Ignoring pleas, Uribe accelerates fumigation

July 11, 2003

Over an outcry from campesinos, environmentalists and human rights advocates, President Alvaro Uribe Velez's government has accelerated fumigation efforts and is proposing a fourth antinarcotics base for the U.S.-backed National Police.

During the first five months of the year, according to official figures released Thursday, the police fumigated 158,999 acres of illegal drug crops, equivalent to roughly half of the country's acreage devoted to coca, the raw material for cocaine.

In most fumigation raids, the police use U.S.-supplied aircraft to protect crop dusters flown by U.S. contractors. In the last six months, the police have lost at least four U.S.-supplied Black Hawk helicopters to leftist guerrilla attacks.

Campesinos usually replant their illegal crops, sometimes after clearing away virgin Amazon forest. The police report gave no estimate of how many coca acres remained.

In a related May report, the National Police proposed building a new antinarcotics base equipped with six Air Tractor crop dusters and at least six helicopters. The police already run antidrug bases in the provinces of Narino, Guaviare and Putumayo. The military, additionally, runs antinarcotics bases in the provinces of Putumayo and Caqueta.

The United States has spent more than $2 billion on aid to Colombian security forces since 1996. Most of the funds have gone toward fumigating crops of coca and opium poppy, the raw material for heroin. The herbicide's main ingredient, glyphosate, is produced by St. Louis-based Monsanto and known in the United States by the trade name Roundup.

Colombia still produces more than 80 percent of the world's cocaine supply, according to the U.S. government. And while a relatively small heroin producer on a global scale, Colombia remains the largest supplier of that drug to the U.S. market.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the country's largest guerrilla group, funds itself primarily by "taxing" coca growers. And rightwing paramilitary groups control most of the nation's drug processing and trafficking.

The United States has funded some efforts to help Colombian farmers switch to legal crops, but most campesinos who've uprooted their coca haven't received any aid. And many scientists and health officials say the spraying has devastated human health and the environment across the country.

In a central valley known as the Middle Magdalena, fumigation raids since May 24 have killed livestock, ruined food crops and contaminated the water supply of 100 families, according to the Cimitarra River Valley Campesino Association.

Some 300 Amazonian indigenous communities on May 13 lost a Constitutional Court case that sought to halt fumigation in that region. A nongovernmental organization called the Attorneys Collective condemned the ruling and cited Uribe's influence over the court.

In Putumayo, a southern province, the 128 indigenous governing councils issued a plea last July to the government and the international community to halt fumigation there. The government's human rights chief echoed the plea in October.

Ecuador, additionally, is demanding that the Bogota government fulfill a promise to compensate Ecuadoran campesinos who've lost crops due to the spraying above Putumayo.

SOURCES:

El Espectador, 5/19/03, 5/26/03, 5/27/03;

El Tiempo, 3/25/03;

Environment News Service, 7/22/02,

Presidencia de Colombia, 5/28/03;

Reuters, 5/29/03;

Vanguardia Liberal, 5/28/03.

Additional research and analysis by Colombia Week.

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