Pubdate: Wed, 31 Jan 2001
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2001 The New York Times Company
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Author: Juan Forero
Bookmark: Reports about Colombia  http://www.mapinc.org/area/colombia

NO CROPS SPARED IN COLOMBIA'S COCA WAR

SANTA ANA, Colombia, Jan. 29 - With considerable training and 
financing from the United States, the Colombian Army has begun an 
aggressive land and air assault on the country's coca-growing 
heartland, claiming to have killed a quarter of all coca crops there 
in the last six weeks.

Low-flying aerial spray planes - protected from groundfire by two 
elite battalions that are dropped into coca fields - have blanketed 
four regions of Caqueta and Putumayo Provinces, spraying herbicide 
over 65,785 acres as of Sunday, according to newly released military 
estimates. The two provinces are believed to produce three-quarters 
of Colombia's coca, the leaves of which are used to make cocaine.

Although aerial defoliation of coca has been used across Colombia for 
10 years, government officials here say this is the first serious 
effort in this isolated region. The effort is a centerpiece of 
President Andres Pastrana's Plan Colombia, a multibillion-dollar 
effort to cut Colombia's coca crop in half by 2005 and, with it, a 
crucial revenue source for leftist guerrillas who are active in the 
area.

To reduce the supply of drugs, the United States has pledged $1.1 
billion toward that plan, mostly in the form of transport helicopters 
and training for antinarcotics troops. Their role is to protect spray 
planes and destroy coca-processing laboratories in the jungle.

The aerial eradication has not come without a price. Farmers in the 
Valley of Guamuez in northwestern Putumayo, a swath containing the 
largest concentration of coca, have complained that legal crops like 
plantains and yucca were destroyed along with coca. The farmers are 
typically poor, and some, caught in a violent world between rebels 
and paramilitaries, turned to coca to eke out a better subsistence.

"I have the proof to show that it wasn't just the coca farmers who 
have suffered," said Carlos Alberto Palacios, secretary of human 
development in the town of La Hormiga.

"We believe people will go hungry," said Mr. Palacios, an expert on 
the coca trade. "They've fumigated everything, fields and plantain 
rows and yucca and everything that people need to live on." Farmers 
have also complained of vomiting, rashes and other side effects.

On a half-hour helicopter flight with Gen. Mario Montoya over what 
was once Colombia's most bountiful coca-producing region, fields that 
once were bright green with coca and other plants were a pale brown, 
wiped free of vegetation for miles around.

The tin roofs of farmers' huts stood out, shining in the sun in a sea 
of drab brown. Military figures show that 45,551 acres of coca had 
been eradicated in that area - a triangle comprising the towns of La 
Hormiga, San Miguel and the western edge of Puerto Asis - as of 
Sunday.

"This is the only way," the general said, taking a look through the 
window of the copter. "We don't have another way."

General Montoya, who is in charge of the effort, said as much as 
250,000 acres in the two provinces was dedicated to coca before 
spraying began Dec. 19, a figure far higher than an estimate last 
January of 185,000.

United States officials, who provide the Colombian authorities with 
satellite maps that help pinpoint coca fields, confirmed General 
Montoya's assessments. American officials also said the spraying - 
using glyphosate, a powerful chemical found in many pesticides - is 
at least 90 percent effective in first-time use, wiping out fields 
within a few weeks. General Montoya said that once a field has been 
sprayed, it takes three months before farmers can replant.

Mr. Palacios, the coca trade expert, and other town officials said 
farmers did cultivate coca, but also a host of legal crops, as well 
as cattle and other livestock. The defoliation, Mr. Palacios said, 
has prompted many farmers and their families to abandon their homes.

The health department of Putumayo is in the process of collecting 
testimony from farmers whose lands were sprayed, said Nancy Sanchez, 
who is supervising the effort as coordinator of the department's 
human rights section. The affidavits will be presented to doctors 
studying the effects of the defoliation, as well as the Colombian 
government.

"There's complaints about intoxication, diarrhea, vomiting, skin 
rashes, red eyes, headaches," Ms. Sanchez said. "In the children, 
above all, there are ill effects on their skin."

American officials dispute such reports, insisting that numerous 
tests on glyphosate have demonstrated that the pesticide cannot cause 
harm to humans or animals.

Nonetheless, directions on the application of glyphosate products in 
the United States warn users not to use "this product in a way that 
will contact workers or other persons, either directly or through 
drift."

The Colombian government, which is concerned about how aerial 
spraying will be viewed overseas by potential financial backers, 
points out that the farmers whose fields were sprayed had ample 
opportunity to sign pacts that would have prevented aerial 
eradication.

Under a program that already has 2,000 signatories across Putumayo, 
the farmers in the Valley of Guamuez could have agreed to yank their 
coca plants in return for up to $1,000 worth of livestock and food 
per family. Although many farmers across Putumayo remain suspicious 
about the government's promises, the government has pledged to those 
who sign that markets for legal crops are being developed.

"The people from this zone had not shown up," said President 
Pastrana's point man on Putumayo, referring to the farmers in the 
Valley of Guamuez. The official, Gonzalo de Francisco, added, "These 
people can't be angry with the fumigation; they were doing something 
outside legal norms."

Mr. de Francisco has also noted that destroying coca farms prevents 
the use of millions of gallons of pesticides and precursor chemicals 
needed to produce cocaine annually. Eduardo Gamarra, an expert on the 
coca trade at Florida International University in Miami, said the 
damage from coca farming and the processing of coca leaves has "some 
very serious environmental implications."

Mr. de Francisco said that complaints from farmers whose fields were 
sprayed have been filed with the government's internal affairs 
office, which investigates allegations of official wrongdoing. Those 
whose farms were unnecessarily sprayed can receive compensation, Mr. 
de Francisco said, noting that the farmers remain free to sign 
accords and join the government's self-eradication program.

General Montoya, who commands army brigades throughout the southern 
region, where most of Colombia's coca grows, acknowledged that 
"errors can present themselves" and that some legal crops were 
defoliated.

"We know that we can make mistakes," General Montoya said, "but the 
mistakes are minimal compared to the magnitude of the operation that 
we're undertaking."

The general explained that defoliating some legal crops is hard to 
avoid because coca farmers tend to hide their crops by planting next 
to larger, legal crops, like banana trees.

"When we've gone to examine the countryside, we've found that there's 
plantain bananas, we've found that there is yucca, but we've also 
found there is coca," General Montoya said.

The anti-coca effort has been fast, General Montoya said, but not 
easy. Because of the presence of rebels from the Revolutionary Armed 
Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the army must fly in soldiers from two 
American-trained battalions before spraying herbicide from OVZ-10 and 
T-65 planes. The soldiers later shower to cleanse themselves of any 
of the herbicide, the military says.

"The people here are always in the middle," said Ms. Sanchez, the 
health department worker. "The guerrillas come and they threaten, 
they make them pay taxes. Then the paramilitaries come and they get 
assassinated and threatened, and now the government comes in and 
fumigates them."
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MAP posted-by: Kirk Bauer