Aguaytia, the Ucali, the Tambo, and the Apurimac. The slopes above the Urubamba were soon expected to rival the Huallaga.^[19]  In all, some 200,000 farmers were growing coca in an area that had been largely rain forest on the day Bush was inaugurated.^[20]  Beyond that, refining and transportation had spread into neighboring Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela. The cocaine industry in Latin America now covered an area nearly as large as the continental United States.^[21]  So to say the eradication program produced no results would be misleading.  There were plenty of results, all of them unintended.

And what of the $50 million base at Santa Lucia?  When it was under construction back in 1988 it was lauded as a model for the future of drug eradication—“a package that can be used anywhere, whether it’s opium poppy or coca fields.”^[22]  But hopes for this Vietnam-style drug war bastion were overwhelmed by the reality of the jungle. In a cost-cutting sweep at the end of 1993, the U.S. Embassy turned operational control of Santa Lucia over to the Peruvians.  The following year a General Accounting Office team dropped in for a look, and their report was bleak: half the helicopters were grounded for maintenance, field operations were paralyzed by an ongoing turf war at the U.S. Embassy in Lima, and “the airstrip needed repair because of holes in the runway...”^[23] 

By the end of the Bush Administration total cocaine output in the Andes had increased fifteen percent. Some estimates placed it in excess of a thousand tons a year.^[24]

The business of turning coca leaves into cocaine is a three step process. In the first operation, the leaves are sun-dried, then dumped in a plastic-lined pit with a mixture of water and  alkali.  Then they’re trampled into mush by peasants who stomp them like wine grapes. The mix is washed in kerosene, the water and leaves are drained off, alkali is added to the remaining gruel, and the cocaine alkaloids fall to the bottom.  The residue is coca paste,