- Because the locals are keen to grow this plant, the plantation is called “San Coca” or “Saint Coca”. This plant provides the active ingredient of cocaine.
- Colombia is the world’s largest drug producer, which led to the birth of the country’s “coca economy”.
- In 2017, Colombia’s plantation area reached a record 171,000 hectares.
In the mountains and jungles of southwestern Colombia, despite the danger posed by guerrillas and drug dealers-despite the government’s anti-drug campaign, farmers, immigrants, and women with babies still work stubbornly in the coca fields.
These plantations are called “San Coca”-Saint Coca-because the locals are keen to grow this plant, which provides the active ingredient of cocaine, and they understand everything it offers them when they are at risk.
Although successive governments of Bogotá have worked hard to combat this trade, Colombia is still the world’s largest producer of addictive stimulants.
“The birth of the coca (plantation) was a response to the abandonment of institutions… and gave everyone in these areas a minimum of dignity,” the leader of Agropatia, an organization representing 12 rural communities and towns Azael Cabrera said.
“Forget the state-it doesn’t exist here.”
For community leader Reinaldo Bolanos, “We don’t think we belong to this state. As for this state, either we don’t exist or we are a burden.”
For decades, the guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) were effectively in charge of Cauca until 2016 when the government and the left-wing insurgents reached a historic peace agreement.
In theory, the fighters left the area according to the disarmament plan, and the farmers wanted the state to intervene, but they never did.
So three years later, the dissidents who opted out of the peace agreement rejoined-they wore new weapons but the same ideology
Without the presence or support of the state, farmers have become vulnerable after suffering the loss of other crops including yuca, corn, coffee and sugar cane and switched to coca cultivation.
So the “coca economy” was born: a network of activities around the cultivation and processing of coca leaves, which were then used to manufacture cocaine, and the rebels acted as intermediaries between farmers and traffickers.
This work puts food on the tables of locals, but there is a problem-the government does not distinguish between coca growers and drug dealers.
Respect for gunmen
Although the authorities have fought the drug trade for half a century, the white powder continues to flow freely into the United States and Europe.
During this period, although Washington provided millions of dollars in anti-drug support, there were still 10 Colombian governments that failed to curb illegal trade.
In Cauca, the guerrillas reign again-they are part of the dissident Carlos Patino’s Front, with the face of Patino printed on billboards and posters, Patino, the rebel who was killed in 2013.
Secretary of Defense Diego Morano admitted that military intervention in the region was “not as intense as other regions” due to the danger posed to security forces.
“But this does not mean that we will allow these groups to continue this criminal activity,” Morano added.
Nonetheless, this trade-which is profitable, because coca can be harvested four times a year, while coffee can only be harvested twice-has grown significantly.
According to United Nations data, in 2010, Cauca had 5,900 hectares of coca plantations.
Ten years later, this number has almost tripled to 16,544 hectares.
“After the deal was concluded in Havana, the army never came here again. This area was once again messed up by illegal armed groups,” Bolanos said.
“We have learned to respect those who have weapons.”
Cabrera interjected: “The peasants have no power over the rebels-we cannot let them leave, we have no choice but to let them come. But this does not make us guerrillas or drug dealers.”
Family business
Entire families, old women, single mothers with children, impoverished former urban residents, and even Venezuelan immigrants who have reached Cauca on foot for months can pick coca leaves on the plantations.
Community leader Abel Solarte said: “Students who don’t have classes or vacations also come to the fields to pick them to contribute to their studies and put food on the table at home.”
When Karen Palacios was a minor, she moved from the capital Bogotá to Cauca with her partner (a native of the area).
At the age of 20, she learned to pick leaves before the couple broke up, leaving her to become the single mother of two-year-old Dana.
“I used to take her to the plantation and set up a tent or hammock so that she can sleep while I work,” Palacios said.
Once, she was able to send Dana to a daycare center, but then the coronavirus pandemic swept through Colombia and the center closed, which meant that Palacios had to take her daughter to the field again.
As the family shoe industry was devastated by the pandemic, Palacios’ father, stepmother and brother all joined her coca leaf pickers in Cauca.
Many single mothers like Palacios work in the fields.
“Many of us do not have husbands, we have children, and if we go picking, we can provide them with food and clothes,” said Dora Meneses, a spokesperson for 60 pickers.
Prosperity
According to United Nations estimates, between 2016 and 2018, more than 200,000 families-2% of Colombia’s population, or more than 1 million people-worked on coca plantations.
Part of the reason for the prosperity is one of the conditions of peace, including the payment of cash to those who agree to destroy the coca crop.
Experts believe that farmers use this as an incentive to grow more and earn more from the destruction.
According to official data, nearly 100,000 families agreed to destroy their crops in exchange for compensation and ending legal proceedings against them.
But in Patia Town, business continues to flourish.
As Venezuela fell into economic collapse, Yeison Enriquez fled Venezuela with his wife and three children.
He changed from treating coca as an illegal crop to defending the “source of work” his brother also emigrated to Colombia.
“We can’t expect this opportunity in the city. In the countryside, there will always be jobs if they eradicate coca. I think I will have to move again,” Enriquez said.
In 2017, Colombia’s plantation area reached a record 171,000 hectares.
In 2020, the country managed to reduce the area of its coca plantations to 143,000 hectares, but did not reduce cocaine production-1,228 tons-the United Nations said this was due to increased crop yields.
Since right-wing President Ivan Duque took office in 2018, Colombia has stepped up its efforts to eradicate coca crops and confiscate drugs—an increase of 549 tons in the past 18 months alone.
Controversially, it is preparing to restart aerial spraying of glyphosate to eradicate the coca crop, which has been suspended since 2015 due to its harmful effects on human health and the environment.
This is also a major threat to farmers’ livelihoods.
“We don’t want to be in pain. We are organizing resistance-marches, protests, strikes,” Solat said.
Get rid of poverty
Antonio Tamayo, 40, is the head of the plantation, where he moved from Antioquia, 700 kilometers away, to Cauca after the coca crop there was destroyed.
On the same farm where the leaves are grown, they are chopped and processed with lime, cement, gasoline, and ammonium sulfate to make a paste that forms the basic component of cocaine.
He said that every week, the “middleman” of the traffickers collects the hard white paste and takes it to a nearby secret laboratory, where the “chemist” converts it into pure cocaine.
Farmers are not involved in the most profitable part of the industry-the manufacture and sale of cocaine-but complain that the government classifies them as cartels.
“We are classified as drug dealers… but others are making money,” Cabrera said.
The income of coca pickers is just enough to escape poverty. An experienced worker can earn up to $37 per day—more than four and a half times the minimum wage.
Prosperity is on the horizon
The dirt roads on the “San Coca” land criss-cross and can turn into quagmire when it rains heavily.
Nevertheless, traffic is still uninterrupted. Trucks authorized by the guerrillas passed by one after another, filled with fuel, ice cream, bread, clothes, etc.
The local “coca economy” has created a community of consumers who pay high prices for things that were produced on their own land in the past.
Bolanos said that in urban areas, coca-rich mines have fueled the construction boom. Roads are improving and schools are getting more supplies.
“The biggest difference with coca is that it provides us with the ability to feed ourselves and also allows us to cover what the government does not provide,” Bolanos said.
But in this mountainous area, everyone is worried about the return of aerial spray crops—they recalled abandoned communities, displaced people, abandoned houses, and the death of most plants.
The aircraft was first sprayed with herbicide in 1984, then returned in the 1990s, and then sprayed again in 2008.
“For these towns, aerial spraying is actually murder,” Bolanos said.
