AFTER SIX DAYS and countless phone calls, our authorizations have come through, and the coca-lab interdiction mission with Azturicaga takes place without a hitch, though it leaves Abramson with a painful crotch rash that makes it almost impossible for him to walk. He bows out of the second mission the next day, an "eradication trip" with a joint task force of soldiers, police, and tecnicos. That evening, Salazar, Villalon, and I find ourselves in a military camp deep in the jungle, frantically rubbing deet into our arms, necks, and faces as mosquitoes begin to circle.

Captain Franz Ordoñez Menacho, our escort, tosses us three U.S.-military-issue meals ready to eat. Salazar has never seen an MRE before. He rips open the thick plastic bag and examines the contents with fascination. "Cajun shrimp," he reads aloud. "Pound cake... vanilla milk shake. Skittles." I slip his shrimp dinner into the heating pouch, add water, and hand him back the warmed-up meal five minutes later. He shakes his head in wonder. "Los gringos," he says with admiration.

The next morning we rise from our tents before dawn and jump aboard the first in a convoy of trucks bound for the eradication mission. The dirt road peters out before a cliff, and Ordoñez, a handsome, bronze-skinned man in his mid-thirties, leads us, along with 89 soldiers and policemen in camouflage fatigues, down a narrow trail that plunges toward the river, 300 feet below. Two days of heavy rain have turned the path into a slippery mess; a single misstep would send a man tumbling to near-certain death over a vertical cliff face. Villalon, Salazar, and I inch across in terror. The troops navigate the trail with practiced ease, loping down toward the wide, brown river, the cops with M-16's slung over their shoulders.

We wade knee-deep across streams, clamber over a field of boulders along the riverbank, trudge down muddy trails hemmed in by primeval flora. After a 90-minute hike, we arrive at a weathered wooden hut in a clearing littered with cooking pots, empty tin cans, corncobs, and soiled clothing. Just beyond it, we come to a chaco, or agricultural plot, covered with eight-foot-high plants: coca. In the old days, the police would have swarmed the field, hacked down the plants with machetes, and burned what was left; an ambush by angry and desperate cocaleros might happen on the way in or out. But now everything proceeds as decorously as a cricket match. Ordoñez hands an inspection order to the federación representative, who was alerted about this visit three days ago. Wilmer Avendano, the slightly built 17-year-old son of the chaco's registered owner, Paulina Avendano, presents his Bolivian identification card. Then, as the police form a cordon around the area, a team of tecnicos in khaki uniforms fans out across the field with tape measures, calling out numbers to a team leader who tabulates the acreage: "20 meters!" "33 meters!" "15 meters!"

The field measures about 1,400 square meters, and a tiny plot just off the jungle trail, also belonging to the Avendano family, brings the total size of the cato to the permitted 1,600 square meters. Then, just as we are about to leave, a soldier shouts from a nearby thicket. He's discovered hundreds of illicit plants hidden in the jungle—a typical cocalero tactic. The soldiers whip out their machetes and begin chopping through the roots to prevent the coca from growing back. But even this vestige of Bolivia's Coca Zero days proceeds with untroubled efficiency. Wilmer Avendano watches the operation and smiles. "We grew this as a 'protest crop' a few years ago," he tells me. "But we're working with the government now, and we're fine with [the arrangement]."

Everything has gone smoothly. But I can't avoid the impression that this choreographed "eradication" is all for show. Indeed, Ordoñez tells me that many federations are engaging in fraud—inflating the number of their members, for instance, or simply not reporting coca fields hidden deep in the jungle. The captain shrugs. "A social experiment is going on here," Ordoñez says. "Who knows where it's going to lead?"

Salazar thinks he's got a pretty clear idea. Later that afternoon, relaxing poolside at Los Tucanes resort, in Villa Tunari, before we head back up to Cochabamba, he tells me that almost everybody in Bolivia expects both coca and cocaine production to soar in the coming months. "By next year Morales will probably increase the allowance from one cato to two catos per farmer," he says. "The cocaleros are happy. The army is happy, too, because they are receiving these extra salaries from the United States." He takes a swig from a bottle of Coke Zero and flashes a wry smile. "Working with coca," he says, "is good business for everybody."