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 News from Around the Americas | December 2007 
Colombia Coca Farmers Elude Black Hawks, Resist U.S. on Cocaine
 Andrea Jaramillo - Bloomberg
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 |  | You go, you spray and clear the military from the area and then they replant. We must clear but also hold the area with social programs that include alternative development, as well as building roads and bridges.
- Juan Manuel Santos |  | |
On his coca farm in the remote mountains of southeastern Colombia, Jose Lopez stoops over the 3-foot-tall plants and picks the shiny green leaves with pointed tips that are used to make cocaine. The farmer's calloused fingers, wrapped with cloth to protect them from cuts, move swiftly up the stem of each bushy plant and place his June harvest in a woven bag.
"You can see the quality," Lopez says. "The darker the leaf, the more merchandise it carries."
Lopez, who lives with his wife and 2-year-old son in a clay and bamboo shack with a dirt floor and no electricity, says coca is the only crop that will support his family. His thriving 1- hectare (2.5-acre) farm in Narino province symbolizes the failure of the U.S.-funded Plan Colombia - a $5 billion alliance with the South American nation to stamp out coca production.
The farmer quit growing coffee in 2002 because of the cost of transporting the beans 30 kilometers (19 miles) to market and trouble finding buyers.
"You don't have that problem with coca," says Lopez, who sells his leaves at a tin-roofed laboratory about 400 meters (1,300 feet) from his plot. The lab turns the leaves into coca paste and sells the substance to drug traffickers, who convert it into a white powder and ship the stimulant to the U.S. and Europe, the largest consumers of Colombian cocaine.
Lopez, 28, earns about 536,000 pesos ($260) a month from his plot and working as a hired hand. "This doesn't make you rich, but it's all we've got around here to put food on our table," says Lopez, who sometimes walks almost 6 hours to Leiva, the nearest town, to buy supplies.
Uribe's Achievements Threatened
President Alvaro Uribe has presided over the fastest economic expansion in Colombia in almost three decades, made possible by his success in tamping down runaway violence. Guerrilla and paramilitary groups that control the cocaine trade turned Colombia into the world's most dangerous country in 2002, according to United Nations figures.
They committed most of the 28,837 murders in a country of less than 43 million people. By 2006, killings had dropped 39 percent to 17,479. That helped Uribe become the first Colombian leader to win consecutive terms since Simon Bolívar, who secured independence from the Spanish in 1819.
Now, as coca production makes a comeback, Uribe's crowning achievements may be threatened. "More cocaine means you inevitably get a more powerful enemy," says Rafael Nieto, Colombia's deputy justice and interior minister in 2003 and '04. "This means more kidnappings and murders and, ultimately, reversing the conditions of confidence and investment that have spurred growth in the last five years."
Coca Production Growing
Plan Colombia's herbicide-spraying missions started in 2000 and initially cut coca production, according to the Washington- based Office of National Drug Control Policy, which uses high- definition Central Intelligence Agency satellites and other equipment to estimate the size of crops. By 2003, the harvest fell 33 percent from a peak of 169,800 hectares two years earlier.
From 2003 to '06, officials found a 38 percent increase to 157,200 hectares, and 2007 may set an all-time high for coca. UN estimates, which show crops fell from 2000 to '06, are derived from lower-resolution satellites and probably miss a lot of cultivation, says Adam Isacson, head of the Colombia program at the Center for International Policy in Washington.
The U.S. drug control office says it's finding more coca because of both increased satellite surveillance and the determination of farmers to keep growing the plant.
"Coca is a means of survival for these farmers," says Myles Frechette, the U.S. ambassador to Colombia from 1994 to '97 and a senior associate with the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington. "The Colombian government hasn't done enough to alleviate poverty in rural areas. Many people in the elites and even in the middle class just don't give a damn about the poor."
Record Foreign Investment
Under Uribe, who calls U.S. President George W. Bush a good friend, foreign investors have poured into Colombia. They committed a record $4.1 billion in the first half of 2007, and the economy may grow as much as 7.8 percent in the full year, according to an estimate by the country's central bank.
In Bogota, retailers and developers have begun to cater to the rich. Ermenegildo Zegna Group, a Milan-based maker of men's luxury suits and ties, opened its first store in the capital in 2007. LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA sells purses to Colombians for $1,800 - the equivalent of six months of wages for a coca grower.
