cover image Snowfields: War on Cocaine in the Andes

Snowfields: War on Cocaine in the Andes

Clare Hargreaves. Holmes & Meier Publishers, $47.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-8419-1327-1

Despite the admitted difficulties in getting hard information from criminals regarding their enterprises, veteran British journalist Hargreaves has managed to produce a remarkably complete picture of cocaine trafficking in Bolivia, a country in which drugs quietly became the most profitable industry while the world focused on Colombia's drug trade. Such is the power of the cocaine interests in Bolivia that they actually managed to install a government friendly to them via a military coup in 1980. Hargreaves follows how cocaine is moved from the fields of Bolivian coca farmers, who receive a pittance for their labor, to the high living and conspicuous traffickers to the consumers of processed crack and cocaine. Finally, the author examines the so-called U.S.-led ``war on drugs,'' which he reveals as largely a sham, and a media event with the foxes are often put in charge of the chicken house. The author has marshaled an impressive amount of material (including an interview with Roberto Suarez, the now-imprisoned head of one of the country's principal cartels), in this fascinating look at a very big business. (Sept.)