By Kirk Semple, Globe Correspondent, 04/10/00
PUERTO ASIS, Colombia -- The planes were coming March 21.
That was the word that terrified and angered this small town in the heart of cocaine-growing country on Colombia's forgotten southern edge. The story went this way: The "fumigation" planes were going to swoop in and drop their poison on the coca fields, which would also kill the farmers' subsistence crops, cause massive social disruption, and stir up the ever-present threat of violence. Everybody was talking about it.
But March 21 came and went without any sign of a plane. In fact, the head
of the local division of the National Police said a coca aerial eradication strategy for Puerto Asis and the surrounding Putumayo region was still on the drawing boards.
No one knows exactly where the rumor began, but the fact that everyone
believed it indicates the level of dread and confusion in this part of
Colombia. The region produces about 50 percent of the nation's coca leaf, by government estimates, and is a focus of the escalating efforts by the
Colombian and US governments to battle drug trafficking at its source.
Not that there is anyone in Putumayo who knows what to expect. As the
fumigation rumor showed, there is a gap between political leaders in Bogota who have been designing their counter narcotics strategy in coordination with the US State Department and the Clinton Administration, and residents and civic leaders in Putumayo who say they have been left entirely out of the planning effort.
Local leaders say the administration of President Andres Pastrana has not
done the needed work to dispel the locals' mistrust and win their support,
which is crucial for implementing major components of the $7.5 billion "Plan
Colombia." That neglect, they say, threatens to undermine the entire program
before it even begins.
The $7.5 billion carrot-and-stick plan to attack drug trafficking relies on
military might and interdiction technology on one hand, and strengthening the
local economy and government through social assistance and development
programs on the other. Much of the proposed US contribution being debated in
Congress - $1.6 billion over two years - would also be destined for Putumayo
state, a sparsely populated slice of jungle the size of Vermont on the border
with Ecuador and Peru.
The use of aerial spraying - "fumigation" as it is called here - is at the
heart of the locals' fears.
"With the problem of fumigation, everybody is saying, `Will it happen? Will
it not happen? What's going to happen to us?' " said Manuel Antonio Alzate,
who is the mayor of Puerto Asis, on the muddy Putumayo River, a major conduit
for drugs.
"It's typical of our country: All the plans and projects and activities
that the national government does aren't done in consultation with local
communities; they're imposed from the top down," said Carmenza Mantilla, a
social development activist who works with farming communities in Putumayo.
The national government has lost authority in the region, she said. Unless
there's a radical change in the political culture and approach, she predicted,
Plan Colombia will fail.
Until last year, Janet Landinez, an impoverished single mother of two, was
growing 26 acres of coca on her small farm near Pinuna Negro, downriver from
Puerto Asis. Pricked by her conscience, she said, she began eradicating her
coca and tried to grow corn commercially.
"But I'm repentant now," she said. "I had the unfortunate surprise that you
can't live on legal crops here."
Almost all small farmers in the west-central part of Putumayo state grow
coca in minimal quantities alongside their subsistence crops, and they fear
that widespread spraying of coca will also destroy their yucca, corn, and
plantains, and perhaps sicken cattle.
Residents also expect that the injection of new military force to battle
leftist rebels and right-wing paramilitaries, who levy huge "taxes" for
protecting drug routes and processing laboratories, will increase the
already-high levels of violence in the region. Both factors, they fear, will
force locals to migrate into town or to neighboring states, destroying
families and compounding the region's economic hardship.
There are few advocates of aerial eradication in Puerto Asis. Civic and
social leaders insist that given a realistic alternative, most farmers would
get rid of their coca. But small growers like Landinez say they cannot afford
to: With no solid farm-to-market infrastructure, it is not profitable to grow
food crops. The farmers say they do not get rich from coca either: Guerrillas
and paramilitaries demand a cut of the proceeds - as much as 80 percent - at
every stage of the process.
To make things worse, the coca economy has fueled steep inflation, driving
up the cost of some everyday products by as much as 70 percent.
Community leaders want spraying programs delayed in areas populated by
small farmers until crop substitution programs are put in place and given time
to work.
But civic officials and community leaders say they doubt their ideas are
being seriously considered.
"They'll just bring it when it's ready and put it in place," said Dagoberto
Martinez, a rural development organizer, speaking about "the famous Plan
Colombia," as locals call it sarcastically.
On a recent morning, Fernando Medellin, the Colombian official coordinating
the social component of the antidrug campaign, was in his Bogota office poring
over maps of Putumayo.
People in Putumayo are wrong, he insisted. "There's not going to be any
fumigation without parallel social action."
Medellin admits that his is still a work in progress - "the job only
arrived in my office in January," he pleaded. That is why, he said, the
administration has not been specific with local communities about its plans.
