PANNA: Devastation in Putumayo and an Expanding War

Don Fernando Castillo(1) and his family took a serious gamble last fall. Having survived in recent years by growing coca--the raw material for cocaine--this family from the small community of El Placer in Putumayo State, southern Colombia, took out loans from three different banks to invest in seeds and equipment from Ecuador to start growing black pepper plants instead. Don Fernando put 2,000 wooden posts in the ground to support the pepper plants; his son put in another 500.

Just after dawn on the morning of November 24, 2001, all 2,500 plants were destroyed. Crop-dusting planes dropped an enhanced formulation of Monsanto's Roundup herbicide (active ingredient glyphosate) onto Don Fernando's fields. Not only pepper but also yucca, papaya, coffee and pineapple plants were destroyed, along with a few small patches of coca. The planes are sold to the Colombian government by the U.S. as part of Plan Colombia--an aid package that has delivered over US$1 billion to Colombia's police and military since 2000. Most of the Castillo's neighbors, whose crops were also hit by the herbicide sprayings that day, abandoned their land, moving to the cities or heading further into the rainforest to plant coca. Don Fernando has been farming his land for 37 years.

When the Castillos invested in pepper, they signed a "social pact" with the Colombian government. Over 30,000 families signed similar pacts in Putumayo last year. The government was to provide about US$860 worth of agricultural aid (livestock, equipment, etc.). After receiving the aid, farmers would have 12 months to manually eradicate their illicit crops (coca or the species of poppy used to make heroin).(2) Like most signatories, Don Fernando and his family had not yet received any aid and, like many other signatories, their crops were killed by the spray-planes anyway. Don Fernando had placed three white flags on tall poles in his pepper field, to let the crop-duster pilots know that he had signed a pact and therefore should not be targeted.

Third round of spraying

The third round of herbicide-spraying missions under Plan Colombia started in mid-November 2001 and was ongoing as of late January 2002 when I visited Putumayo as part of a delegation with Witness for Peace. The sprayings are part of an aggressive counter-narcotics strategy initiated by the Clinton administration, attacking drug-production at "the source"--the small farmers who barely eke out a living growing drug-crops. Most of the program's funds go to the Colombian military and police, purchasing helicopters (Blackhawks and Superhueys) and providing training; the helicopters flank the crop-dusters on spraying missions for protection. The aircraft (war helicopters and crop-dusters alike) are often flown by U.S. pilots--employees of a Virginia-based company called DynCorp, hired by the U.S. Department of State. DynCorp's staff of "private contractors" is made up largely of former U.S. military, Department of State and Central Intelligence Agency personnel.(3)

Denunciations of the sprayings' effects on food security, human health and the environment have been made regularly and emphatically by Colombian farmers, church leaders, local mayors, governors, U.S. Congress members and human rights observers. All these groups have called for an immediate stop to the aerial herbicide sprayings and a growing chorus of international environmental and human rights organizations, including the UN Drug Control Programme and many members of the U.S. Congress, have joined them in this call. No independent body has conducted tests of the chemical mixture in current use. The U.S. Embassy in Colombia insists that the chemicals are harmless, and asks Colombians to take their word for it rather than conduct independent tests--while thousands of reports of adverse health and environmental effects come in from southern Colombia. Even the Human Rights Ombudsman's office, a ministry of the Colombian government, has not been able to obtain a sample of the spray mixture for testing.(4)

Meanwhile, thousands of farmers are displaced from their land by the spraying campaigns, many of them furthering the destruction of the Amazon (an ecosystem often called "the lungs of the world") by destroying trees to plant new coca crops. One hundred thousand of Putumayo's inhabitants arrived in the last ten years, displaced from central Colombia, where they had grown corn and coffee, by the liberalization of Colombia's agricultural markets and the collapse of international coffee prices.(5) Putumayo has no infrastructure to support the marketing of legal food crops. Those farmers who manually eradicate their illicit crops and sign social pacts with the government are left with no agricultural alternatives and little faith in the government when their legal food crops are destroyed in outright violation of the pacts' terms.

