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| Rugged Crop Defies Drug War |
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Posted by CN Staff on May 20, 2002 at 10:25:32 PT By Tim Collie, Foreign Correspondent Source: Orlando Sentinel 
Winding his way over muddy mountain roads in a cold, driving rain, Fabio Calambas readily points out small plots of tall poppies growing alongside corn, rice and onions. There's no hesitation, no shame, not a hint of illegality.The plant that provides the United States with its chief source of heroin is just another crop here. The Guambiano Indians who live in Colombia's southwestern highlands never see the narcotic that their poppies produce and have no native use for it. "It's a weed, basically," shrugs Calambas, a tribal leader and local farmer who grows a little opium himself. "You can just toss the seeds in anywhere, and up it sprouts. . . . You don't pay for the seeds, but the money you make can pay for the corn, onions and fertilizer you need to grow anything else." Like many here, Calambas says he only grows a crop. Someone else converts it into an illicit narcotic. "There's nobody here that gets rich off of this, as you can see," he says. "The person who makes the money is the chemist, the man making the heroin." Opium is Colombia's other illegitimate cash crop. Its cultivation is dwarfed by the farming of coca -- the raw ingredient in cocaine and the main target of U.S. eradication efforts. The red and purple poppies arrived only a decade ago, when astute traffickers realized they could move in on the Middle Eastern drug trade. It was a savvy move. While production in Colombia is minuscule compared with the opium centers of Afghanistan or Southeast Asia, the heroin produced here dominates the East Coast of the United States, where most U.S. heroin users are concentrated. But it's in the rugged central and southwestern Colombian Andes where the narcotic first emerges. In Cauca state, on the steep, cold, cloud-shrouded lands of the Guambia reservation, poppies are not hard to find -- covering about a quarter of the tiny farms. On land so thick turf usually must be pulled up by hand and even lettuce involves constant care, opium grows easily. The Guambianos, who number about 17,000 on a federally protected reservation near Silvia, a town of about 4,000 residents, lived on this land long before the arrival of the first Spanish explorers. Usually dressed in traditional blue skirts, black ponchos and bowler hats, they mostly have shied away from the violent trafficker and guerrilla groups who run the coca trade. They typically draw the attention of the government in Bogota only when they block highways and roads over land disputes. Yet they remain one very small but pesky corner of the global drug war. Empty promises The poppies have been both a blessing and a curse, tribal leaders say. After decades of neglect, the Colombian government has funneled some money into poppy-growing regions to build roads, dams and schools -- pork-barrel projects that can generate jobs. But the effort has been sporadic, and nothing makes up for the money a farmer can earn raising a few poppies. "Historically, we've been marginalized over the years by the federal government," Calambas said. "There hasn't been a relationship with Bogota, so we were on our own. Then people started making money, growing this crop, and then planes came trying to kill it. "That's what they call paying attention to us. Nobody warned us, told us they were coming. At first, people were shocked. Now they're just angry." It's a familiar complaint among farmers who turn to coca and opium throughout rural Colombia to make ends meet. The money promised for development, they say, is never enough, or it never arrives. Meanwhile, the government sprays opium fields with herbicides that often kill other crops. Pointing to large patches of yellowing fields where he says spraying occurred, farmer Manuel Morales said that he and others are fed up that they are being made to pay for what is a U.S. problem. Americans are the ones using the drugs, he said. At the same time, many Americans don't seem to realize how poorly the Colombian government is using their money to solve the drug problem on this end, he said. "It wasn't announced; they just swooped in last year and began dumping this stuff all over the farms," said Morales, who doubles as an agricultural agent overseeing development on the Guambiano lands. "It's not just that they kill the crops, but we have streams and rivers running all over these mountains that supplies the water people drink. It's a big concern." Small-time growers After the United States had spent almost $2 billion on an anti-drug program known as Plan Colombia, the State Department concluded that farmers were not destroying their crops despite low-cost loans and other payments designed to wean them off coca and opium. In March, the United States announced that it was re-evaluating that strategy. The U.S. government estimates last year's coca crop surged by almost 25 percent over the year before, to 419,000 acres. By comparison, opium was grown on 10,071 acres in 2001, up from 7,700 the previous year, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. The heroin produced on that land climbed from 3.6 tons in 1999 to 4.7 tons last year. Getting a good grasp on opium production is difficult. It tends