CONTEXT: Fumigation a dismal failure
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BY W. JOHN GREEN
Colombia Week
U.S. drug policy in the Andes never looked more pathetic than on October
18, when Bolivian President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada resigned and fled
to Miami as massive protests shook his country. High on the list of
popular grievances was his complicity with U.S.-backed coca eradication.
Human rights leaders from southern Colombia and northern Ecuador
outlined the problems with forced eradication, especially aerial
fumigation, at a Brookings Institution presentation September 25 in
Washington, D.C. They offered ample evidence fumigation is hurting
agriculture, human health and the environment in both countries.
Fumigation began on a large scale in 1996 in the southern Colombian
province of Guaviare. By 2000, most of the targets were Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) strongholds in nearby Putumayo and
Caquetá. The herbicide mixture--combining Monsanto-made glyphosate with
surfactants and “inert” ingredients--has contributed to the
disappearance of native flora and fauna. And it has destroyed the
subsistence crops of thousands of small farmers, many of whom were not
growing coca.
The Colombian visitors presented video of Putumayo mayors and small
farmers testifying that the spraying hits legal crops, greenhouses and
schools. As a result, local children experience severe itching, vomiting
and diarrhea.
U.S. officials insist the impact is minimal and contained. Yet they
would never consent to having these chemicals dumped on their own
children.
Despite its negative consequences, the fumigation is failing to reduce
coca production. The Colombian visitors presented evidence the
cultivation is shifting to other provinces, especially Amazonas and
Nariño. And, while the average Colombian municipality is producing less
of the leaf, the number of municipalities producing the crop has
increased.
As the cultivation spreads out, so does violence. Paramilitaries and
guerrillas are demanding ever more from inhabitants of coca-growing
regions, especially by “taxing” transportation of agricultural products.
The biggest irony is that coca is one of the country’s most resilient
plants. After the spraying, it springs back quickly. When fumigation
wipes out legal crops, many small farmers have no choice but to turn to
the thing that still grows.
Despite fumigation’s failure, the United States presses on with it
obsessively, evoking a biblical proverb: “As a dog returneth to his
vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly.”
© 2003 Colombia Week. W. John Green (wjgreenva@aol.com) is a senior
research fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington,
D.C., and author of Gaitanismo, Left Liberalism, and Popular
Mobilization in Colombia (University of Florida, 2003). His column
appears biweekly.
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