Numerous reports of illnesses caused by exposure to the sprayings--the most prevalent being fever, skin rashes, respiratory problems, diarrhea, eye irritation and abdominal pain--have come from southern Colombia since November 2000, when Plan Colombia fumigations began.(6) During our January visit, we heard that two children had died in the most recent round of sprayings.

Inadequate U.S. response

The U.S. Embassy officials with whom we met, while saying that they would "certainly look into" health complaints, simultaneously dismissed out of hand the very possibility that such health effects could exist. During one meeting, the Embassy's fumigations expert gave no response to my request to hear why the U.S. is not applying the precautionary principle in this case; thousands of reports of health problems seem like a compelling reason to take this approach, even if the Embassy genuinely believes that the spraying is safe.

Since September, the Embassy has released two studies of health effects, arguing in the Executive Summary of one that "in the vast majority of cases, reported health problems are not caused by aerial spraying" while the other study makes a similar claim.(7) Yet the studies are full of scientific and methodological flaws that render their conclusions invalid.

The first study was conducted in a community where the herbicide sprayings targeted poppy crops, and, since coca is harder to kill than poppy, the chemicals are much less concentrated over poppy-growing areas. Since over 90% of the sprayings target coca, not poppy, drawing conclusions about the overall health effects of the fumigations from a case-study in a poppy-growing area is scientifically invalid, if not deliberately misleading. The study also looked at only 23 health cases, and discarded eight others without providing any information about them or any rationale for doing so.

The second study, which involved lab analyses of blood and urine samples from people exposed to the fumigations, did not submit the samples for analysis until four months after exposure--over two months beyond the time that any effects would be likely to be seen if pesticide poisoning had occurred.(8) The Colombian epidemiologist and health worker who collected the samples and gathered the baseline health data for the study, Dyva Revelo, told us that the Embassy would not let her see a draft of the report (which they had put together with her data, and which would have her name on it) until it was ready for distribution.

In some communities in Putumayo, the "health" section has recently been excised from the official forms on which farmers are to register complaints about negative effects of the fumigations, since the Embassy apparently considers such complaints incredible.(9)

Witness for Peace

The Witness for Peace delegation in which I participated took place in January 2001. Thirty seven U.S. citizens--labor leaders, environmentalists, educators, counselors, students, social workers, ranging from age 19 to 66--spent six days in Bogota. We met with analysts, community leaders and government officials in an attempt to better understand the complex Colombian conflict and the effects of the U.S.'s expanding role there. For four days, the delegation split into two sections: the labor group traveled to Barrancabermeja, an oil-producing city where union organizers are regularly killed by right-wing paramilitaries (over 60% of the trade unionists killed worldwide last year were killed in Colombia); the rest of us traveled to Putumayo in the south, to see fumigated fields, talk with farmers, and meet with church and campesino (farmer) leaders.

In the south, we visited another farm that belonged to Don Oscar Delgado,(10) an affable and hard-working man who grew corn and kept pasture for grazing. Over ten acres of his corn and pasture were destroyed in a recent herbicide-spraying campaign, even though there were no illicit crops nearby. Many community leaders we met with, as well as academics and policy analysts from Bogota, feel that this spraying of large areas of legal crops without coca nearby is not unusual. It is not so much that the spraying is "indiscriminate," we were told time and again, as that it appears to be deliberately targeting legal as well as illicit crops. As the Colombian sociologist Teofilo Vasquez put it, "Displacement is not a consequence but a strategy of this war." But why would this be the case? Why would the Colombian or U.S. government want to displace Putumayo's farmers?

The U.S. "War on Drugs"?

Answers to these questions are not easily found. An overview of "War on Drugs" strategies and a discussion of recent proposed changes in U.S. aid to Colombia may help elucidate aspects of an answer, however.

