Pubdate: Sat, 27 May 2000
Source: Austin American-Statesman (TX)
Copyright: 2000 Austin American-Statesman
Contact:  P. O. Box 670 Austin, Texas 78767
Fax: 512-445-3679
Website: http://www.austin360.com/statesman/editions/today/
Author: Margarita Martinez

COLOMBIA ANTI-DRUG SPRAYING BEGINS

LA GABARRA, Colombia (AP)--When police planes swooped down and sprayed
herbicides over the fields outside this dusty little village, they dented
more than the numbers of coca plants used to make cocaine.

The following weekend, the number of prostitutes in town was way down,
residents say. Their spendthrift young clients wouldn't have had a peso in
their pockets.

Authorities have launched a major anti-drug offensive in this remote eastern
region near the Venezuelan border--fumigating the green fields and setting
jungle cocaine laboratories on fire.

The police strikes--which in an 11-day span this month have destroyed 120
drug "kitchens" and sprayed 3,700 of the area's nearly 25,000 acres of
coca--will hit hard at a local economy that has come to depend on the
illegal plantings.

But some residents of La Gabarra are welcoming the offensive. They see it as
a way out of a cycle of vice and violence that has overtaken their formerly
quiet, pastoral home since the coca moved in.

"The only thing this plant has brought us is war," said Lina Carrero, whose
shop in La Gabarra's main square could go bust if the local cash crop
disappears.

Once living off cattle ranching and crops like plantains and cacao, the
Catatumbo region that includes La Gabarra has metamorphosed into Colombia's
second-largest coca-growing area, after the leftist rebel-controlled south.

It also has become one of the South American country's most violent places.

The squat, shiny coca bushes began sprouting up in the area in the early
1990s, officials said. The crop expanded exponentially a few years ago,
aided by a scarce government presence and armed gangs who protect the coca
for a cut of the profits.

When right-wing paramilitary militias moved in to the region, long a
stronghold of leftist rebels, they left a trail of massacres and refugees.

A paramilitary incursion in April left 21 people dead in Tibu, the township
that includes La Gabarra. Massacres last August killed at least 51 people
and sent nearly 3,000 frightened villagers fleeing into Venezuela.

For many, as worrisome as the violence is the ethical breakdown the drug
trade has wrought.

"There has been a transformation in values," said La Gabarra's Roman
Catholic priest, the Rev. Sady Castaneda. "Now what we have are anti-values,
a culture of money by any means."

Personifying the new decadent lifestyle, Castaneda said, are the estimated
20,000 coca-pickers known as "raspachines" who've came to eke out a living
in the fields of Catatumbo.

Many migrated from depressed regions where they worked on coffee and cotton
estates. Most are bachelors who spend a good portion of their earnings on
booze and women. They can make as much as $25 a day--nearly five times the
minimum wage.

The cash influx, however, has driven prices of ordinary commodities through
the roof. An egg in La Gabarra costs 50 cents, more than five times its
price in the capital, Bogota.

When officials came from Bogota to see the spraying last week, some
residents asked why the government destroys crops, but doesn't bring jobs,
education or security.

"We all live off of this," said Asdrubal Perez, a clothing-store owner who
once farmed coca. "What are we going to do now?"

The government is pledging to provide adjustment loans to coca farmers when
its begins a major fumigation thrust planned for later this year in southern
Colombia.

But as he stood in a coca field in La Gabarra that had just been sprayed,
Defense Minister Luis Ramirez warned people not to expect a handout.

"Before there was coca the people didn't get any aid," he said.
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