Un mundo sin fin by Yesica Liliana Florez Arroyo, 2014

Photo by Edinson Ivan Arroyo

 Life around Alvaro’s farm
Hannah Meszaros Martin

A world torn in two hangs on a wall in the centre of a small house

in the jungle. The painting depicts both halves. The world alive,
the world destroyed. And someone, a girl, stands in the middle
of the two; her hands over her face, almost covering her eyes. But
not quite. In her exposed eyes we can see the terror and sadness
of the threshold on which she stands.

Somewhere close by the guerrilla is hiding in the monte, where,

as the people around here say, they are the law of the forest.

We are told that there are two guerrilla fronts currently operating
here in Putumayo: the 39 from Nariño – we are in their territory
now – and the 48 from Caquetá, who reside on the other side of
the road that leads to the international bridge/border with Ecua-
dor. Our guide drew a map of their territories on my napkin at
breakfast. When he ran out of space on the napkin he switched
to my notebook. The frontier with Ecuador runs along the river,
and the road (which follows an oil pipeline) serves as a kind of
border between the two factions. He told us that it is difficult
to go over to the other side of the road. There, weapons, drugs,
money and commanders all cross the river to hide away in the
jungles of Ecuador.

But here around the farm I am approximately eight kilometres

away from Ecuador, visiting fields that were aerially fumigated
four months ago. That exact distance – eight kilometres – is
94 hannah meszaros martin

significant because now Colombia is legally prohibited from

fumigating within ten kilometres of the border. This is because
Ecuador filed a lawsuit against Colombia in the International
Court of Justice claiming that the herbicide was drifting across
the border, damaging their environment and their inhabitants’
health. Fumigation has been the primary ‘tactic’ used to erad-
icate the coca plant in the US-funded ‘Plan Colombia’. In the
court case, Colombia argued that the loss of natural habitat
and damages to human health were necessary ‘collaterals’ in the
context of their ongoing internal armed conflict. In the end,
however, the court ruled that this herbicidal drift was a violation
of Ecuadorian national sovereignty, and Colombia agreed to pay
15 million dollars as a form of settlement. The farmers who we
interview amidst their dead fields of coca and non-coca are all
too aware of this. They say – Ecuador gets millions of dollars, but
what do we end up with over here in Colombia? It is our own state that
did this to us!

And what does fumigation in the selva of Putumayo look like?

Like the painting hanging in the centre of the house. Dried earth
with dried leaves, everything is dead or in the process of dying.
The forest floor has been bleached out, and left in a twisted pat-
tern of brown earth and pale yellow leaves.

The girl who made this painting of the fumigated world puts me
on the back of her motorcycle to go back to her house. She is 15
years old. She wants to go to art school and is happy to hear that
I have been.

Later on, down another path, I am standing in front of a large

pile of these supposedly criminal leaves. They have been dry-
ing for about a day now, lying in the corner of a small wooden
structure, a bit like a suspended platform, next to a stream. Now
we are about one kilometre away from the border. This is a little
laboratory, where the alkaloid used to make cocaine is extracted
 alvaro’s farm 95

from the raw leaves. To my left there is a giant, mysterious pile

of something brown and desiccated, which I am surprised to
learn is entirely comprised of discarded coca leaves. Our new
friends don’t want to have their voices recorded – this is not sur-
prising – although, for some reason, they have no problem with
being filmed or photographed. We avoid their faces nonetheless.
I am fidgeting, not really knowing where to place myself within
this illegal activity. My boots are covered in mud from the walk
here – I am almost embarrassed to wear them on the platform,
like I am dirtying their workspace. I end up sitting on the floor. I
don’t know why, it just feels better to be lower – and out of sight.
They are paranoid about us for sure. We all just kind of shift
around smiling at each other dumbly, like we know how bizarre
this is – all being together on this platform, something so normal
for them, and so out-of-mind-and-body for us – that somehow
we are participating in a criminal activity by just being here.

It is late afternoon, almost the end of the workday. A barefooted

man wearing fashionable clothes carries a 50 kilo sack of leaves
over his shoulders. He looks very out of place here. Obviously
he is strong, but he looks almost glam, with glittery earrings
and skinny jeans, next to the other campesinos in stained trousers
and muddy boots. I realise that he doesn’t want to wear shoes
because the mud will ruin them, and also give away where he has
been today. We ask about the process of making the pasta. The
leaves that have been drying on the floor are chopped up with a
handheld grass-cutting machine; they demonstrate the process
for us, and the cameras. The chopped leaves are then dumped
into a large drum, which is filled with gasoline. They stew in
there, the attendant campesinos stirring the mixture now and
again. Eventually, they let the liquid drain out from a spout at
the bottom of the barrel. The gasoline and water separate. The
gasoline is then discarded into the stream and the remaining
water is boiled down to form the coca paste, which is sold on to
bigger laboratories to be refined into powder.
96 hannah meszaros martin

At the end of the day we all go to a pool of water that has formed
in a depression in the road. We wash our boots, arms, motor-
cycles, clothes, faces – everything that is covered in mud – mud
being the primary evidence of the day’s activities. Again, we are
all staring at each other dumbly, smiling, mainly concentrating
on the task of washing. But then some vague feeling of normalcy
sinks into my stomach through this ritual – like we were never
in the campo, never standing next to piles of coca destined to
become cocaine, never in illegally fumigated fields, like none of
it ever happened. The simple, momentary truth in this pool of
rainwater is that the sun is setting over the jungle, and we are
bathing with our motorcycles.