Apartments, such as a $2.2 million, four-bedroom unit in the Guadalquidir building - which features squash courts and an indoor pool - are going up in the city at a rapid pace, says Fabio Acero, a partner at Bogota-based Cure Acero Constructores.
Peso Surges
"From what we had five years ago, demand has risen infinitely," he says. "You couldn't sell this type of apartment then."
In Narino province, about 680 kilometers from Bogota, many people live in shacks made of bamboo and pressed earth. Cesar Lopez, a supervisor in the government's manual eradication program, watches his workers in Narino rip plants from the ground belonging to Euterio Arcos, who lives in a pressed-earth dwelling with his wife and 4-year-old son.
"It's sad in cases like this where the population is very poor and you know you are pulling out their economy," says Lopez, who used to grow coca himself. "Though it doesn't look like it now, it's the best thing for them. Cocaine's a curse."
Arcos lives an hour's walk on a narrow mountain trail from the nearest road. For the farmer, switching to a legal crop or finding a farm job has become harder - thanks to the soaring Colombian economy. The 53 percent surge in the peso to 1,871.6 per dollar in June 2007 from January 2003 has hurt exports of bananas, rice and flowers, leading employers to fire workers. The rural unemployment rate rose to 7.8 percent in the second quarter of 2007 from 6.8 percent a year earlier.
Coca Replaces Rice
Fifteen banana farms shut down in 2006 and '07. And the number of hectares under rice cultivation dropped by 10 percent in the same period, says Rafael Hernandez, head of the Bogota- based National Federation of Rice Growers.
"It's logical that in some areas where coca is already planted, rice is being replaced by the illegal crop," Hernandez says. "Farmers are farmers, after all."
A Plan Colombia mission in central Tolima province in June shows the ease with which agents find coca crops. At an anti- narcotics base, four U.S. Black Hawk helicopters take to the sky.
Two anti-narcotics officers aboard each chopper point multibarreled machine guns at the ground, looking for guerrillas. Each helicopter escorts a T-65 Turbo Thrush crop- dusting plane piloted by a U.S. citizen hired on contract by the State Department. The planes carry as many as 200 gallons (760 liters) of Roundup herbicide.
Hit By Gunfire
Anti-narcotics police Captain Mauricio Cardenas, one of the helicopter pilots, says that in some regions, planes and choppers are hit by gunfire every day.
"It's a tough battle and will possibly take many years, but we're on a good path," says Cardenas, yelling over the thumping roar of helicopter blades.
The rolling, densely forested land below is cut by rivers and dotted with bare patches cleared by coca farmers. The crop- dusters descend closer to the ground over a few hectares of coca and drop the herbicide, which turns into a white cloud as it slowly falls.
A few kilometers away from the spraying, a team of about 10 antinarcotics police armed with rifles and grenades trek through the mountains, looking for coca labs. They find a dilapidated wooden shack hidden in the trees.
'Source of Disappointment'
Inside, two plates of beans and rice sitting half full on a table and chicken broth boiling on a wood fire suggest the occupants had just fled. After checking for land mines and securing the area, an officer takes a jug of gasoline found in the lab and douses the building. Another officer tosses in a grenade, turning the lab into a huge ball of fire.
Plan Colombia's planes and agents have wiped out an enormous number of coca plants: 213,370 hectares were eradicated in 2006, an almost sixfold jump from 2000.
"It's been a source of disappointment for some that the amount of eradication has not caused the overall crop to collapse," says John Walters, director of the U.S. drug control policy office. "The groups are working as never before to sustain the crops even under this enormous pressure."
Farmers have moved to more isolated areas in Narino and Choco provinces to better hide crops. Alberto Perez, 48, says he relocated 2 1/2 years ago to the more mountainous Narino province from southern Caqueta after his crop was sprayed.
62 Percent in Poverty
Farmers have also learned to prune the leaves after they've been sprayed to prevent the herbicide from reaching the roots and killing the plants. Jose Lopez pruned his sprayed crop in 2007, and the leaves grew back within a few months. Other growers such as Jesus Timana prepare for the crop-dusters: He keeps seedlings on hand to quickly replant if his crops are killed.
"You go, you spray and clear the military from the area and then they replant," says Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos. "We must clear but also hold the area with social programs that include alternative development, as well as building roads and bridges."
