Hearts of Colombia

by Mary Barr, for ReconsiDer 

With Plan Colombia, we have taken the “War on Drugs,” literally by trying to eradicate Coca, the weed that cocaine is made from.  The problem with declaring war on this weed, is that it grows like---a weed.  In a June 2003 Witness for Peace delegation, I visited the Putumayo region of Colombia and saw many devastated fields.  In some fields farmers had burned Coca off their land in compliance with U.S. contracts.  In one blackened 300-foot area, there was a tiny green plant sticking up out of the middle. If you guessed that it was Coca, you can go to the head of the class.  In my estimation we can’t effectively kill this weed or Poppy and Cannabis weeds either.

The plan is to give farmers a one-time payment of $8,000 to plant alternative crops like corn, rice and hearts of palm.  Heart of palm takes fifteen months to grow, while Coca takes only three months to grow.  Rice takes only four months to grow but you need tons of it to make the same profit from one kilo of coca.    I wondered how all the farmers voluntarily agreed with this plan. In interviews with the non-profits that implement the plan, I found out that if one farmer in a community agreed, they all had to agree, or no payment.  Plus they would be placed on the list for fumigation.  This caused a lot of arguments in the pueblitos, where 90% of the rural population lives in abject poverty, and pressure to sign on was great. 

We were lead through three farms by Don Ishmael, his wife and cousin. All of these farms had eradicated coca over two years ago, at the beginning of Plan Colombia. In walking for many miles we saw no Coca but they all had been fumigated, the last time only two days before.    At one patch of Heart of palm the Senora stopped me and started to cry.  I guess she was around sixty years old, and she had spent days in the blasting heat of the region to plant these crops, which were totally devastated. (Photo)  She told me it was the third time she planted and had her crops fumigated.  Then she said something that made me grab an interpreter thinking that my Spanish was faulty.  She repeated that these were Plan Colombia crops.  The very crops we had paid her and given her seed and instruction to plant!  And we had fumigated them not once, but three times!   Of all the things I learned this tiny crying woman taught me the most. 

We have sent 650 million dollars so far this year in military aid to Colombia and are planning to send more. On our way back from the country our bus was stopped and entered by the FARQ, one side of the civil war in Colombia that is claiming many lives.   The FARQ and the Guerrillas are notorious for kidnapping and ransom tactics.   He looked to be only 16 and asked us if we had seen any enemy soldiers during our journey.  It was surreal that he had a lollipop in one hand and a machine gun in the other.  I held my breath expecting to be kidnapped at any moment.  But after our driver said he didn’t know, the youth looked us over and let us go unharmed. 

When we went to our meeting at the U.S. embassy we were told that there were over 8,000 complaints filed of erroneous fumigation of licit crops.   We asked how many were paid out and were told two!  We asked if that was because of budgetary concerns and were told they had an unlimited amount.  We asked what was paid out and they answered $6,000.  We then showed our pictures of fields of corn, heart of palm and other licit crops that had been fumigated from three farms.  An embassy official said that they would visit and, if they found the same conditions, would pay reparations.