Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean

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Eradication without prior consultation: the aerial

fumigation of coca in the black communities of the
Colombian Pacific

Alexander Huezo

To cite this article: Alexander Huezo (2017) Eradication without prior consultation: the aerial
fumigation of coca in the black communities of the Colombian Pacific, Canadian Journal of Latin
American and Caribbean Studies / Revue canadienne des études latino-américaines et caraïbes,
42:3, 375-399, DOI: 10.1080/08263663.2017.1378406

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/08263663.2017.1378406

Published online: 06 Nov 2017.

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CANADIAN JOURNAL OF LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN STUDIES, 2017
VOL. 42, NO. 3, 375–399
https://doi.org/10.1080/08263663.2017.1378406

Eradication without prior consultation: the aerial fumigation

of coca in the black communities of the Colombian Pacific
Alexander Huezo
Department of Global and Sociocultural Studies, Florida International University, Miami, FL, USA

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Until October 2015, Colombia was the only country in the world Received 18 July 2016
still permitting the controversial practice of aerially fumigating Accepted 7 October 2016
illicit crops – mostly coca and, to a lesser extent, opium poppies KEYWORDS
– despite evidence that suggested serious violations of the socio- Coca; aerial fumigation;
environmental rights of affected communities. According to US consulta previa; Colombia;
and Colombian authorities involved in the conduct of aerial era- black communities
dication, however, most of this criticism was unwarranted or exag-
gerated. This article, based on interviews conducted in the last
year the aerial eradication program was in operation, analyzes the
disconnection between officials involved in the oversight of the
aerial eradication and related policy versus black communities of
the Pacific region affected by this strategy. More specifically, it
examines why these rural black communities, supposedly guaran-
teed the right to prior consultation, were never granted this
process and why the aerial eradication complaint system failed
to address the grievances lodged against it. The article concludes
by reflecting on the implications for the territorial rights of black
communities and illicit-crop eradication in Colombia.

RESUMEN
Hasta octubre de 2015, Colombia era el único país del mundo que
todavía permitía la polémica práctica de fumigación aérea de cultivos
ilícitos – principalmente coca y en menor amapola de opio – a pesar de
las evidencias que sugerían graves violaciones a los derechos socio
ambientales de las comunidades afectadas. Sin embargo, según las
autoridades estadounidenses y colombianas involucradas en la
conducción de la erradicación aérea, la mayoría de estas críticas eran
injustificadas o exageradas. Este artículo, basado en las entrevistas
realizadas en el último año del programa de erradicación aérea, analiza
la desconexión entre los funcionarios involucrados en la supervisión y
las políticas relacionadas con la eradicación aérea y las comunidades
negras de la región del Pacífico afectadas por esta estrategia. Más
específicamente, el artículo examina porque estas comunidades
negras rurales, a quienes supuestamente se les garantiza el derecho
a consulta previa, nunca fueron convocadas a este proceso y porque el
sistema de denuncias de erradicación aérea falló en su respuesta a las
quejas presentadas en su contra. El artículo concluye reflexionando
sobre las implicaciones para los derechos territoriales de las comuni-
dades negras y la erradicación de cultivos ilícitos en Colombia.

CONTACT Alexander Huezo adhuezo@gmail.com

This article was originally published with errors. This version has been corrected. Please see Erratum (https://doi.org/10.
1080/08263663.2018.1404233).
© 2017 CALACS
376 A. HUEZO

Until 1 October 2015, Colombia was the only country in the world that still used spray
aircraft to eradicate illicit crops – primarily coca and, to a lesser extent, opium poppies
– as part of the US-supported War on Drugs. Though conducted in Colombia since the
1980s when marijuana was the primary target, aerial eradication became a central
component of a bilateral effort to reduce the production of illegal narcotics following
the 2000 approval of Plan Colombia. It was a highly contentious strategy for a number
of reasons, chiefly the damage caused to plants, animals, and people living in or near
fumigated areas. Yet throughout the controversy, officials involved in the practice of
aerial eradication maintained that the criticism was unwarranted and that potential
damages caused by this counternarcotics strategy were grossly exaggerated. Nearly
two years after the decision to suspend aerial eradication operations, questions remain
about whether aerial eradication might be reinstated at some point.
While much has been written about the effectiveness (Moreno-Sánchez, Kraybill, and
Thompson 2003; Dion and Russler 2008; Rincón-Ruíz and Kallis 2013), environmental
and health implications (Londoño Zapata 2006; Dávalos, Bejarano, and Correa 2009;
Cederstav and Puentes 2012; Camacho and Mejia 2015), and human rights concerns of
aerial eradication in Colombia (Landel 2010; UNDP 2011; Tate 2015), not much
attention has been paid to how the agencies that managed aerial eradication understood
fumigation guidelines and conducted the actual spraying. While there are some pub-
lished reports and investigations on the displacement of communities in spray zones
and documentation of protests against aerial eradication (Ferro and Uribe 2002; Walsh,
Sánchez, and Salinas 2008, 30–1; Programa Presidencial 2010; Ramírez 2011; UN
Refugee Agency 2012), little work has been done to understand precisely how affected
communities experienced and understood aerial eradication.
The central objective of this article is to examine the dramatic disconnection between
US and Colombian authorities involved in the oversight of the aerial eradication
program, and the experiences of people living in or near fumigated areas. By disconnec-
tion, I mean a lack of communication as well as a lack of agreement. As I detail in the
next section, this disconnection can be at least partially attributed to major geographic
and cultural differences between where Colombian illicit-crop eradication policies are
created (largely, Bogotá and Washington DC) and the populations most impacted by
these policies (largely, isolated rural communities).
María Clemencia Ramírez’s ethnography of the protest movement against aerial
eradication in the Putumayo department of the Colombian Amazon in the late 1990s
is fundamental to understanding the differences between official and community
responses that I examine in this article (Ramírez 2011). She describes aerial eradication
as the imposition of a transnational drug policy that further marginalized a population
already disadvantaged within the Colombian civil conflict:

Global anti-drug policy is unidirectional in that it is often imposed without the consulta-
tion of local governments or civil society in affected regions. This reinforces pre-existing
constraints on attempts by the marginalized population to make itself visible through
demands for citizenship in civic, political, social, and cultural terms. (2011, 229)

Ramírez details how certain Colombian state institutions viewed coca growers as “crim-
inals” for growing an illegal crop and, at the same time, labeled coca growers “insurgents”
or “insurgent auxiliaries” because they resided in areas occupied by guerillas (2010, 94).
 CANADIAN JOURNAL OF LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN STUDIES 377

Coca growers responded by referring to themselves as cocaleros (coca leaf growers) in

protest against aerial eradication (Ramírez 2011, 2) and as campesino colonos (peasant
settlers) or campesino cocaleros (peasant coca leaf growers) to distinguish themselves from
the violent activities of mafias that process and traffic coca paste (35). Thus Ramírez
describes how cocaleros demanded their rights as Colombian citizens through protests,
reasoning, “it can be argued that the cocaleros were simultaneously inside and outside the
law. As coca growers they were considered criminals, yet they rejected that status by
exercising their right to participate as citizens” (8).
Massive aerial eradication campaigns in the Amazonian region since the 1990s
eventually factored into the spread of coca cultivation to other parts of Colombia
such as the Pacific region, which is predominantly inhabited by black Colombians
and, to a lesser extent, indigenous peoples (Rubio Serrano 2003, 310). Despite the
backlash generated by the earlier cocalero protests, aerial eradication operations were
also conducted in many of these new cultivation areas. These areas included lands
collectively titled to these respective ethnic communities, supposedly safeguarded by
Colombia’s 1991 constitution.
Roughly two decades after Ramírez’s study, the controversy over aerial eradication
reached fever pitch. Ethnic communities and their supporters protested aerial eradication
from the onset, joining a chorus of critics. Additionally, these communities cited aerial
eradication as a violation of their territorial rights, specifically the right to prior consulta-
tion about activities conducted in their respective collectively titled lands according to
Colombian law and per the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention 169 adopted by the
International Labour Organization in 1989. Meanwhile, aerial eradication authorities –
namely, the Colombian Anti-Narcotics Police (DIRAN) and the US Bureau of
International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) – continually insisted that
the primary chemical used in aerial eradication, glyphosate, was not harmful to humans or
the environment. They also argued that aerial eradication was safer than manual eradica-
tion, which may provoke threats of violence from non-state armed actors, or expose
workers to antipersonnel mines planted to protect illicit crops, as well as to tropical
diseases, and that aerial eradication was better than manual eradication for accessing illicit
crops increasingly cultivated in difficult-to-reach areas.
This article, based on interviews conducted from January to October 2015 in
Colombia, examines one process related to aerial eradication, the right to prior con-
sultation, and one process specific to the aerial eradication program, the aerial eradica-
tion complaint system. Both processes illustrate the disconnection between authorities
involved in the conduct of aerial eradication and the lived experiences of communities
affected by this counternarcotics policy. The interviews were conducted with residents
of rural black communities in the southwestern Pacific region of Colombia – specifi-
cally, the communities surrounding Guapi, Cauca and Buenaventura, Valle del Cauca –
and were facilitated by leaders of the Process of Black Communities (PCN), one of the
organizations at the forefront of the movement to establish the territorial rights of black
communities in Colombia.1 The issues of prior consultation and the aerial eradication
complaint system not only serve as examples of the disconnection between drug policy
authorities and poor rural communities, but are also emblematic of the challenges
facing these communities in the establishment of black territorial rights in Colombia.
378 A. HUEZO

Disconnected space: the black communities of the Pacific region

Colombia’s Pacific region is a vast landscape of lowland tropical forests, mangroves, and
waterways that comprise 7.7% of the national territory. There are approximately 1.4
million inhabitants in the Pacific region living in small riverine settlements and larger
urban areas, representing 3.1% of the nation’s total population (Departamento Nacional
de Planeación 2010, 40). Approximately 45% of the region’s inhabitants live in three
major cities – Quibdó, Buenaventura, and Tumaco – while 46% live in rural areas
(Departamento Nacional de Planeación 2010).
Demographically, approximately 79.5% of the Pacific region’s inhabitants are either
black (73%) or indigenous (6.5%), while the remaining 20% are either white or mestizo
(Departamento Nacional de Planeación 2010, 40). Eighty-eight percent of the Pacific
region’s 45 municipalities overlap with legally recognized ethnic territories2 (42). The
term “Afro-Pacific” is often used in this article as shorthand for the black population in
the Pacific region. The term is not meant to neglect the presence of the indigenous
population in the region. Rather the intent in using this term is to avoid generalizing
what is said about the lived experiences of black communities affected by aerial
eradication with those of other communities in the same region, especially indigenous
groups. In this article I use the terms black and Afro-descendant interchangeably per
the conventions of the people I interviewed. “Afro-Colombian” is a relatively newer
term that comes about through the politicization of ethnic identity (namely, following
the approval of a new constitution in 1991 and Law 70 protecting Afro-Colombians’
rights in 1993).
Topographically, the Pacific region extends along the entire western coast of
Colombia from the Panamanian border to the Ecuadorian border, isolated from
the rest of the country by the Andes mountains. Approximately 50% of all primary
forest in Colombia is located within ethnic territories, including the Afro-Pacific
(Flórez López 2012, 287). With the exception of the highway that connects Cali to
the port city of Buenaventura and the highway that connects Pasto to Tumaco, the
majority of the Pacific region is disconnected from the network of roads that unite
the central Andean highlands. Boat trips to the rural black communities outside of
major towns can range from 20 minutes to 12 hours long. Transportation within the
Pacific region is primarily conducted along the waterways that unify the region,
both spatially and ontologically, by what Oslender (2016b) terms “the logic of
aquatic space”.
Economically, 62.5% of people living in the Pacific region do not have their basic
needs met, compared to the national average of 27% (Departamento Nacional de
Planeación 2010, 20, 384). Households in black communities have traditionally relied
on small farm plots and fishing to guarantee their sustenance and cash crops or
activities such as artisanal mining for income. In recent decades, however, these
activities have been disrupted by the arrival of armed groups, oil palm plantations,
illegal mining, coca cultivation, and the aerial eradication of coca.
Politically, the Pacific region is divided along departmental lines and has limited
representation outside of the region. The Chocó is the only department predominantly
of the Pacific region. The other three departments of the region – Cauca, Nariño, Valle
del Cauca – have much larger populations inland than on the coast. For this reason the
 CANADIAN JOURNAL OF LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN STUDIES 379

