Pubdate: Mon, 30 Jul 2001
Source: Miami Herald (FL)
Copyright: 2001 The Miami Herald
Contact:  http://www.herald.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/262
Author: Juan O. Tamayo

SPRAYING BLITZ CRIPPLES COLOMBIAN DRUG CROP

LA HORMIGA, Colombia -- It is harvest time in the mint-green hills of 
southern Putumayo state, the epicenter of Colombia's coca cultivation. But 
coca farmers such as Gabriel Nieto are in no mood to celebrate.

The price of what everyone here calls simply "the merchandise" has plunged 
following a U.S.-backed aerial defoliation campaign in December and January 
that turned huge expanses of coca bushes into dead brown stalks.

Stepped-up army patrols have limited supply and driven up the cost of 
chemicals needed to make cocaine, and thousands of farmers and itinerant 
leaf pickers have moved out, leaving behind half-filled brothels and churches.

"Now we can barely squeeze a few pesos out of this," Nieto, 38, grumbled as 
he mixed 750 pounds of coca leaf with lime and gasoline under an open-sided 
hut, grandly called a "laboratory," to produce a pound of unrefined cocaine 
known as coca base.

Seven months after the spraying blitz in Putumayo kicked off the 
counter-drug campaign broadly known as Plan Colombia, early results suggest 
that the offensive has dealt a powerful blow to the local coca industry.

U.S. and Colombian officials caution that it is too early to assess the 
campaign, backed by $1.3 billion in U.S. aid. The plan aims to cut 
Colombia's cocaine output in half by 2005 and shave the drug income of 
leftist guerrillas and right-wing militias waging Latin America's most 
violent conflict.

The impact has not yet been felt in the price of cocaine on U.S. streets, 
and the campaign -- a three-point strategy of spraying, army interdictions 
and giving subsidies to farmers who agree to uproot their coca bushes -- is 
in danger of losing its spraying leg.

GROWING OPPOSITION

One reason is growing opposition inside and outside Colombia to the use of 
chemicals, which critics say sicken peasants and poison the land.

A Bogota court Friday issued a preliminary injunction against all spraying 
but gave the government three days to reply and said it would issue a more 
detailed ruling in 10 days. The government said it was studying the ruling.

Still, for now the coca business in this critical production region is 
faring badly.

"Here, the coca business is over. Production is way down, maybe 60 
percent," said Flover Mesa, mayor of La Hormiga in the Guamuez Valley, a 
part of Putumayo that holds one-quarter of Colombia's 402,600 acres of coca.

U.S. and Colombian officials toss out all kinds of impressive numbers for 
the Putumayo campaign's progress -- numbers that skeptics say are the 
drug-war equivalent of Vietnam's meaningless "body count."

Between sprayings and interdictions, "we've taken 100 metric tons off the 
market, and that's not insignificant," said U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson.

Colombia's total cocaine production is estimated at 560 tons per year, 
while U.S. consumption is put at 300 tons. Colombia's Defense Ministry 
reported last week that soldiers and police had sprayed 128,000 acres of 
coca and destroyed 663 "laboratories" in the first half of this year, 
almost double the totals for same period in 2000.

SEIZURES DECLINE

Cocaine seizures were down in the same period -- from 38 tons to 23 tons, 
largely because of the shortage of leaves, said Gen. Gustavo Socha, head of 
the Colombian National Police Anti-Narcotics Division.

Mesa said the spraying blitz in the Guamuez Valley killed some 26,000 acres 
of coca and initially drove up the price of coca base from $1,050 to $1,400 
per kilogram -- 2.2 pounds -- because of the shortage of leaf.

"It was a very green Christmas -- dollar green," recalled a smiling Nieto, 
who farms two acres of coca and works as a hired hand in a neighbor's much 
bigger plot, earning $4 for every 25-pound sack of leaves he picks.

But prices have now plummeted to $750 per kilo as intensified patrols by 
three U.S.-trained army counter-narcotics battalions scared off major 
buyers of base, usually sent by cocaine refineries in central and northern 
Colombia, and left the field to locals who are less willing to pay top prices.

`TOO MANY SOLDIERS'

"The buyers say there are too many soldiers, that they have to pay extra to 
smuggle the merchandise from here to the refineries," said Ancizar Ardila, 
43, as he showed visitors his nursery of 25,000 tiny coca plants just one 
mile from La Hormiga.

