Pubdate: Sun, 03 Apr 2016
Source: Albuquerque Journal (NM)
Copyright: 2016 Albuquerque Journal
Contact:  http://www.abqjournal.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/10
Author: Jim Wyss, Miami Herald

DRUG TRADE COMPLICATES COLOMBIA'S TALKS TO END CIVIL WAR

With Peace at Hand, Coca Farmers and Traffickers Consider Their 
Futures If Their Cash Crop Is Eradicated

LA GABARRA, Colombia - Daniel Duarte has thick, rough hands and the 
burned scalp of someone who has spent more than two decades under the 
sun tending coca crops. Toiling over a few acres in a remote 
northeastern part of Colombia, Duarte says the bright green shrub is 
the only plant that has allowed him to feed his family, even as 
neighbors go broke trying to get their bulky yucca and plantain crops 
to market.

As the Colombian government and the nation's largest guerrilla group 
inch toward a deal to end the country's half-century civil war, coca 
farmers are in the cross hairs.

Negotiators have agreed to create an "integral" crop substitution 
program to wean farmers off the leaf, which is processed into 
cocaine. If that fails, however, the government and the Revolutionary 
Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC, have said they will join 
forces to eradicate the plant.

Of all the threats to a lasting peace deal, the drug trade might be 
one of the most menacing. Experts fear the lucrative business might 
tempt some FARC factions to break ranks and join criminal gangs for 
control of the trade. And then there are the farmers themselves. More 
than 156,000 families are thought to make their living by growing and 
processing coca, according to United Nations data.

On a recent weekend, more than 630 coca farmers - men, women, old and 
young - gathered in the Africa Bar, a nightclub in this riverside 
village, complete with laser lights and ceramic lion heads on the 
wall, to discuss the peace plan and their future in it.

Almost everyone said they'd give up the coca trade that has made them 
targets of criminal gangs, guerrilla groups and military eradicators 
- - as long as they're provided with a profitable alternative. What 
they won't allow is for the government or anyone else to destroy the 
crops without their consent.

"The position of us farmers is that we're going to defend the only 
way we have to feed ourselves," Duarte said. His community, La India, 
has already stopped a few military eradication efforts. "What would 
you do if someone tried to take your plate of food away? You'd 
probably grab your fork and stick it in their eye."

The peace talks have been grinding along in Havana, Cuba, for more 
than three years, and negotiators had set March 23 as a deadline for 
a final deal. That day came and went without a breakthrough.

It appears that differences remain about how the FARC's estimated 
9,000 to 17,000 troops and urban militias might be demobilized into 
"concentration zones," and how a peace agreement might be verified.

Even so, the two sides have already made progress on issues such as 
land reform and agricultural development, guerrilla participation in 
politics and transitional justice.

But President Juan Manuel Santos has said an agreement on drugs - 
turning the FARC, which relies on the trade to finance its war, into 
an ally in the fight - is a game changer.

It's clear the country needs its game changed. Despite countless 
deaths and billions of dollars in eradication efforts, much of the 
money coming from the United States, coca crops are thriving.

Colombia's coca production increased from 277,000 acres in 2014 to 
393,000 acres last year. Much of that growth has been concentrated in 
border areas like this one, called Catatumbo, along the frontier with 
Venezuela.

Juan Carlos Quintero, vice president of the Farmers Association of 
Catatumbo, said that for the first time in many years the consensus 
among coca growers is that they want out of the business.

The region has been particularly hard hit by the conflict. The 
mountainous area has long been the haunt of the FARC, the smaller 
National Liberation Army and the Popular Liberation Army.

It has also been targeted by right-wing paramilitary groups and criminal gangs.

Quintero said the region has been unfairly stigmatized as a guerrilla 
hotbed and its coca farmers as providing the "fuel" of the conflict. 
But he said that for most farmers, coca is a necessity because of the 
lack of good land and, primarily, farm-to-market roads. People 
growing food crops often find that the transportation costs alone 
make them unprofitable.

"We're farmers, not drug traffickers," Quintero said. "But we're 
forced to grow coca leaves - we're stuck in this social problem - 
because of the historic abandonment by the state."

The Catatumbo region has suffered an inordinate amount of violence, 
including 10,000 dead and 110,000 displaced during the conflict, 
Quintero said. So a peace deal provides hope.

In the draft version of the substitution program, the parties agree 
to build roads and marketplaces and create an economic ecosystem 
where legitimate crops can thrive. Another part of the deal would 
provide access to land and titles. The United States has pledged more 
than $450 million to support the peace process.

"The war in Colombia isn't over the drug trade, that's just not true. 
. The fundamental problem is access to land; coca arrived long after 
the conflict started," Quintero said. "If everything in the deal 
comes to fruition, there's no reason anyone should have coca crops."

The Catatumbo region is proof that brute force doesn't work. In 2013, 
when the government tried to eradicate crops in the region, farming 
communities rose up and blocked roads. The two-month-long uprising 
paralyzed the region, and at least four people were killed and more 
than 200 woulded in clashes with police.

Eventually, the government stopped the eradication and instead 
started test substitution programs. Locals said those pilot projects 
were promising. Critics, however, blame the detente for allowing coca 
crops to thrive in the region again.

Cesar Jerez of the National Association of Peasant Farmer Reserve 
Zones, said the only secret to eradicating coca is providing feasible 
alternatives. If the government could guarantee minimum prices on key 
crops and provide a network of markets to sell them in, it would go a 
long way to solving the problem.

"The government wants coca to disappear like a magic trick," he said. 
"But coca has historical roots in Colombia; it's the culmination of 
all sorts of unsolved problems in the agricultural sector, including 
access to land. As long as those structural problems are not 
resolved, farmers will continue to grow coca, poppy and marijuana."

Duarte, who lives about seven hours from the nearest marketplace, 
says coca is about survival for him, but he acknowledges that it's a 
crop with global repercussions.

"I know that as I benefit from this product, I am hurting who knows 
how many people in Europe or the United States," he said. "That's 
worrisome, and that's why we're saying we no longer want to make our 
living growing coca."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom