[News] New Coca Fumigation Program Drives Poor Colombians Off Lands

[News at freedomarchives.org]

New Coca Fumigation Program Drives Poor Colombians Off Lands




Locals See Supposed “Anti-Drug” Operations in Chocó as Part of a Decade-Old 
Campaign by the Government and Corporations to Displace Them




By Sean Donahue
Special to the Narco News Bulletin




February 16, 2005
This report appears on the internet at 
http://www.narconews.com/Issue35/article1177.html

Since early January, pilots from DynCorp, working under contract to the 
U.S. State Department and under the supervision of the Colombian National 
Police, have been spraying glyphosate over indigenous and Afro-Colombian 
villages in the fragile rainforests of Chocó on Colombia’s Pacific Coast. 
Ostensibly they are working to eradicate the coca crops that have sprung up 
in the region in recent years, as fumigations to the south in Putumayo, 
Guaviare, and Narino have pushed coca cultivation into new areas, and the 
utter destruction of local communities and economies has forced more and 
more people into the lower rungs of the cocaine economy. Rain recently 
forced a temporary halt to the fumigations, but they are slated to resume 
once the rain stops.

392e5d.jpg

A displaced family in Chocó, forced off their land by paramilitaries.
Photo: Pablo Serrano D.R. 2005
Wherever fumigations have occurred in Colombia, they have had a devastating 
impact on the land and the people. Glyphosate is a “broad spectrum” 
herbicide – it will kill anything with leaves. Sprayed from crop-dusting 
planes it becomes an indiscriminate weapon, wiping out food crops and 
severely damaging the forest. There is growing evidence that it damages 
soil microbes and 
<http://www.counterpunch.org/bigwood08232003.html>promotes the growth of 
toxic fungi. It is persistent in water where it can poison fish, birds, 
amphibians, and livestock. In humans it causes rashes, respiratory 
problems, nausea, and temporary blindness. Long-term exposure 
<http://www.naturescountrystore.com/roundup/page8.html>has been linked to 
non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. There is strong circumstantial evidence that 
fumigation has been used as a strategy to force people off 
<http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2004/12/17/124459/55>land coveted 
by oil companies in southern Colombia.

Local leaders see the fumigations as the latest phase of a ten-year old 
campaign to drive indigenous people and Afro-Colombians off the land in 
order to clear the way for mining, logging, hydro-electric projects, and 
the construction of a dry canal to replace the Panama Canal. In a formal 
denunciation <http://www.codhes.org.co/dbreves.php?breve=492>re-published 
by the human rights group CODHES and the Colombian affiliate of 
<http://www.censat.org/A_A_Noticias_Nacionales_113.htm>Friends of the 
Earth, members of the Chocó organization Fundación Las Mojarras y Consejo 
Comunitario Mayor de Condoto wrote that:

“The appearance of illicit crops and their eradication through fumigations 
with Glyphosate in the department of Chocó, are a political decision of the 
state that adds in the long run chain of facts that in the conjuncture of 
the past eleven years from 1996 are leading to the Black and indigenous 
towns of Chocó towards a total genocide.”

They fumigations are the culmination of a carefully orchestrated program of 
forced displacement – and by extension the eradication of a culture.



Five Hundred Years of Genocide and Resistance

Africans were brought to Colombia to replace indigenous people as slaves in 
gold mines and on sugar plantations starting in the early sixteenth century.

They began resisting slavery as soon as they reached this continent. Luis 
Alberto Murillo, the first Afro-Colombian to serve as governor of Chocó 
(now living in exile in the U.S.,) 
<http://isla.igc.org/SpecialRpts/SR2murillo.html>wrote in 2001:

“In pre-abolition Colombian society, Afro-Colombian slaves fought for their 
freedom from the beginning of their arrival to the country. It is clear 
that there were strong, free African towns called palenques where Africans 
could live as cimarrones – that is Africans who escaped from their 
oppressors. Some historians view the Chocó as a very big palenque with a 
large population of cimarrones, especially in the areas of the Baudo River.”

Following the abolition of slavery in 1851, many freed slaves fled the 
culture that had enslaved them, joining the palenques and forming new 
communities in Chocó. Here they forged a new culture and carved out a 
degree of freedom and independence. Murillo writes:

“Afro-Colombian people were forced to live in jungle areas as a mechanism 
of self-protection. There, we learned to live harmoniously with the jungle 
environment and to share the territory with Colombia’s indigenous 
communities. Our Afro-Colombian communities developed their own living 
patterns, which are very respectful of the environment and emphasize social 
values such as peace, friendship and solidarity, rather than money and 
capital accumulation.

“This Afro-Colombian way of living has enabled us to conserve our rich, 
biologically diverse ecosystem to the present day.

“From 1851, the Colombian State promoted the ideology of ‘mestizaje.’ This 
meant the necessity of mixing African and indigenous people with white 
Spaniards and their descendants. The purpose was to disappear, or minimize, 
the historical links with Africa and pre-Columbian America. In fact, the 
Colombian government purposely ignored and neglected the newly free Black 
population.

“The only way for Africans and indigenous peoples to maintain their 
cultural traditions was by living in isolated jungle areas. But it was not 
easy. The history of Black people in Colombia is the history of a struggle 
for freedom and land, and against discrimination and invisibility.”

The nineteenth and twentieth century were marked by struggles against armed 
groups backed by wealthy ranchers who wanted to seize land in the lush 
rainforests of Chocó to build coffee, banana, and sugar plantations.

In 1991, the Colombian Constitution granted Afro-Colombian and indigenous 
communities collective title to their traditional lands. Rather than 
marking a victory in the struggle for land and freedom, however, the new 
law brought a wave of violence down on communities that dared to assert 
their rights.



A Decade Of Massacres

In 1993 the Colombian Congress passed “Law 70” which laid out the process 
for Black communities to apply for formal recognition and formal title to 
their land. Three years later, in 1996, the community of Riosucio became 
the first of the former palenques to file for recognition under the law. 
Almost as soon as Riosucio began the process, the paramilitaries attacked 
and drove nearly everyone off their land. Marino Codroba Berrio, a 
community leader from Riosucio who went on to form the Association of 
Displaces Afro-Colombians (AFRODES) in Bogotá and is now living in exile in 
the U.S., 
<http://www.newsandletters.org/Issues/2002/May/afro-colombia_May02.htm>wrote 
in 2002:

“The community organizations met resistance from those who had been 
exploiting natural resources in our region such as gold and wood. 
Communities demanded title to the land. Since then we’ve experienced 
assassinations and expulsion by military groups paid by political and 
business interests.

“My organization won the first collective titles in that region. Seven days 
later, at 5:00 AM on Dec. 13, 1996, paramilitary groups arrived in my town, 
Riosucio, intent on murdering the leaders and their families. Many were 
taken from their beds and paraded naked through the streets. Anyone who 
resisted was killed. The shouts woke me up. I ran to take refuge in the 
swamp along with many others.

“At 8:00 AM, army helicopters started patrolling. The paramilitaries 
radioed the pilots to attack the swamp, claiming the people were 
guerrillas. The army attacked us with bombs and rifles, killing many 
people. Those who survived stayed in the water for three days until hunger 
and desperation forced us out. Some of us sneaked through the town and 
reached a rural community across the river. I recuperated there, then fled 
to Bogotá


“Two months later, in February 1997, the paramilitaries and army attacked 
the rural communities in the region and massacred an unknown number of 
people. More than 20,000 people left the area. Not a single person 
remained. Today, some are living in Panama, Ecuador, Venezuela, and many 
are in the big cities.”

After a decade of massacres, Afro-Colombians now make up the majority of 
Colombia’s two million internal refugees. Paramilitary violence has 
followed them to the shantytowns outside Bogotá and Medellín, where death 
squads are trying to wipe out the survivors to prevent them from telling 
their stories and from fighting for their right to return to their homes.



The Political Economy of Genocide

Timber and gold interests have played a tremendous role in driving the 
violence in Chocó, but larger economic forces are at work here as well. As 
economist Hector Mondragon wrote:

“The genocide actually has a theorist. A Canadian economist, Lauchlan 
Currie, has advised 5 successive presidents in this theory, called 
‘Accelerated Economic Development’. The theory is that there are two 
obstacles to development. The first is kidnapping. The second is the 
population of campesinos [peasant-farmers]. For Colombia to develop, 
according to this theory, the population of campesinos must be reduced 
dramatically. There are two ways to accomplish this. Pull and Push.

“The pull method is to attract campesinos to the city with jobs. The 
housing plan by Pastrana senior [the father of President Uribe’s 
predecessor, who ruled from 1970 to1974], for example, enabled people to 
get houses with high interest credit. Many lost their houses in the banking 
crisis that ensued. The banks happily took the houses, and then their 
smiles faded because they have houses and no one to buy them. But banks, 
unlike citizens, are eligible for state help and bailouts. The upshot, 
though, is that unemployment is well over 20%, underemployment much higher. 
Pull isn’t happening.

“What’s left is push. Which we know about.”

Massacres are the most direct form of pushing people off the land. But 
there is an economic dimension to the push as well. 
<http://www.gratisweb.com/ciclocrisis/polarization.htm>According to 
Mondragon, President Uribe has begun introducing a kind of reverse agrarian 
reform:

“The subsidies that the recently closed Institute for Agrarian Reform – 
INCORA used to give to campesinos are now only handed over to 
‘income-generating projects within larger business production systems.’ The 
land ‘abandoned’ by campesinos can be given over to any ‘producer.’”

These “larger business production systems” enter into agreements with 
campesinos which require the farmers to plant 
<http://www.wrm.org.uy/plantations/material/oilpalm2.html>African palm 
trees, and to put their land up as collateral for the loans they need to 
get into the palm oil business. International lenders have been pushing 
increased palm oil production around the world, driving the prices down. 
When the prices fall, the campesinos lose their land.

The land is the real investment that wealthy Colombians and multinational 
corporations are interested in. Chocó’s geographical location is even more 
important than its resources. The department borders Panama, and is being 
eyed by developers as the site for a system of wet and dry canals to 
replace the Panama Canal. It also has a crucial role to play in Uribe’s 
plans to build a gas pipeline to Panama, and to build a massive new 
electrical grid that would carry electricity from dams throughout Colombia 
to the U.S.

Gold and timber companies will plunder the land for its resources first. 
Bio-prospectors might comb the forest for traditional herbal medicines that 
they can synthesize and patent. And when the forests and the people are 
gone, Chocó’s role as the ecological corridor connecting South America to 
Central America will give way to its new role as the corridor that will 
allow gas and electricity to move north while goods move over land from the 
Atlantic to the Pacific.

The massacres were the first stage in removing the people who stood in the 
way of development. Fumigations serve to starve out the people who remain 
by eradicating their food crops and the wild plants they depend on along 
with whatever coca is now growing in Chocó. The push is almost complete.


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