On the edge of the drab town of 13,000 people, more signs of the coca 
industry's downturn: a half-dozen shuttered brothels and a dozen more open 
but nearly empty except for a few bored-looking girls sitting on the sidewalks.

"There used to be 300 prostitutes and lots of happy business with the leaf 
pickers who came into town on weekends to spend their salaries, but now 
there are less than 100," said parish priest Julian Gomez. "But most of the 
pickers are gone now, and even attendance at Sunday Mass is down."

In a possibly more significant sign of the impact of the counter-narcotics 
crackdown, Guamuez Valley peasants say they have begun to believe that coca 
has turned into an unprofitable business.

"The farmers have been doing their math and thinking that it's time to 
quit," said Harold Montenegro, who lost two of his three acres of coca when 
they were sprayed Jan. 14. "If they spray again, we're all dead."

PREDICTIONS FAIL

Perhaps just as significant for the long-term effectiveness of the 
counter-narcotics campaign, none of the hoary predictions of disaster that 
accompanied the start of the spraying blitz in Putumayo have come to pass.

The sprayings did not drive waves of refugees into neighboring Ecuador, and 
leftist guerrillas from the 17,000-member Revolutionary Armed Forces of 
Colombia, who collect hefty "taxes" on the coca business, have not 
significantly increased their attacks around the region.

NO RIGHTS COMPLAINTS

Nor have human rights complaints been filed against the three Colombian 
army counter-narcotics battalions, trained by U.S. Special Forces, that are 
spearheading the Putumayo campaign, U.S. officials said.

"We're extremely pleased with the results" of the U.S.-trained force, said 
a military officer at the U.S. Embassy in Bogota. "That's got to make a 
dent on the [drug] trade."

For all its success, the Guamuez Valley offensive has not been without 
problems.

Fields of coca bushes only a foot high show that many farmers whose crops 
were sprayed either replanted or pruned their bushes immediately after the 
spraying, to keep the leaves from absorbing the herbicide.

Montenegro estimated that one-third of the Guamuez farmers whose crops were 
sprayed have replanted, most of them owners of large fields who had already 
invested money in fertilizers, pesticides and a new high-yield strain of 
coca just brought in from Bolivia. Their first harvest is four months away.

"I am replacing coca with coca. Yuca or plantains bring in even less 
money," said Manuel Palacios, a 46-year-old farmer whose two-acre lot in 
the village of La Vega was killed by the spraying campaign Dec. 22.

Farmers said that many of the new fields are in areas declared off-limits 
to spraying by the government -- in Indian tribe reservations and populated 
areas along the edges of main roads -- or in the neighboring state of 
Narino to the west.

And there is a black cloud on the horizon -- mounting attacks on the aerial 
spraying by a broad range of Colombian politicians and activists who insist 
that the herbicide glyphosate makes peasants ill, poisons the land and only 
drives coca farmers elsewhere.

NO FAITH IN SPRAYING

"Fumigation is easy but does not work . . . You need more, a lot of 
economic and social development programs, or farmers will just plant 
somewhere else," said Klaus Nyholm, head of the U.N. Drug Policy office in 
Bogota.

The governors of Putumayo, Narino and four other drug-producing states have 
demanded a stop to the spraying, and a senator from the Conservative Party 
of President Andres Pastrana announced two weeks ago that he would submit 
legislation decriminalizing small coca fields.

PRESSING AHEAD

So far, Pastrana has stood by the spraying. "It is not in the government's 
plans to halt the fumigations," said Gonzalo de Francisco, Pastrana's 
national security advisor and point man on the Putumayo campaign.

The U.S. government's position is much the same.

"Manual eradication has a role to play but, given the amount of coca and 
[opium] poppy cultivation in Colombia, it can be only part of the 
solution," Patterson, the U.S. ambassador, said.

"Especially in areas of large-scale production or where [guerrillas are] 
most active, it takes too long, is too dangerous and -- frankly -- it's too 
expensive."

Patterson said Washington is paying for a study that will test blood and 
urine samples from 1,000 people -- 500 living in areas sprayed and 500 in 
areas far from the spraying -- for any signs of glyphosate.

"We have a moral responsibility to be sure what we're doing is right," the 
ambassador told reporters Wednesday.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom