Colombian
President
Calls
for
End
to
Eradication
10/23/98
Colombian President Andres Pastrana rebuked the US Drug War in harsh language last week (10/15), telling a group of foreign correspondents in Bogota that aerial eradication of coca "has not worked," adding, "clearly, we have to look for another policy." Over the past four years, while US-funded eradication efforts have been increased, the amount of land being used for coca cultivation in Colombia has more than doubled. In response to the eradication efforts, however, peasants have moved their operations deeper and deeper into the Amazon Basin, clearing rain forest and harming the environment. Pastrana, who has taken bold steps to begin peace negotiations with the rebels who control much of the southern half of his country, is scheduled to meet with President Clinton in Washington on October 28-29. But US Drug Warriors, both in the Republican-controlled congress and in the Office of National Drug Control Policy, were less than eager to stop dumping poison on Colombia's rainforest and its inhabitants. "Sixty percent of all the drugs that enter the United States start from or pass through Colombia," Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey told reporters. "There has to be a continued willingness to confront this threat to the hemisphere, and aerial eradication has to be part of it." Eradication has become the focus of a number of environmental groups recently, as the US has pushed for the use of Tebuthiuron, which can be dropped from higher altitudes than traditional defoliants, providing a measure of safety for pilots. Until recently, Dow Chemical held the patent on Tebuthiuron, and had refused to sell it to the US for use in eradication, citing environmental and safety concerns (http://www.drcnet.org/wol/47.html#herbicide). Congress has also ignored Pastrana's statements, and last week passed an omnibus spending bill which included over $150 million in aid, including hardware, for the purpose of eradication. Winifred Tate of the Washington Office on Latin America told The Week Online, "Eradication is obviously a serious issue in terms of the peace process. President Pastrana is in a difficult position on this in that the support of the business community, which is vital to his peace effort, will be impacted if the US decides to decertify Colombia. And there are other relationships as well between the two countries where the US can apply pressure, especially with regard to trade and military aid." Cynthia Arnson, Senior Program Associate of the Latin American Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center told The Week Online, "This latest confrontation over eradication is just the latest manifestation of a storm that has been brewing since Pastrana took office. There growing unease in Colombia with eradication as it is seen as a process which is driving peasants further into the arms of the guerrillas. The growing clash is evidence of contradictory viewpoints between the two governments. It (eradication) is politically difficult for the Colombian government, especially as it pertains to the peace process, but while the State Department has been supportive of that process, there are other interests at stake for the US as well. "Officials in the Pastrana administration have been publicly questioning eradication for some time," she said, "and these latest statements sound like a digging in of the heels in advance of his visit. I'm sure that the program will be seriously discussed next week when President Pastrana is in Washington." (Editor's note: Report after report issued by US government agencies as well as private research groups have found eradication to be a total failure. For example, skim through the General Accounting Office reports online at http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/GOVPUBS/gao/gaomen1.htm for many relevant studies. Mike Gray makes the point powerfully in the book Drug Crazy, released by Random House last June. Chapter six, The River of Money, takes us from the inauguration of President George Bush, who dramatically increased the Andean strategy of coca eradication, through to the end of his four-year administration. Eradication had not reduced coca cultivation -- in fact the total cocaine output in the Andes increased 15 percent -- but had merely shifted it around in what is known as the "balloon effect" or "push down, pop up". In Peru, where $2 billion was spent on eradication during the Bush years, coca cultivation moved from the Upper Huallaga valley, to which it had previously been limited, to the valleys of the Aguatyia, the Ucali, the Tambo and the Apurimac. As Gray puts it, "In all, some two hundred thousand farmers were now growing coca in an area that had been largely rain forest on the day Bush was inaugurated." Latin America's cocaine industry, including cultivation as well as refining and transportation, had spread to an area nearly as large as the continental United States. While drug warriors point to nations that at times have reduced their coca cultivation -- one of the chief criteria in the certification process -- that cultivation has invariably been replaced with increased growing in other nations. Eradication is not sensible part of a drug-fighting strategy; it is a ridiculous wild goose chase, the justifications for which fly in the face of principles familiar to anyone who has taken a single semester of economics. We urge our readers to go to the bookstores and support Mike Gray's important book; or check it out online at http://www.drugcrazy.com to read the first chapter and the appendix of online resources and other information, or to purchase it online. - DB)
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