Pacific region has minimal representation in the national congress and other branches
of government. For example, Guapi is one of three Pacific region municipalities within
the department of Cauca. Yet, the demographic, physical, and cultural landscape of
Guapi could not be any more different than the capital of the department, Popayán, or
the rest of inland Cauca. For these reasons, many residents of the Afro-Pacific feel
disconnected from the national government, their respective departmental govern-
ments, and the rest of the country.

Black communities in the Pacific region and the struggle for territorial rights
Black Colombians have historically been excluded from the majority white-mestizo
population’s imagination of Colombia (Wade 1993, 36), which is a reason why black
communities in the Pacific region have sought to establish territorial rights and a reason
why this process has been so arduous. Black activists first had to confront the percep-
tion that their communities merited recognition as an ethnic group: “Black commu-
nities, it was argued out of ignorance, did not conform to the definition of an ‘ethnic
group’ since they lacked their own language and forms of rights and authority; they
were fully integrated as citizens into the mestizo life of the country; and they had
adopted alien cultural elements” (Grueso, Rosero, and Escobar 2003, 432). In other
words, black communities were not considered under the parameters that recognized
some Indigenous communities with special territorial and political rights as early as
1890 (Arocha 1992, 41).3 In fact, historically blacks have been characterized as illegal
occupants of the Pacific region, due in part to the fact that free black settlements,
constituted of both escaped and manumitted slaves, were never formerly recognized as
territories and because of legislation meant to protect indigenous lands from encroach-
ment by black settlers (45).
Black communities of the Pacific region had to establish that their territorial claims
were rooted in traditional patterns of land use that date back generations, despite
national legislation that denied this history. As Oslender explains, “patterns of tradi-
tional landownership were ignored and made invisible by national legislation in 1959
that declared rural untitled lands in the Pacific lowlands as tierras baldías, or unoccu-
pied state-owned public lands” (2016b, 64). Informal land agreements, the norm in
rural Colombia, were disregarded, essentially rendering these lands “unoccupied”
despite generations of presence and use by black communities. The eventual establish-
ment of collective ethnic community land titles could therefore be understood as a re-
territorialization of traditional lands that had been converted into tierras baldías.
The PCN understands this re-territorialization as a product of struggle. The new
Colombian constitution of 1991, “presented as the construction of a pluriethnic and
multicultural nation”, provided an avenue for the articulation of an “Afro-descendant”
or “Afro-Colombian” identity rooted in the Pacific region (Grueso, Rosero, and Escobar
2003, 432). Black activists pursued an indigenous model of territoriality that argued for
claims to land rights on the basis of autochthony (Cárdenas 2012, 309). These efforts
eventually culminated in the passage of Law 70 in 1993, which recognized collective
land titles for black communities: “The law does this, essentially, by elaborating a ‘black
ethnicity,’ something constituted by culture (traditional production systems), history
(palenques and self-liberation), and geography (rural riverine and Pacific)” (Offen 2003,
380 A. HUEZO

58). Thus the titling of lands was not simply gifted by the Colombian state, but
produced through the efforts of black activists and their networks of supporters.
The re-territorialization of black communities, however, did not end with the
passage of Law 70, not only because the collective titling of black communities
continues today, but also because black activists seek greater territorial autonomy and
participation in Colombian democracy than Law 70 and the Colombian court system
have afforded black communities thus far. Asher explains, “For the state, recognizing
Afro-Colombian ethnic rights meant incorporating them as resource stewards into its
development and conservation practices: this was the purpose, as much as the product,
of land titling. For PCN and other black activist groups, ethnic recognition implied
more than property rights and participation in the state’s projects” (Asher 2009, 59).
Law 70 specifies that black communities that have occupied public lands, in accordance
with their traditional practices of production, have a right to collective property (Article
1 of Law 70) and that these collective titles will be known as “Lands of Black
Communities” (Article 4 of Law 70).
Black activist groups such as PCN prefer to use the term “territory” to refer to their
collectively titled lands in the Pacific region to “counter the state’s agenda by putting
forth the idea of territoriality as opposed to land title” (Asher 2009, 59). Therefore,
through the discursive production of “the territory” or “black territory” or “Afro-
descendant territory”, black activists are actually promoting “territoriality” – broadly
defined as “the use and control of territory for political, social, and economic ends”
(Agnew and Oslender 2013, 123) – because only territoriality “encompasses the idea of
territory as a social, cultural and material space” (Asher and Ojeda 2009, 299).
Throughout the rest of this article, therefore, terms such as “black territory” or
“Afro-descendant territory” or “the territory” will connote the perspective of black
activists engaged in the struggle for black territorial rights in the Pacific region as
well as their desire to participate in the multicultural democracy proposed by the 1991
constitution. With this demographic, geographic, political, and legal context in mind, I
will now turn to an examination of the impacts of the War on Drugs and the practice of
aerial fumigation.

