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Date sent: Sat, 05 May 2001 23:09:30 -0400
From: David Goldman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [CIA-DRUGS] Coca Growers just keep moving......
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>From www.nyt.com
March 17, 2001
In the War on Coca, Colombian
Growers Simply Move Along
By JUAN FORERO
LORENTE, Colombia, March
12 � This isolated town used
to be as sedate and dirt poor as all
the rest.
Then came coca and its
byproducts, discos and prostitutes,
pool halls and cantinas, cheap
hotels and the businesses that cater
to newcomers, stores with wood
planks, tin sheeting and other
materials for flimsy but
serviceable housing.
The change began more than a year
ago, local government officials
and residents say, but accelerated
with a huge American-backed
campaign to destroy coca fields in
adjacent Putumayo Province. The
effort, the officials said, displaced
coca growers and their crops,
sending them to the jungles here in
Nari�o Province. It is a familiar
pattern. Coca came to Colombia
because of success in eliminating
it in Bolivia and Peru, without
aerial spraying.
"What the fumigation did was to transfer the phenomenon from
Putumayo to Nari�o," said Gov. Parmenio Cu�llar of Nari�o.
"And if they fumigate Nari�o, the problem will go to another
place."
Nowhere are the effects more visible than in this town on
Highway 10, once a sleepy community of poor farmers that is
luring hundreds of former Putumayo farmers, coca-laboratory
workers and others drawn by the coca trade.
"They call this Little Putumayo, and they say people who are
coming here are leaving Putumayo because of the fumigation,"
said the Rev. Domingo Moreno, a Roman Catholic priest who
works in Llorente. "The people, more and more, are lured by
coca, tempted by the magic leaf. Not only are they starting to
plant coca, but they're also leaving behind the other plants they
grew, plantation bananas and cacao."
Critics of aerial defoliation say the expansion of coca in Nari�o
and elsewhere bore out a central warning about the plan to
destroy coca in Putumayo: that eradication in one region causes
coca to move to others.
"The argument I've always made is that the fumigation will not,
in any way, do away with the coca fields," said Carlos
Palacios, an expert on the coca trade and the human
development secretary in the town of Valle del Guamu�s in
Putumayo. "What fumigation does is that it causes the fields to
simply transfer to other places."
Opposition to spraying is so strong in southern Colombia that
mayors, church officials and others have been pushing President
Andr�s Pastrana's government and the United States to stop the
spraying. Mr. Cu�llar and three other governors visited
Washington this week to criticize the program and to lobby for
aid to improve agriculture.
American officials counter that the size of the Nari�o crop, with
fewer than 15,000 acres under cultivation, is manageable
compared with the 250,000 acres that existed in the
coca-growing heartland of Putumayo and Caquet� Provinces
before large-scale spraying began in late December. The
Americans also note that the movement of people and planting
of coca in Nari�o began long before the spraying in Putumayo.
The Americans say the defoliation effort, called Plan Colombia,
with its reliance on crop dusters, military helicopters and
battalions of Colombian antinarcotics troops, is intended to
contain the spread of coca. The plan is "intended to apply
pressure in more places simultaneously than previously
possible," said Jim Mack, deputy assistant secretary of state for
international narcotics and law enforcement.
But the officials, and their Colombian counterparts, are
worried.
"We're concerned about Nari�o," an official at the American
Embassy said. "Right now, there's a lot more coca there, in
Nari�o, so much so that in fact it's going to be one of our next
priorities."
Mr. Cu�llar said the migration into the province began before
the spraying in Putumayo, as farmers and others in the coca
trade became convinced that a broad plan to wipe out coca was
going to become a reality. But he said the movement of people
grew significantly in late September, when the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia closed roads throughout Putumayo
to prove that it was in control, strangling the coca trade in the
process.
On Dec. 19, Plan Colombia, with a goal of halving the
estimated 336,000 acres of coca in five years, began. Financed
with a $1.1 billion American aid package, the operation
denuded 75,000 acres of coca in Putumayo in two months.