In rural provinces including Guaviare and Meta where coca is grown, about 62 percent of the 11 million residents are mired in poverty. Some 36 percent of people in the countryside don't have running water, according to 2005 figures from the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. And 12 percent live without electricity. Residents older than 15 years of age have received an average of five years of schooling, according to government figures.
Boosting Law Enforcement
Andres Escobar, deputy director of Colombia's National Planning Department, says the government has helped the rural poor by reducing crime and preventing farmers from being chased off their land.
Uribe added to the firepower of Plan Colombia by increasing the size of the nation's police and military by 32 percent to 391,004 from 2002 to '06. He also spread the police to all of the country's 1,098 municipalities, up from 940 municipalities in 2002, according to government figures.
"We are not yet in a paradise, but five years ago, we were in an inferno," Uribe, 55, told Bloomberg News in September.
In June, the government almost doubled to 235 billion pesos the amount it set aside in 2007 for financial aid and loans for farmers hurt by the strengthening peso. The president also boosted the number of poor families covered by a subsidy program to 1.5 million in 2007 from 220,000 in 2002 at a cost of 894 billion pesos.
Plan Colombia Changes
Children under 7 get a monthly nutrition subsidy of 50,000 pesos, and aid is given for older children, too. The programs have helped cut the rural poverty rate to 62 percent in 2006 from 70 percent four years earlier, according to the planning department.
"Our government is interpreted only as a government of security," Uribe says. "It's very important that the U.S. be informed of our social policy."
U.S. Representative Nita Lowey, a Democrat from New York, is pushing to shift more Plan Colombia funding into poverty programs. Since 2000, about 74 percent of Plan Colombia funding has gone to pilots, fuel and equipment used in spraying, seizing drugs and fighting militants.
For 2008, the House has approved a measure that reduces the military slice to 55 percent, with the remainder of the $530.4 million slated for projects that train farmers to grow legal crops and improve the education, health-care and legal systems. The Senate approved a similar bill, and both measures are headed for a conference committee.
Opposition From Bush
"Increasing the military aid over the years has resulted in more hectares being produced, not less, so it certainly makes sense to try a different approach," says Lowey, who heads the House Appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over foreign aid programs. "The U.S. needs to help Colombia attack the underlying and pervasive poverty that is the root of the problem in the region."
Plan Colombia has helped about 81,000 families grow legal crops such as coffee. Aura Dennis Orozco, a former coca farmer in Narino, received technical assistance and money to buy machinery from the government to produce pineapples and papayas.
"People don't realize that it can be done," Orozco says. "We're not scared of the police anymore."
Uribe and Bush oppose the House and Senate proposals to reduce funding for the military. Bush wants to increase total funding to $587 million in the next budget from $565 million in 2007.
$137 a Gram
"You can't do alternative livelihoods in these contested areas if the aid workers and the people who participate in these programs are not protected," says Walters, the U.S. drug czar. "They will be killed by the insurgents."
Walters says a reduction in military funds may also set back efforts to stop cocaine from reaching the U.S. and Europe. Plan Colombia hasn't reduced the export of cocaine out of the country, says Peter Reuter, who heads the Center on the Economics of Crime and Justice Policy at the University of Maryland in College Park.
Mexican authorities are seizing more of the drug en route to the U.S. - driving up the price in New York and Los Angeles to $137 a gram in September from $95 nine months earlier, according to U.S. figures.
"Except for the Mexico-related tightening, cocaine in the U.S. has been as readily available throughout the life of Plan Colombia as in the previous 10 years," Reuter says.
Uriel Munoz, a farmer in Narino whose coca crop was uprooted in June, plans to add to the plentiful supply of cocaine. He says he would grow lulo, a sour fruit used to make juice, if he had government assistance with seeds and moving his harvest to market.
'We're Hungry'
"How can we change if there is no help?" says Munoz, 41, who has a wife and two sons. "We're hungry."
Munoz says he'll move deeper into the mountains, tear down a forest, plant more coca and sell it to drug traffickers.
Uribe's ability to contain militants and lure investors in coming years may hinge on sharing more of Colombia's riches with coca farmers like Munoz.
To contact the reporter on this story: Andrea Jaramillo in Bogota at ajaramillo1(at)bloomberg.net |
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