance to the country would be cut off if proponents of coca/cocaine ran the country. A patriotic uproar ensued about US intervention in internal Bolivian affairs, and it made the international news. I read the New York Times in Seattle and wondered what on earth had prompted Ambassador Rocha to wade into the election in such a clumsy manner. Had I been in La Paz, I hope I might have read his remarks in draft and had the backbone to observe they might raise hackles. I was off the hook, however, far away on vacation, to some relief I have to admit. The upshot of his remarks? Evo Morales went from forlorn hope to place second in the presidential elections. He later sarcastically thanked Ambassador Rocha for his campaign boost. Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada did win, however, and continued Bolivia’s anti-drug cooperation with the United States, but Evo Morales went on to be elected president (and Bolivia’s first indigenous one) in 2005. He promptly shut off counternarcotics cooperation with the United States.
I considered the ambassador’s back-firing remarks to be ham-fisted, but I thought nothing more about them for two decades when I was shocked to learn Ambassador Rocha, now a private citizen, had been arrested as a suspected agent of the Cuban government. He apparently served Cuba for 40-some years; he pleaded guilty and received a 15-year prison sentence in April 2024. In hindsight, I now view his remarks differently. Perhaps he knew exactly what he was doing. Perhaps he wanted to stir up Bolivian pride by lecturing the electorate about the penalty for voting against US wishes. Perhaps he wanted to elevate Morales, a friend of Cuba, to the presidency. Perhaps he wanted to set back US policy objectives in Bolivia. I have no idea whether or not Evo Morales knew that Ambassador Rocha was secretly on his side or if the two ever met quietly. If so, however, I wonder if the ambassador ever apologized to Evo for my foot stomp.
Melissa Clegg-Tripp, a retired member of the Senior Foreign Service, specialized in public diplomacy for 30 years, first at the US Information Agency and then at the Department of State. She served in Turkey, Poland, Bolivia, France, South Africa, Oman, and Saudi Arabia in addition to Washington, DC. She has a B.A. from Bryn Mawr College, a M.A. from New York University, and a M.S. from the National Defense University. She is a member of the board of American Diplomacy.