Those whose farms became instantly worthless quickly packed
up and left for Nari�o.
Provincial officials and workers from the central government's
social service agency, Solidarity, said the displacement of
people from Putumayo had stretched resources in Nari�o.
Shantytowns have sprouted on the outskirts of Pasto, the capital.
Crime has increased.
An estimated 10,000 people have fled Putumayo since
September, with 1,600 settling in neighboring Ecuador,
according to the director of Solidarity, Fernando Medell�n. An
additional 8,400 dispersed into Nari�o, Cauca and Huila
Provinces, with most settling in this province, Mr. Medell�n
said. In Pasto, nearly 900 arrived in February, and about 40
new families arrive every week.
Alonso Matta, 36, who arrived two weeks ago in Pasto, said
spraying his four-acre farm "got everything, my plantains, my
coca, all of it."
"There are a lot of people who are leaving for that reason," Mr.
Matta said. "They're going to go where they find work, where
they can find some money."
In many cases, experts said, the migrants are going to where
they can again grow coca. Other provinces like Amazonas,
which is large, isolated and laced with rivers that allow the
easy movement of contraband, may also have new coca fields,
American officials said. Guaviare Province, which had large
tracts of coca sprayed in 1999 and last year, has shown signs of
a resurgence.
Last month, the army said that it had found thousands of acres of
coca on the border of Guiania and Vichada Provinces in the
southeast. In the north, particularly in Santander Province, coca
is also flourishing under the watchful paramilitary groups.
American and Colombian officials who defend the eradication
have noted that coca farmers with small- scale farms could
voluntarily stop their coca in exchange for a benefits package.
Many of those who fled Putumayo for Nari�o came from a
region where farmers declined to sign pacts with the
government to destroy their crops voluntarily. Ana Teresa
Bernal, director of Redepaz, which works with the displaced,
said 65 percent of those who fled worked in coca fields.
Llorente was in many ways the perfect place to relocate coca
and coca labs, a locale that Mr. Cu�llar calls "the door to the
vast territories where narcotraffic is creating extensive coca
fields."
Traffickers can take advantage of many rivers to move in the
processing chemicals and move out the finished product.
Nari�o's long unguarded Pacific Coast is an ideal jumping-off
point for northbound cocaine.
And public security is nonexistent in the 100-mile stretch
between Tumaco on the Pacific and Ricaurte, where the Andes
rise dramatically, said Col. Jorge Valencia, the police
commander in Pasto. Indeed, some newcomers here said they
were well aware of the slight presence of security forces.
"Here, everyone works in everything that has to do with coca,"
said a recent arrival from Putumayo who used to work in coca
labs. "There are farms and labs and transportation, all of that.
I'm looking for work in the lab."
Others seek work in new businesses or those that are booming
because of the influx of cash.
"We've been seeing a lot more business," said Pilar Benavides,
18, who was born in Putumayo and who was running a pool hall
while her parents picked coca. "They come to play pool, have
some beers. The tables are always full on weekends, all the
time. Here, any business will work. If you sell some corncakes
on the street, you'll make money."
Jos� Laborda, a vendor from Putumayo, said he left after
spraying had dried up most businesses, including his. He
quickly found a job as administrator of the Hotel Familiar.
"I see friends here and there and I ask them why they came," Mr.
Laborda said. "They all say the same thing. The reason is
economic."
Others, like Alberto Tapias, moved to Llorente to escape the
violence in Putumayo. Mr. Tapias, a former coca grower who
moved with his wife and three children, has given up coca for
now. He works in a palm field.
"We're poorly paid, have little to eat, live badly, but we're
better off," said Mr. Tapias, who is renting a newly built house
in a crowded neighborhood filled with flimsy structures.
There are signs of change. Murders and other violent acts are
increasing, officials said. Leftist rebels and their archenemies,
the paramilitary groups, are more visible than before.
"There's a lot of concern," Father Moreno said. "I've said
this is
a time bomb. We don't know when it's going to go off. But it
will."
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