"We don't want to come with a vague strategy and without the international
resource to back it up," said Medellin, director of the Social Solidarity
Network. "We don't want to speak about things that aren't certain. We would
prefer not to generate more disinformation, to present something that in a
week will completely change."
He added that he had no desire to impose a strategy on Putumayo. The
government will present "a working guide" to regional and local working
groups, from which will emerge the final plan, he said. He hopes to begin the
process this month or next.
But in Bogota and Washington, critics of the antidrug programs accuse both
governments of hastily designing Plan Colombia for political reasons, and say
the governments still have only a fuzzy notion of how they are going to use
the money they seek.
"It's clear that the cart is way before the horse," said Adam Isacson, an
associate at the Center for International Policy in Washington, a think tank
critical of the proposal before Congress. "Except for the military aspect,
it's clear they haven't thought out what exactly they're going to do."
The evolving plan outlined by Medellin will address the needs of three
populations: small farmers, migrant workers, and Indian communities. Another
group - the industrial coca growers - will be left to the devices of the
military's counter-narcotics task forces.
The plan does try to address many of the concerns voiced by Putumayo's
anxious residents: It would offer farmers who grow some coca alternative
development programs, the opportunity to join an agro-industrial development
project in another state, even social security and health care.
And the entire territory would not be hit by spraying, Medellin said. Small
farmers who form cooperatives and grow alternative crops would be spared the
deadly herbicides. The plan also stakes out a large no-spraying zone that
includes the population centers.
Bur word of this does not travel well between Bogota and Puerto Asis.
Virtually none of the worried local residents interviewed had heard about the
plan to create a no-spray zone.
Residents and community leaders say the government had better move quickly
if it hopes to win over the community, which already harbors a deep mistrust
of the central government.
"They've promised a lot to the people but they haven't delivered," said the
Rev. Luis Alfonso Gomez, a local priest. "The people are very guarded against
the government"
Jose Aldemar Pedreros, a 44-year-old farmer who lives in Quilili, just
north of Puerto Asis, agreed to destroy most of his small coca crop and
planted palmito trees under a crop-substition program to market
hearts-of-palm. But the government-sponsored project has been stalled for
several years because the packing factory does not have electricity.
"The politicians say they're getting money to do away with drugs," he said,
snorting derisively. "They're saying it's to help the farmer. Lies! They're
sending the money to kill."
When the Bogota officials finally begin to work with the people and leaders
of Puerto Asis, they will find they have rivals: Catholic priests who travel
freely in the countryside say leftist guerrillas have already begun an
aggressive campaign to recruit minors and to arm families in anticipation of
the military onslaught and aerial eradication program.
SIDEBAR
THE ILLS OF A NATION ARE PLAYED OUT DAILY IN PUERTO ASIS
PUERTO ASIS, Colombia - On a wall in this muggy town of 45,000 people, a
graffiti artist has painted a silhouette of the Grim Reaper and superimposed
on it a circle with a slash through it. Above are the words: "Killing is
prohibited."
The artist now lives abroad, driven into exile by threats from right-wing
death squads who have de facto control of the town. "He upset some people with
some things he did," said a friend of the artist, who would not be more
specific.
You watch yourself carefully here: where you go, what you say, who you say
it to. It is easy to make enemies. If there were a nexus for all of Colombia's
ills, it would be this place.
All the country's major warring parties are here: Right-wing paramilitaries
have the final say in town, but leftist guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia, or FARC, dominate the countryside. Their nearest
encampments are located just on the other side of the muddy Putumayo River, a
short drive from the town square on deeply rutted dirt roads. The National
Police have a station in town and the army has a base in the next town to the
north, but neither is able to control the narco-traffickers or the armed
groups in the region.
Though Puerto Asis was founded 87 years ago and is the state of Putumayo's
most important settlement, the central government abandoned the area long ago.
The town center only got an electrical grid 16 months ago; until then,
residents depended on private generators. Most of the roads in town remain
unpaved; most of the state has no roads of any kind.
Crime rates, as in the rest of Putumayo state, are abnormally high, and
violent crime is a way of life: Of the 220 deaths recorded at the town
hospital last year, 211 were homicides.
The town shuts down at 9 p.m. on weekdays; on weekends the streets are
virtually empty at the stroke of midnight, the unofficial curfew enforced by
paramilitaries. And, hard drinking and prostitution flourish.
"There is no state in Putumayo," said a senior official in the
administration of President Andres Pastrana explaining why Plan Colombia
includes such a large military component: "It's like the gold rush in the
United States. We have to control the area, we have to create a state."
The last priest at the principal Catholic church resigned after he
developed an ulcer from the stress, said his successor, the Rev. Luis Alfonso
Gomez. Two other former priests who had spoken out about human rights abuses
fled after learning of paramilitary murder plots against them, he said.
"The critical reality here," said Sister Angela Maria Grenada at the local mission of the Missionaries of the Immaculate Conception, "is that everybody is scared to death."