Coca cultivation in the rural black communities of Guapi and Buenaventura

A common criticism of US-supported illicit-crop eradication in Latin America is that these
efforts have failed to decrease the amount of narcotics being exported from the region and
that the supply has remained relatively steady over time (Moreno-Sánchez, Kraybill, and
Thompson 2003; Dion and Russler 2008; Rincón-Ruiz and Kallis 2013). The “balloon
effect” refers to the phenomenon of illicit-crop cultivation being reduced in one region,
only to increase in another region (Dion and Russler 2008, 400–1; Rincón-Ruiz and Kallis
2013, 64–5). This effect occurs between the three main coca-producing countries –
Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia – and within these countries. For instance, illicit-crop
eradication efforts in Peru and Bolivia contributed to a massive increase in the amount
of coca cultivated in Colombia in the 1990s–2000s, while more recent eradication efforts in
Colombia contributed to Peru and Bolivia surpassing Colombia in 2012 (The Economist
2013). In Colombia, coca was cultivated in 12 departments in 1999, which expanded to 23
departments by 2003 (UNODC 2004, 7, 11).4
 CANADIAN JOURNAL OF LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN STUDIES 381

The Colombian Pacific Coast initially served as a trafficking corridor for cocaine but
has now been transformed into a major coca-growing area. Colombian anthropologist
Eduardo Restrepo describes how the region’s unique topography facilitated the trans-
portation of coca products:

The morphology of the southern Pacific Coast, replete with estuaries and mangroves,
crossed by countless rivers and tributaries that penetrate deep into rainforests, facilitates
the travel of small rapid boats with which to transport the alkaloid to Central America, and
from there, to North America. At the same time, the continuous flow of cargo vessels
transporting timber coming from the dozens of sawmills camouflage the drugs headed to
the port of Buenaventura. (2013, 270)

Coca cultivation spread to the Pacific region in the 1990s, principally the department of
Nariño, in response to the massive aerial eradication campaigns in the Amazonian
region during that period. With the implementation of Plan Colombia – which made
aerial eradication a central strategy of counternarcotics efforts – as well as the prolif-
eration of FARC and paramilitary conflicts in the Amazonian region, many of these
colonos (settlers from the Andean region who had moved to the Amazonian region) and
raspachines (coca harvesters) left the departments of Putumayo and Caquetá to resettle
in Nariño (Restrepo 2013, 268–9).
As a result of this history, many residents of the rural black communities I
interviewed perceived coca cultivation as an imported activity, something that paisas,
or residents of the department of Antioquia, brought to the region, through either
coercive or corrupt means.5 I had originally intended to interview residents of the
rural black communities of Nariño because not only had this area transformed into
the epicenter of the coca boom in the Pacific region, but it was also the most heavily
fumigated department in the country over the last decade (UNODC 2015). However,
Tumaco, the principal port and municipality on the Pacific Coast of Nariño, was
caliente as everyone explained, which meant that it was simply too dangerous to visit.
In lieu of visiting the rural black communities of Tumaco, I interviewed residents of
the rural black communities of Buenaventura, Valle del Cauca, and Guapi, Cauca,
both areas that have been affected by the spread of coca cultivation since the 1990s
(Figure 1).
When I asked interviewees about coca cultivation in their communities, I had to be
mindful of the fact that individuals may not want to answer such questions directly,
may only want to discuss the topic in private, or may not want to discuss the topic at all
for fear of retribution by non-state armed actors. “That is not our culture” was a
popular refrain from residents asked their opinion about coca being grown in their
communities. As Meertens explains, in the context of forcible displacement in the civil
conflict, “In a situation where it is not safe to assume any responsibility nor to make any
accusation, the only way to refer to acts and perpetrators of violence is in a neutral
form: violence came here yesterday, as if it were an autonomous force and not a human
act” (2001, 138, emphasis in the original). Héctor Marino from Río Naya,
Buenaventura, was open to discussing coca cultivation in his community but certainly
cautious about identifying the actors involved in this activity:
382 A. HUEZO

Black Territories

IndigenousTerritories

Coca 2013

CHOCÓ

BOGOTÁ
VALLE DEL CAUCA

BUENAVENTURA

POPAYÁN
GUAPI
CAUCA

TUMACO

NARIÑO CAQUETÁ

PASTO

PUTUMAYO
Ethnic Territories - INCODER
Coca Cultivation 2013 - SIMCI
Municipal & Departamental Boundaries - IGAC

Figure 1. Ethnic territories and coca in southwestern Colombia.

AH: When did people start to cultivate coca in your community?

Marino: Around 1995 armed groups begin arriving and with them came the coca and
after that, the fumigation.
 CANADIAN JOURNAL OF LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN STUDIES 383

AH: Did the armed groups force people to participate in the cultivation?
Marino: No, they accomplish participation through pedagogies, political pedagogies
that achieve a certain consciousness in the community; market politics,
economics and business, that reach people and they decide for themselves
if it is good or bad, according to their conscience. So it’s promoted like this
vision of economic income and development that will allow people to
change their lives, like when people launch a small company.
AH: So it was viewed as something positive?
Marino: No, not in any sense was it good. It was great for those that bought into a
foreign concept of development, based on a culture that has nothing to do
with ours. It could have been great for those individuals but, no, it was not
good for the community or the territory. Let’s say the community and the
territory together are a system and that system is composed of subsystems
. . . so when they arrived (armed groups) they ruined many of these sub-
systems, so there is no benefit. For those that now subscribe to this new
independent system, they benefit, but not at the community level.
AH: So that’s how coca cultivation began in your community. What about
nowadays? Is it still the same people growing coca or do certain armed
groups have more influence over the cultivation?
Marino: Let’s just say it’s a system, in which one can’t define who is and who is not
guilty.6

