Pubdate: Thu, 12 Mar 2009
Source: Guardian, The (UK)
Copyright: 2009 Guardian News and Media Limited
Contact:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/175
Author: Grace Livingstone
Note: Grace Livingstone's book America's Backyard: the US and Latin 
America from the
Monroe Doctrine to the War on Terror is published this month

COLOMBIA'S DESERT WAR

The Aerial Assault On Cocaine Funded By The US Is Wiping Out 
Everything - Apart From Coca Plants

The counter-drugs strategy of the United States is clearly failing. 
UN figures cited in the Guardian this week show that the cultivation 
of coca, the plant from which cocaine is derived, has surged in the 
Andes. The most dramatic rise has been in Colombia, the only country 
in the region that allows the use of pesticides to eradicate coca 
leaf - a policy promoted and funded by the US.

I recently received a disturbing email from southern Colombia warning 
that the fragile Amazonian soil could "soon be turned to desert". 
They were the words of a Catholic priest, so I rang a church worker 
whose parish lies deep in the Amazonian state of Caqueta. Military 
planes targeting coca farms, funded by the US, had been spraying 
mists of pesticides over food crops, grazing animals and even areas 
where children were playing, she said: locals were complaining of 
breathing problems and rashes; "strips of skin" have been peeling off 
cows, and chickens have died; and maize, yucca, plantain and cacao 
crops have wilted and shrivelled. "We fear there will soon be a very 
serious food shortage in the region," she said. The local parish has 
issued an urgent appeal.

The US has been funding the spraying campaign for more than two 
decades, but 70% of the world's coca leaf is grown in Colombia. 
Glyphosate is the most frequently used pesticide; its biggest selling 
commercial formulation is Roundup, made by Monsanto. The company 
acknowledges that contact with glyphosate may cause mild eye or skin 
irritation. But independent studies have suggested a far greater 
range of symptoms, including facial numbness and swelling, rapid 
heart rate, raised blood pressure, chest pains, nausea and congestion.

In Colombia, glyphosate is mixed with other chemicals, and because 
the exact composition has not been made public it has been impossible 
to test its toxicity. One addition, a surfactant, makes the corrosive 
liquid stick to the surface - leaf or skin - on which it is sprayed. 
The pesticide is used at higher concentrations than stipulated in the 
US, and is sprayed from above the recommended height of 10 metres. 
Farm workers in the US are advised to keep clear of weedkillers, yet 
in Colombia aerial spraying takes place with no warning, showering 
humans and animals with chemicals.

All Colombia's neighbours - Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, Venezuela and 
Brazil - oppose the "fumigation" policy. The Andean and European 
parliaments have called for its suspension, as have numerous 
environmentalists, scientists and politicians in Colombia. But 
spraying has intensified since the launch in 2000 of Plan Colombia, 
the US-funded counter-narcotics strategy.

It was in that year that I first went to meet coca growers in 
Caqueta. One woman told me a familiar story. Sara's parents were 
landless, and had travelled south to set up a farm. In this remote 
region, with no paved roads, they found that coca was the only crop 
from which they could make a living.

Sara showed me the weather-beaten wooden press she uses to grind the 
coca leaves. Peasants here turn the coca leaves into a paste, which 
is then sold on to a middleman who takes it to a jungle laboratory to 
refine it into cocaine.

Sara also grows maize, yucca, sugar cane and tropical fruit, but 
these products don't make much money. It would take days to transport 
them along rivers or dirt paths to the nearest big market. In 
contrast, coca paste is easy to transport and, crucially, always in 
demand. But the peasants here are not rich. They receive just 0.1% of 
the final street price of cocaine.

The US focuses on one element of the trafficking chain, the 
poverty-stricken peasant. But the policy is not even effective. When 
their land is poisoned, peasants migrate and start growing coca 
again. They have no alternative. Spraying simply displaces the 
problem. Despite decades of spraying, coca cultivation in Colombia 
has grown by 500% since the 1980s, according to US state department 
figures. US politicians heralded a drop in cultivation after the 
launch of Plan Colombia, but the area of land covered by coca crops 
is now larger than when the plan was launched. Perhaps the clearest 
indication that the policy is failing is the falling price of 
cocaine, suggesting more, not less, of the drug is entering the US market.

Back in Caqueta, the church worker described how pesticides have run 
into rivers and streams, killing fish. Locals wait days before they 
dare drink the water. One of the most fragile ecosystems in the world 
"is being poisoned".

. Grace Livingstone's book America's Backyard: the US and Latin 
America from the Monroe Doctrine to the War on Terror is published this month
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MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart