In the tropical valleys of Cauca – planted with coffee, yucca, sugar cane, bananas and, increasingly, coca – everyone agrees with Gustavo Petro that a change of plan is needed. Designed in Washington and financed with some 13,000 million dollars from the US federal budget, the anti-narcotics strategy in Colombia has not produced results. After two decades of military operations, the extradition to the US of hundreds of drug traffickers and the use of chemicals to eradicate coca crops in areas like Cauca, coca is growing and so is violence.
“Illicit crops are once again very strong here,” says Richard Morales, a representative of the Misak people, one of the dozen indigenous ethnic groups in Cauca, in southwestern Colombia. Since 2010, the area in Colombia dedicated to coca has increased from 75,000 hectares to 250,000 hectares. “We must support the production of other crops such as coffee so that the peasant can change,” he adds. The peasants of Cauca have protested against the use of toxic chemicals, such as glyphosate, sprayed from planes, due to their damage to health and the environment, as well as the destruction of other crops.
The policy of substituting illicit crops through support for farmers is exactly what was agreed upon in the peace agreement between the government of Juan Manuel Santos and the FARC guerrillas, signed in Havana in 2016. But, after the victory of the no in the 2016 plebiscite, implementing the most important elements of the agreement –such as agrarian reform and peasant land legislation– was not politically convenient for the conservative president Iván Duque or his political godfather, Álvaro Uribe. Nor did it suit Donald Trump, who was seeking anti-Castrochavista votes in Florida.
Gustavo Petro’s victory creates a historic opportunity to change strategy. Following the peace agreement to the letter, Petro opposes the forced eradication of illicit crops and defends a support program for the countryside through subsidized loans, training courses and the recognition of land titles. He rejects fumigation and insists that “whoever grows coca cannot be criminalized; You have to look at the causes.” He is also opposed to the extradition of drug traffickers to the US, opting for their prosecution in Colombia.
Likewise, the final report of the Truth Commission, created within the framework of the peace process, which was presented last Tuesday in Bogotá, criticizes the military strategy and points out that “the war on drugs has become a factor of persistence of the conflict”, insists the report, prepared after interviewing 30,000 victims of violence. Despite the disarmament of the FARC, Colombia maintains 500,000 police and military personnel, twice as many as Brazil, whose population is four times greater.
There is some indication that the Biden Administration wants to respond positively. “We have to de-narcoticize the agenda,” said Juan González, the director responsible for Latin America at the State Department, in an interview with the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo. To date, “the only criterion for success has been the number of hectares eradicated and extraditions (…) We have to talk about something other than drugs,” he said. Instead of fumigation, González’s number two, Brian Nichols, defended “promoting alternative development (…) in rural communities.” At the same time, Petro’s desire that it be through support for the peasant economy and clean energy could complement the environmental strategy of the Democratic Administration and its defense policy for the Amazon. Both presidents described as promising the conversation they had by telephone last Tuesday.
But according to analysts in Bogotá and London, the political and military powers in Washington will resist abandoning the drug war. “Maintaining drugs as a priority has made it possible to justify the presence of the seven military bases in Colombia, a very strong U.S. influence on the Colombian police, and the training of anti-narcotics units for Central and South America,” said Ricardo Vargas, from the University of Bogota–. At the Department of Defense in Washington they don’t want to change it.” This reluctance was made clear at an event days before the Colombian elections at the Atlantic Council, a powerful Washington think tank. “USA. It must professionalize the Colombian armed forces and police (…). Colombia needs more military and police forces than before,” said David Petraeus, former CIA director.
Both in Washington and in the Colombian military leadership, it is considered crucial to maintain military operations against the FARC “dissidents” who have refused to lay down their arms, as well as far-right paramilitaries such as the Clan del Golfo, all of them involved in the cocaine business.
Petro wants to open negotiations now with the National Liberation Army (ELN) and the FARC factions willing to disarm. Likewise, he intends a profound security reform starting with the police, whose management will be transferred from the Ministry of Defense to the Ministry of the Interior. “US penetration of the military and police is an urgent matter for Petro,” said Oscar Guardiola Rivera of Birkbeck College in London. “After the social explosion of 2021, people want a reform of the police and the army.”
The legislative elections in the US in November, and specifically those in Florida, will not help Biden support Petro’s new plan. The decision of the Democratic Administration to remove the FARC from the terrorist lists has already unleashed a wave of Republican attacks in Florida. Congressmen in Miami, such as Marco Rubio or Mario Díaz-Balart, defend more militarization and more fumigation. Iván Duque has announced that he will take advantage of the long month that remains in his presidency to spray thousands of hectares of glyphosate in Catatumbo, in the east of the country.