to be grown on thousands of small farms. Cloud cover at the high elevations where most opium is grown makes it difficult to get satellite photos of the crop for eradication. The thousands of small-time opium growers sell their produce to hundreds of local, small-time traffickers. Unlike other heroin-producing countries, there is no dominant organization overseeing the heroin trade in Colombia. "The Colombian heroin trade has never been controlled by the large cartels," said a DEA official who asked not to be identified. "Even in the heyday of the Medellin or the Cali cartels, they didn't really get involved in it. It's been a very fragmented group of small traffickers for most of the last decade. "Nor are there the large shipments or seizures you find with coca," the official said. "They've gotten a bit larger, but until recently the preferred method was smuggling it on airlines -- people who'd swallow bags with no more than a kilogram." Shift in strategy Instead of paying farmers to switch to other crops, the United States may sponsor large development schemes -- construction of roads, sewage systems and other public works -- that can create jobs in places such as Silvia. But local leaders are skeptical. Many argue that years of isolation have left many peasants deeply angry at the government. Also, it's unclear what type of development would produce lasting jobs in remote, mountainous areas where pockets of residents live miles from the nearest roads. A quaint town of clean white buildings and colorful plazas, Silvia used to be a tourist center and trout-fishing mecca before Colombia's civil war spread into Cauca during the past decade. Now the hotels are empty, and the shops selling indigenous trinkets are empty of customers or shuttered. Guerrillas from two of Colombia's rebel armies roam these mountains, occasionally showing up at the Guambianos' small stone homes to demand food and "taxes." Tribal leaders on walkie-talkies patrol the mountains to report any strangers. After a three-year absence, a small platoon of government soldiers has moved back into Silvia to reclaim it from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC. Raw materials But the main concerns for residents are economic. With the tourist base gone, the need for extra income from opium is even more acute. The poppies grow in clumps on small plots usually no more than an acre in size. There are rumors of larger farms nearby, hidden under dense tree and cloud cover from satellites and spy planes. But no one among the locals appears to be getting rich off the opium trade. "You can see this is a very small operation," said Calambas, smiling. "People are just growing poppies along with other crops, maybe a quarter of their acreage. Now don't go telling Americans that all we do here is grow poppies." But in Silvia's central market, non-Guambianos are convinced the indigenous mountainfolk have larger farms hidden from prying eyes. "What's great about this crop for them is they just grow it, then someone shows up at the door and picks up their gum for them," said Juan Carlos Arboleda, who runs a small store. "The big yields are way up those mountains, under the trees where you can only get by donkey." An acre of poppies will yield a few cupfuls of what's known as opium latex -- the gum that is milked from the poppy bulb. Farmers can grow two opium crops each year. On only one hectare -- about 1.54 acres -- a family can make several hundred dollars per harvest. After being drained from the poppies, the gum is sold to traveling merchants known as compradores, who walk the mountains collecting "the merchandise." Unlike coca, which is often processed into paste by laborers, converting the gum into heroin requires a certain degree of expertise with chemistry, according to drug experts. New schemes At least three times since 1997, both the Indians and the Colombian government have announced efforts to eradicate opium poppies on the reservation lands spread over these mountains. Sometimes crop dusters have swooped over opium patches without warning. At other times, the Indians have pulled out the plants by hand in much-publicized campaigns. Then there are the alternative schemes, which range from road building to crop substitution to an idea new to these parts -- trout farms. During the past three years, the Guambianos have built two dozen small ponds and hatcheries to raise trout to be sold to local restaurants and markets. But there is no sure sign of profitability in trout farming, Calambas says. The men and women running them still have much to learn. Transporting fresh fish around these mountains will be difficult. "It's something totally new for us, but it could catch on," Calambas said. "What's important is that it could supplement incomes, like the poppies, but I don't think it's ever going to replace regular farming or become the source of income. "And if it fails, we're going to be eating a lot of fish." Tim Collie is a reporter for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, a Tribune Publishing newspaper. Silvia, Colombia Source: Orlando Sentinel (FL) Related Articles & Web Site: Colombia Drug War News Collateral Damage from Colombia's Drug War The Colombia Quandary - Patrick Leahy Growers Bear Brunt of Plan Colombia Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help |
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