By referencing different “systems”, Marino conceptualized coca cultivation as a

destructive logic – foreign to black communities – without incriminating the growers
or the armed groups implicated in the regulation of coca. For Marino, the coca plant
itself was not the problem, but rather it was the logic behind growing the plants to
process them into cocaine.7
In my conversations with them, PCN-affiliated community council representatives
were outspoken about not wanting coca in their communities not only because it
represented a foreign economic logic, but also because aerial eradication planes often
sprayed large swaths of licit crops in attempting to wipe out coca crops. Nemesio
Hurtado of Río Guajuí, Guapi, remembers how the warnings against coca cultivation
fell on deaf ears and how aerial eradication compromised the agricultural productivity
of his community and its most profitable crop, chontaduro (peach palm):
To this day folks have not been able to recover, that is the decline that accompanied it
[aerial eradication of coca] .. . . It is an absolute crisis; the price of goods has increased.
What we saw coming, those of us who knew what had happened in the eastern plains . . .
we told everyone that this was bad business because it would result in downfall but folks
did not listen.8

According to Hurtado, part of the problem stemmed from the fact that in the late 1990s the
community council was not as organized and did not have the power that it has today.
Every collectively titled black community contains a concejo comunitario (community
council), of elected representatives. While the PCN is a very popular Afro-descendant
political organization throughout the Pacific region, it is not the only one and many
community councils are split between PCN representatives and other groups. In the case
of both coca cultivation and illegal mining, which also eventually became a serious problem
384 A. HUEZO

in his community, an outsider approached a community resident and convinced him to act
as a liaison to the rest of the community. While some community members rejected the
offer to grow coca or permit the operation of mining machinery, others agreed. Once the
cultivation or mining began, it was difficult to challenge these decisions without putting
lives in danger as non-state armed groups were backing these investments.
In other cases, the coca growers were outsiders who threatened locals with violence
upon their arrival. I interviewed four men – Tulio Montaño, Juan Alturo, Adolfo
Sánchez, and Teodoro Montaño – who explained how coca arrived in El Penitente
near their farm in Temuey, Guapi:

Juan: It arrived from Cali, Nariño, Antioquia . . . people from Medellín . . . who
came to our region . . ..
Tulio: Imagine this, you have your plot of land and they begin to plant and
harvest coca. You cannot say anything because they threaten you. They
take your land and you just have to remain silent . . ..
Adolfo: They look for the weakest, least wise people in the community.
Teodoro: They offer them money to rent the land and like that, they start taking our
land.
Juan: One does not want to create problems by speaking out.
Tulio: Something could happen to you. We cannot say anything.
Juan: You may be threatened or killed.9

The farm belonging to these gentlemen was sprayed despite the fact that the nearest
plots with coca were 5–6 kilometers away.
Lastly, I interviewed a few coca growers who admitted to harvesting the plant out of
desperation. One older man from Guapi Arriba argued that he would have not grown
coca if the government had invested in agriculture in Guapi instead of aerial eradica-
tion. He then created a hypothetical dialogue between himself and his frustrated
neighbors to illustrate his point:
In those times when I had some [coca] plants, if they said to me, “Hey, why are you doing
that, what is up with that?” I would explain, “I don’t have any money, I’m an old man”. So
they, if they asked, “How much money do you need to survive?” And one says, “Well, with
a million pesos (approximately $350 USD) I could have enough to plant my subsistence
crops”. And if they said, “Ok, take this money. You have land, go and get to work”. I
would have done that and I would be willing to do that and I think many people could
have avoided putting themselves in danger that way.10

So for this gentleman his decision to grow coca was about meeting his basic needs when
he felt that he did not have other options. The same was true of the other interviewees
growing coca, all of whom did so by growing “unos palitos” (some coca plants)
interspersed with legal crops (yucca, taro root, peach palm, mango, plantains, guava,
etc.) per the traditional agricultural practice of intermixing subsistence crops in the
Pacific region (Machado Cartagena 1993).
While these interviews revealed some of the different dynamics of coca growing in
the Afro-Pacific, PCN leadership was very clear that black communities should have a
say in how the coca cultivation problem should be addressed. This point was repeated
 CANADIAN JOURNAL OF LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN STUDIES 385

over and over by both farmers who claimed to only have legal crops and those that
cultivated coca. For instance, when I explained to Silvano Caicedo of Río Anchicayá,
Buenaventura, that eradication authorities preferred aerial eradication over manual
eradication because it puts many less lives in immediate danger,11 he responded that
communities could learn to manually eradicate the coca themselves: “they should send
us a video or find some legal mechanism through the United Nations”.12
Black communities also encountered problems with authorities in instances where
the community itself organized to voluntarily eradicate. One resident of Yurumanguí,
Buenaventura, detailed how in 2007 his community council urged residents to form a
minga (collective work team) and manually eradicate 27 hectares of coca being grown
by an outsider.13 The community council argued that the outsider was putting much
more than his own farm at risk because the authorities would simply fumigate every-
one’s crops without any warning. After the eradication the man demanded payment
from the community, which was promptly denied on the grounds that he was trespas-
sing and conducting illegal business within the territory. Dismayed, the man then went
to speak with the Colombian military and denounced the community as testaferros
(front men), implying that the community had been working with the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia (the leftist FARC guerrillas). Though the military ultimately
sided with the community, several PCN leaders were subjected to investigation because
of the man’s accusations. Community leaders were outraged not only that they were
under investigation, but that the real criminal initially had the support of the
Colombian military.14
On the one hand, this case was exceptional because it was only one person – an
outsider – growing coca in a community with strong PCN leadership. For other black
communities in the region – those where outsiders have violently established coca
cultivation within territorial boundaries and/or those with multiple community resi-
dents cultivating coca themselves – negotiating voluntary eradication would have been
much more difficult, if not impossible. On the other hand, PCN leaders mentioned the
efforts in Yurumanguí as an example where the community initiated voluntary manual
eradication as proof that black communities should and can be more involved in
counternarcotics efforts.15

Why not more voluntary eradication or alternative development?

