Changes

In late 1985, Paz Estenssoro was under pressure from the U.S., which threatened to cut Bolivia's aid in half unless Bolivia could eliminate 10,000 acres of [[coca]] cultivation.<ref name="APJan1086">Peter McFarren, "Government May Send Troops to End Siege of Anti-narcotics Squad," The Associated Press, January 10, 1986.</ref> The government crop reduction program began in December 1985, promising farmers $350 for each hectare taken out of coca cultivation. At the time a farmer in [[Chapare]] told reporters that he earns 10 times more from coca than he could from any other crop. According to accounts from six months later, these coca eradication efforts were a failure: "Voluntary programs to replace coca with other crops have been a miserable failure. By this year, according to a 1983 US-Bolivia aid agreement, Bolivia was to have removed 10,000 acres of coca plants. To date, virtually no coca has been pulled out of the ground."<ref>Mac Margolis, "Bolivian economy hooked on cocaine," Christian Science Monitor, May 14, 1986.</ref>