Cocaina: A Book on Those Who Make It by Magnus Linton, John Eason Page A
Authors: Magnus Linton, John Eason
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Leninist logic that there is no position between pro and contra, anyone who refused to grow coca was seen as acting in opposition to the FARC. This ‘law’ was one families in guerrilla-dominated territories had to abide by, unless they wanted to run the risk of being killed. Consequently, the number of cultivated hectares increased dramatically. Entire villages and small towns developed with coca as their only means of sustenance, and by 2000 green gold was being cultivated on 66,000 hectares in Putumayo, representing 40 per cent of all the coca grown in Colombia that year. This fact flew in the face of the US and Colombian governments, who, after the 9/11 attack in 2001, launched a historic retaliation in the form of Plan Colombia, the strategic military effort that would not only change Putumayo and Colombia, but also all of Latin America.
EDGAR PULLS ON his galoshes and splashes some water, cement, and fertiliser over the heap before wading back and forth in the green mound to mix everything together until it becomes a thick, leafy pulp. The sludge is then dumped into oil barrels, which are filled with fuel. The stench of ammonia fills the air once the chemicals start to react, and four-year-old Luis holds his nose as his dad picks him up and moves him away from the fuel can.
‘I’ve only been found out once,’ Edgar says. ‘The military was passing through, but I just gave them a bag of fish. They thanked me and left. They’re poor guys like us. The police are worse, but I’ve never seen any of them here.’
Nelcy comes to tell him that lunch is ready. The family bands together, along with José, and crosses the creek, which glistens rainbow from a can of used fuel Edgar has dumped in the water. They walk about 200 metres through the mud, passing a brown fishpond before reaching the stairs of their home. A wall calendar showing a bikini-clad girl is the only colourful object in an otherwise completely grey wooden house. The dwelling is built on stakes, and under the floor fuel cans and hoses are packed in, together with broken toys. Two agitated tethered cocks flap their wings wildly in anticipation of the weekend’s cockfight, a sport as important to the lives of Colombian coca farmers as soccer is to the European working classes.
Nelcy puts out a couple glasses of fresh milk and some fried fish from their farm and apologises for their small size. Once the family could afford to wait until the fish were big enough to have some meat on their bones, but not anymore. She serves her children and then tells the story about ‘the aeroplanes’: ‘We were crying. They sprayed everywhere: the water, animals, crops. We had dug a well and it was ruined. It was terrible to see the coca die — because, of course, that’s our livelihood. We tried to wash the plants, but it didn’t work. Everything died. Even the monkeys died because there was nothing left on the trees for them to eat.’
When the White House under Richard Nixon, the man who coined the term ‘the war on drugs’, shifted focus from demand to supply, a theory was born that would steer the approach of every future Washington administration to the global cocaine problem. It was thought that spraying coca fields with herbicides, destroying laboratories, confiscating shipments, and arresting smugglers would reduce the amount of cocaine reaching US and European markets, whereupon the quality would drop and prices would soar — and eventually the curves would intersect, causing the entire industry to implode, since it would no longer be profitable to produce and transport an increasingly diluted drug to the wealthy markets of the world. Since then the graphs have, in reality, been pointing in very different directions, and since Obama was elected the theory has been called into question, but in the second decade of the 21st century it is still the logic that’s dictating the war on drugs.
What was new about Plan Colombia, instigated by Bill Clinton in
EDGAR PULLS ON his galoshes and splashes some water, cement, and fertiliser over the heap before wading back and forth in the green mound to mix everything together until it becomes a thick, leafy pulp. The sludge is then dumped into oil barrels, which are filled with fuel. The stench of ammonia fills the air once the chemicals start to react, and four-year-old Luis holds his nose as his dad picks him up and moves him away from the fuel can.
‘I’ve only been found out once,’ Edgar says. ‘The military was passing through, but I just gave them a bag of fish. They thanked me and left. They’re poor guys like us. The police are worse, but I’ve never seen any of them here.’
Nelcy comes to tell him that lunch is ready. The family bands together, along with José, and crosses the creek, which glistens rainbow from a can of used fuel Edgar has dumped in the water. They walk about 200 metres through the mud, passing a brown fishpond before reaching the stairs of their home. A wall calendar showing a bikini-clad girl is the only colourful object in an otherwise completely grey wooden house. The dwelling is built on stakes, and under the floor fuel cans and hoses are packed in, together with broken toys. Two agitated tethered cocks flap their wings wildly in anticipation of the weekend’s cockfight, a sport as important to the lives of Colombian coca farmers as soccer is to the European working classes.
Nelcy puts out a couple glasses of fresh milk and some fried fish from their farm and apologises for their small size. Once the family could afford to wait until the fish were big enough to have some meat on their bones, but not anymore. She serves her children and then tells the story about ‘the aeroplanes’: ‘We were crying. They sprayed everywhere: the water, animals, crops. We had dug a well and it was ruined. It was terrible to see the coca die — because, of course, that’s our livelihood. We tried to wash the plants, but it didn’t work. Everything died. Even the monkeys died because there was nothing left on the trees for them to eat.’
When the White House under Richard Nixon, the man who coined the term ‘the war on drugs’, shifted focus from demand to supply, a theory was born that would steer the approach of every future Washington administration to the global cocaine problem. It was thought that spraying coca fields with herbicides, destroying laboratories, confiscating shipments, and arresting smugglers would reduce the amount of cocaine reaching US and European markets, whereupon the quality would drop and prices would soar — and eventually the curves would intersect, causing the entire industry to implode, since it would no longer be profitable to produce and transport an increasingly diluted drug to the wealthy markets of the world. Since then the graphs have, in reality, been pointing in very different directions, and since Obama was elected the theory has been called into question, but in the second decade of the 21st century it is still the logic that’s dictating the war on drugs.
What was new about Plan Colombia, instigated by Bill Clinton in
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