The majority of US and Colombian government officials I spoke with outwardly
expressed support for alternative approaches to eliminating illicit crops besides aerial
eradication. For instance, in 2014, I asked William Brownfield, former US Ambassador
to Colombia and the current INL Assistant Secretary, about his view on the future of
the aerial eradication program in Colombia, and he mentioned voluntary manual
eradication and alternative development as part of his response:
The ideal is voluntary eradication. And voluntary eradication I acknowledge, you don’t just
say “please do it because it’s the right thing”: you have to find a way to make it in the
interest of the individual campesino or subsistence farmer in Afghanistan to understand
why he or she wants to eradicate. They’ve got to get something, whether it’s alternative
development, an additional livelihood, schools, clinics, paved roads, water, sewage, elec-
tricity . . . something. They have to have some reason to understand why it is in my interest
386 A. HUEZO

to eradicate this stuff even though I know that if I grow corn I’m only going to make 25%
as much as I’m making by growing coca.16

What Brownfield did not mention in his complete response to my question is that
voluntary eradication and alternative development have been the least prioritized strate-
gies in the history of US-supported counternarcotics efforts in Colombia. In fact the
reason that the primary organization monitoring illicit-crop cultivation and eradication
efforts in Colombia, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), does not
have any data on voluntary manual eradication in Colombia is because the impetus for
and coordination of such efforts have come from the communities themselves.17
While there have been an array of crop-substitution programs supported by the
UNODC, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and
various NGOs, the INL stated that these fields would be aerially fumigated if any illicit
crops were detected among the substitute crops.18 Therefore, in addition to the farmers
I spoke with who claimed their coca-free farms had been unjustly fumigated, I also
heard numerous accounts of alternative development fields being sprayed. A resident of
Río Napi, Guapi, explained:

Sometimes the community councils initiate their own projects to cultivate subsistence
crops such as plantains, rice, corn . . . but they fumigate the fields and we are left with
nothing, just like what happened with our cacao project. So if they fumigate, what are we
to do? There should be some guarantee from the government that they will not fumigate
these projects.19

At a PCN gathering to discuss the association of five communities in Guapi, frustration

set in among the participants when the subject of a new agricultural project was
introduced. “Why even bother if it is going to be aerially fumigated?” was the question
repeated throughout the ensuing discussion.20
I spoke with attorney Carlos Barrios, who represented three black communities of
Tumaco – Río Chagüí, Río Mejicano, and Río Rosario – in a lengthy court case
involving crop-substitution fields that had been fumigated. Barrios explained that
these community councils formed an association and signed agreements with the
national government through the Programa Presidencial to launch a crop-substitution
project with the support of USAID, the UNODC, and Acción Social (a government
agency that assisted victims of violence).21 After enduring 7 years of aerial eradication,
the association cited the voluntary eradication of 500 hectares of coca plants as well as
the establishment of 5500 hectares of agroforestry products, 1200 hectares of cacao, and
750 hectares of coconut palm (Carta Abierta 2009). Part of the agreement was that
DIRAN promised to demarcate the project as off limits to aerial eradication so long as
the fields were inspected and certified as being coca-free by the UNODC. Despite this
certification, the fields were fumigated.22
The case went to court in 2009 and ended unsuccessfully for the communities in
2013. Carlos commented that DIRAN offered various explanations for why the fumiga-
tion was conducted. One explanation was that a particular field within the project
contained coca while another explanation was that the project was very close to nearby
coca fields targeted for aerial eradication and that the wind had blown the spray off
course (a phenomenon known as “aerial drift”). When I asked Carlos why he thought
they lost the case he responded that the first explanation was surprising because an
 CANADIAN JOURNAL OF LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN STUDIES 387

agreement had been signed and a UNODC technician was permanently assigned to
verify that the fields were coca-free. He then asked:
If there are resources for crop substitution and there are resources for DIRAN, then why
are there not resources for coordination between these two entities? These are institutional
errors. And (black) communities are supposedly guaranteed constitutional protection with
the backing of international agreements.

In Carlos’s opinion, the fundamental difficulty in taking this type of collective action to
trial is gathering evidence of culpability. He sadly acknowledged, “Unfortunately, black
organizations simply do not have the financial support necessary to win these battles”.23
On 27 March 2014, the Colombian Constitutional Court issued Order 073, which
drew on an earlier ruling (Sentence T-25 of 2004) to protect victims and potential
victims of forcible displacement in Nariño. It is extremely important to note that
according to Article 3, Paragraph 3 of Law 1448 of 2011 – the law that defines the
victims of the civil conflict and the terms of restitution – people who have suffered a
violation of their rights are not considered victims if the damages caused to them were
the result of their participation in criminal activity (República de Colombia 2011). This
law precluded people displaced by aerial eradication from being considered victims and
earning whatever restitution or benefits might be available to them. Essentially, people
displaced by aerial eradication are guilty by association, whether they were growing
illicit crops or not. Not only did people displaced by aerial eradication not receive any
benefits, but they also did not figure into the official registry of displaced persons.
Neither were they counted as victims according to the 2011 Victims Law. Therefore, the
estimates of people displaced by aerial eradication are quite varied and difficult to
disentangle from the larger numbers of people displaced by violence from the very same
places.24 Order 073 detailed how aerial eradication generated displacement and speci-
fically called for those black communities affected by aerial eradication in Nariño to
receive prior consultation per Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention No.169
(República de Colombia 2014, 74–6).