The Drug War has, according to its own stated goals, been a tremendous failure.(11) Drug price, availability and purity--the three indicators used to assess the scale of the drug problem in the U.S. and the success of efforts to redress it--have all gotten significantly worse in recent years, despite expanding budgets for domestic and international counter-narcotics initiatives. The U.S. Drug War budget is 20 times larger now than it was when Ronald Reagan took office in 1980.(12) When aggressive counter-narcotics measures reduced coca production in Peru and Bolivia in the 1990s, new fields simply appeared in Colombia. The total coca production of the three countries remained practically constant over the decade--though Drug War advocates regularly point to the successes of Peru and Bolivia to prove the War's viability and efficacy.(13) It is hard to believe that all the officials driving Drug War policy in the U.S. government are unaware of its demonstrated lack of success in reducing drug availability and consumption.

When our delegation arrived at a small airport in Putumayo--formerly a civilian airport, it has recently been commandeered by the Colombian military--a fumigation mission was just leaving. Four sleek planes flew in formation overhead, squirting a few drops of chemicals to greet their friends on the ground. Large blue plastic barrels were rolled out to be filled with the Roundup mixture. One Blackhawk and three Superhuey helicopters lifted from the ground--an impressive, powerful sight--with machine guns leaning out their open doors. It occurred to me suddenly that all this military might was supposed to be trained against a plant. The idea struck me as too absurd to be true.

Protecting U.S. oil interests?

What is the U.S. doing in Colombia, if not waging war on a crop? Recent events shed some light on this question. The Bush administration announced in February that their 2003 budget proposal includes US$98 million in military aid to Colombia, designated for the protection of the Cano Limon pipeline, which brings oil to the Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum Company. If Congress passes the proposed new aid this summer, it will be the first time the U.S. has contributed funds directly to counter-insurgency efforts (the pipeline is regularly blown up by guerrilla groups; the aid would assist the Colombian military in its war against these guerrillas) rather than counter-narcotics.

Returning to the earlier question: why would the displacement of farmers be in the interest of the U.S. or Colombia? A partial answer can be found in what many analysts described as the "eerie symmetry" between the areas most heavily fumigated and the areas where oil deposits are known to exist. The Department of Putumayo is situated in a corner of Colombia directly between Ecuador and Venezuela, South America's leading oil producers. Though oil extraction in Putumayo has been taking place for decades, it remains at a small scale due to the threat of guerrilla attacks on pipelines, refineries and businesspeople. For petroleum corporations to establish large-scale, profitable operations in Colombia, they will need a greater degree of protection from guerrilla attacks; this is precisely what the proposed new counterinsurgency aid is designed to provide.

Occidental and other oil and coal companies have been, along with military contractors, the strongest lobbyists for ostensibly counter-narcotics-focused U.S. support to Plan Colombia since 1999.(14)

Expanding the "War on Terrorism"

Alongside and related to this first explanation (that petroleum interests drive Plan Colombia militarization) is another, more complex argument.

During the U.S. Super Bowl football game this year, a new anti-drug campaign was launched through two expensive 30-second ads. The campaign--called The Anti-drug--also includes billboards and an expansive web site (http://www.theantidrug.com). The Super Bowl ads linked the purchase of drugs to the terrorist attacks on Colombian judges and civilians. "Where do terrorists get their money?" one ad asked. "If you buy drugs, some of it may come from you." The argument is that, since Colombian guerrilla groups profit from drug trafficking, the purchase of drugs supports terrorist activities. A Brigadier General from the Colombian Ministry of Defense, with whom we met, made similar claims to those made in the Super Bowl ads.

The rationale, perhaps, is that if the two appear to be indistinguishable, then there will be less opposition to the currently proposed transition from a "War on Drugs" in Colombia to a "War on Terrorism."

But what does this have to do with the fumigations?