Eradication without prior consultation

In response to communities that wanted to have some say about how coca was
eradicated from their communities, aerial eradication authorities preferred not to
disclose any details about their intended targets. There were a number of strategies
that coca-growers employed to protect or save some of their sprayed harvests. Aerial
eradication was not intended to kill coca plants: rather the intent was to lower the
alkaloid content of the coca leaf to the point that it was no longer profitable.25 As much
as aerial eradication authorities attempted to surprise coca growers, sometimes coca
growers knew about an aerial eradication operation before it happened. The older
gentleman from Guapi Arriba explained:
People knew, not exactly where the fumigation would occur, but yes they would see that
preparations were under way in Guapi . . . the planes and helicopters at the airport. Because
people had seen it before, they knew. People did not know what area exactly was going to
be sprayed though because they would spray in some parts but not in others. They mixed
things up.26
388 A. HUEZO

A fleet of helicopters and planes arriving at the nearest airport, flying overhead to take
pictures, or the bombardment of an area in anticipation of an eradication mission was
ample warning,27 especially if aerial eradication missions had already been conducted in
the area.
In these instances certain products – such as Pony Malta (a popular Colombian
soda) or molasses – could be applied as a coating to protect the plants from absorbing
the glyphosate.28 If the coca growers were caught off guard by the fumigation, then
cutting the sprayed top leaves of the plant or washing off the glyphosate could also
work.29 For instance, in a town in Antioquia a local business was set up to rent water
pumps to coca farmers whose harvests had been sprayed.30 For these reasons and
others, targeted areas were often aerially fumigated multiple times to produce the
desired effects.31 Alerting a community prior to aerial eradication would have also
put the lives of pilots and associated personnel in danger, as eradication aircraft were
frequently the targets of ground fire from guerrilla groups. Between 2002 and 2013, 650
aircraft were impacted by ground fire and four were shot down during aerial eradica-
tion operations (DIRAN website).
At the same time, black and indigenous communities were supposedly guaranteed
the right to determine the activities conducted in their territories. This right – the
primary legal instrument that black and indigenous communities have to assert
control over what happens within the boundaries of their respective collectively titled
lands – is known as consulta previa (the right to prior consultation). In 1991
Colombia ratified an international treaty known as Indigenous and Tribal Peoples
Convention 169, created by the International Labour Organization (ILO). Convention
169 establishes that state-recognized ethnic territories need to be consulted before the
extraction of resources, the implementation of projects, or any other activities that
might jeopardize residents’ rights to occupy their land and practice local traditions
(ILO 1989). Despite the fact that Convention 169 was ratified the same year as the
new Colombian constitution of 1991, the Colombian Congress never made consulta
previa into explicit law. Instead, consulta previa has been developed through case law
in constitutional courts where Convention 169 has been invoked on behalf of black
and indigenous communities.32 With respect to aerial eradication, Decision 383 of
2003 determined that because many indigenous communities consume coca leaf as
part of their traditional culture, aerial eradication without prior consultation was a
violation of their right to cultural identity (República de Colombia 2003). In theory,
all indigenous communities in Colombia had the right to be consulted prior to aerial
eradication because counternarcotics authorities such as DIRAN, INL and the
Colombian National Council on Narcotics (CNE) did not keep a list of which
communities consume coca leaf as part of their traditions.33
The question of whether black communities should have been consulted prior to
aerial eradication was an extremely divisive one. Pablo Rueda, former Director of
Consulta Previa in the Ministry of the Interior, described a disagreement between
himself and Farid Benavides, the Vice Minister of Criminal Policy in the Ministry
of Justice, which took place during an academic conference. Rueda argued that
black communities should always be consulted if an activity is being conducted in
their territory that will directly affect their community.34 Benavides countered that
granting black communities the right to prior consultation would set a problematic
 CANADIAN JOURNAL OF LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN STUDIES 389

precedent for Colombian law because black communities do not consume coca leaf
as a traditional practice. According to his logic, any community – black, white or
mestizo – could then demand the right to be consulted prior to aerial eradication.
Regardless of where one stood in the aforementioned disagreement, the govern-
ment officials I spoke to agreed that consulta previa does not work the way it should
in Colombia. Prior consultation is meant to be a mutual conversation between
national government officials and representatives of the respective ethnic commu-
nities. What happens much of the time is that the consulta is never carried out or the
ethnic communities are simply informed of what will happen in their territory ahead
of time.35 Pablo Rueda complained that Ministry of Justice officials only attended
approximately three of the 30 consultas he oversaw during his time as the director of
consulta previa.36 An employee of the Ministry of Justice cited personal concerns
about safety in the communities and other job responsibilities as possible reasons for
the poor attendance. She added that most people employed in governmental agencies
are contracted and that there is sometimes a shortage of personnel to delegate to
attend the consultas.37
According to Lt. Colonel Tunjano of DIRAN, there was no formal mandate to
inform local authorities (except in indigenous communities) that an aerial eradication
mission was about to take place. He did, however, state that part of the aerial eradica-
tion protocol is to inform departmental and municipal authorities as a matter of
courtesy.38 An analyst for the Defensoría del Pueblo (the Ombudsman’s Office, which
is also the state’s human rights agency) explained that DIRAN was supposed to inform
the municipal administration, which would then inform relevant local officials such as
the personero (municipal human rights ombudsman). The analyst also explained that
this protocol was often ignored, especially in the Pacific region where transportation to
and communication with municipal authorities can be difficult. He believed this was
problematic because each municipality should have been prepared in the case of an
accident during an aerial eradication mission or in the event that affected residents
subsequently protested the fumigation.39
Nevertheless, there was a complaint system in place to address the grievances of
people who felt that they had been wrongly sprayed. As Lt. Colonel Tunjano simply
explained, “If we sprayed and they had no coca, we pay. If we sprayed and they had
coca then we do not pay”.40