The delegation also met with Ricardo Vargas, one of Latin America's leading drug policy analysts. He remarked that, along with displacing farmers from potential oil-producing areas, the fumigations tend to send those displaced farmers further into the Amazon. In southern Colombia, right-wing paramilitaries currently control many of the urban centers and larger villages; the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) tend to control outlying, rural areas. Thus as farmers move further away from the cities and villages, hoping to evade fumigation, they move further into guerrilla-controlled territory. Over time, Vargas said, the overlap between areas of guerrilla control and areas of drug production will increase as a result of the fumigations, shoring up the currently tenuous argument that drug production and terrorism are identical. The more persuasive this argument becomes, he observed, the easier it will be for the U.S. to assume a more direct role in Colombia's counterinsurgency war, in an attempt to establish more favorable conditions for the entry of major oil (and other natural resource extraction) ventures.(15)

In the meantime--while all these political, economic and military interests continue to work themselves out, producing new policies and intensifications of war--chemicals fall on the communities of Putumayo. The U.S. Embassy and State Department refuse to entertain the possibility that the fumigations have negative health impacts, and produce duplicitous studies to confirm their position. Fish and livestock are killed. Farmers move into the rainforest, cut down precious trees, and plant more coca. Food crops are decimated.

Farmers like Don Fernando are left with ever more difficult decisions. The social pacts have proved an enormous failure, and he is unlikely to be so naïve as to take the government's word next time. Many of his neighbors have resettled temporarily in the city, but Don Fernando needs to pay off the three loans he took out last fall to plant pepper. The fruit trees on his property, which withstood November's spraying, provide just enough food for his family to eat, but Don Fernando needs income quickly. He has only one real option.

Phillip Cryan recently completed a Fellowship at PANNA. He will be moving to Bogotá in April, where he will help coordinate Colombia delegations for Witness for Peace.

Notes

1 This is not the farmer's real name.

2 Isacson, Adam. "The Tragedy of Alternative Development in Colombia," Colombia Report, December 3, 2001.

3 Bigwood, Jeremy. "DynCorp in Colombia: Outsourcing the Drug War," CorpWatch, May 23, 2001.

4 Defensoria del Pueblo Director of Collective Rights and the Environment, meeting with Witness for Peace environmental delegation, January 18, 2002, Bogota.

5 Tatiana Roa, CENSAT AGUA VIVA, meeting with Witness for Peace environmental delegation, January 17, 2002, Bogota.

6 "Efectos de la Fumigacion: Valle del Guamuez y San Miguel, Putumayo," Departamento Administrativo de Salud, February 2001; "Informe Tecnico de la Comision Internacional Sobre Los Impactos en Territorio Ecuatoriano de las Fumigaciones Aereas en Colombia," Adolfo Maldonado (with CONAIE, RAPAL, Accion Ecologica and Instituto de Estudios Ecologistas del Tercer Mundo), July 2001.

7 "Informe Final: Estudio de las Denuncias de Danos a la Salud Relacionadas con la Erradicacion Aerea en Colombia, Departamento de Narino," September 2001 (published by U.S. Embassy in Bogota).

8 Dyva Revelo Calderon (epidemiologist), meeting with Witness for Peace environmental delegation, January 21, 2002, Mocoa, Putumayo.

9 Ibid.

10 Not his real name.

11 "War on Drugs: Addicted to Failure," Institute for Policy Studies, http://www.ips-dc.org/projects/drugpolicy.htm, visited on March 7, 2002.

12 Sanho Tree (Institute for Policy Studies), meeting with Witness for Peace delegations, January 15, 2002, Miami.

13 For example: "U.S. Official Advocates Coordinated Drug Policy for Western Hemisphere," U.S. Department of State, International Information Programs, January 18, 2002.

14 Vaicius, Ingrid and Adam Isacson. "‘Plan Colombia:' The Debate in Congress, 2000," Center for International Policy, December 2000.

15 Ricardo Vargas, meeting with Witness for Peace delegation, January 25, 2002, Bogota.