Complaints about the complaint system

Throughout the history of the complaint system, the number of successful cases that
resulted in compensation was an extremely small percentage of the number filed. For
instance in 2008, only 31 of 987 (3.1%) complaints received compensation and the
average number of successful aerial eradication complaints over the next few years was
still roughly 3%.41 INL personnel attribute this low percentage to a high incidence of
unjustified claims, such as complaints for days when fumigation was not conducted,
lots where coca was identified on the premises, claimants who did not properly follow
complaint protocols, and, in recent years, the FARC encouraging campesinos to register
false complaints to thwart the aerial eradication program.42
390 A. HUEZO

There are a number of mitigating factors that undoubtedly contributed to the low
success rate of complaints filed. The number one factor to consider, which had been a
major criticism of the process since its inception, is that complaints were verified by the
same agency (DIRAN) that conducted aerial eradication. Furthermore, while local
government authorities participated in the receipt of complaints and other government
agencies might have been requested to participate in the evaluation of the complaint
process, the claimant had to furnish evidence to prove that DIRAN had mistakenly
fumigated someone’s property.
For poor farmers with limited education living in rural areas the complaint process
required access to a computer with internet to download the “easily accessible com-
plaint form”, a GPS device to record the coordinates of the property, property titles for
a population that typically lives on land that it does not possess the title to, money and
time to travel to the nearest municipality and make numerous photocopies, photo-
graphic evidence and monetary estimations of damages, and trust in local government
officials who are supposed to accept, assess, and forward the documents to DIRAN if
they deem the claim is valid. The Technical Coordinator of the Integrated Illicit Crops
Monitoring System (SIMCI), which is the office that processes satellite images of coca
cultivation for DIRAN – was critical of the complaint process in general, explaining:

If a person is wrongly affected by aerial eradication, there is a very small probability of being
compensated for that error. That is because we do not definitively know how many errors
there have been. So many people complain that they do not even begin the complaint process
because it so complicated. So many of the complaint requirements are absurd. Very few
people have GPS and are able to provide the coordinates of their farms, so right there a large
number of complaints die. If the complaint is successfully registered, then what they do is
schedule a visit. The visit can happen two months later and someone arrives and says, “No,
we cannot find evidence of glyphosate”. And obviously after two months it is very likely that
you will not find traces of glyphosate in the plants. This complaint mechanism does not really
work and we have no idea how often this is the case.43

As one might expect, many farmers simply do not bother or trust the process to begin
with. At the end of the day the claim could be rejected for any number of reasons
without DIRAN having to submit any evidence unless compelled to do so by the court
system.
Residents and representatives of black communities were largely frustrated by the
lack of transparency of the government institutions managing the complaint process
and generally distrustful of these institutions. Silson Carabalí, the ombudsman of
Guapi, explained the steps that local governing entities usually took in filing a com-
plaint for a black community. The mayor, the ombudsman, and the community council
would form a committee with other relevant local government entities to determine
whether individual complaints were valid. Based on that evaluation the committee
would then file a complaint. However, Carabalí argued that most often in Guapi the
process would never go any further because the committee had no success finding a
“competent authority” to process and resolve the complaint.44 In the municipality of
Buenaventura, which unlike the municipality of Guapi is not almost entirely composed
of lands titled to black communities, the relationship between black communities and
the local administration is more tenuous. Mario Angulo, the director of PCN in
Buenaventura, explained that the office of the Secretary General organized spaces
 CANADIAN JOURNAL OF LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN STUDIES 391

where the communities could conduct estimates of the damage caused, file the com-
plaints, and meet with DIRAN. However, DIRAN evaded culpability by claiming the
aerial eradication missions were conducted on presidential orders and the communities
could not count on the municipal government for support.45
Within the black territories of the Pacific the collective titling of community lands
means that, in addition to local government authorities, residents must also place their
trust in their representative councils. In theory, the process of receiving compensation
for the aerial spraying of collectively titled lands would seem more manageable than the
process for an individual complaint because elected community council representatives
collected all of the information required for the community and facilitated the entire
process. Robinson Paz and Orfilio Carabalí, residents of Río Iscuandé, Nariño,
described the great lengths they went to in order to gather the proper documents for
submission to their local representatives. Carabalí claims that when he traveled to the
mayor’s office to find out what had happened with their case on wrongful fumigation,
he was informed that the compensation had already been awarded to the community
council. He was then given the phone number of a lawyer to inquire further, but he
never called, unsure about whom to trust on the matter. Paz explained, “We campesi-
nos, we have always been subject to deception. People know that, yeah, the benefits we
might receive are not much but actually receiving them is another matter”.46
While I could not confirm that the local community council withheld compensation,
I did speak with several residents of Guapi, Cauca, who expressed similar distrust in
local government authorities and the restitution processes. These residents had sub-
mitted evidence in a class action court case against the aerial eradication program that
began in 2008. While the case is still being litigated in courts, many people I spoke with
have either forgotten about it or lost faith in the process. Even if the case is resolved in
the coming year, it will have taken nearly 10 years for some people to be awarded
restitution.47
Whether the acquisition of compensation took as little as a month (absolute best-
case scenario) or a decade, a great deal of effort and patience was required for a process
that did not work in the claimant’s favor about 97% of the time.

Conclusion: life after aerial eradication

I don’t know how they come up with . . . it is human error to think that the city of
Buenaventura functions the same as Cajambre. Although both places are part of the same
municipal district, they are two completely different things. That is the error. They are
thinking about this from over there and establishing standards for how to deal with this
situation from Bogotá, from the city. It is a mistake. So their strategy and everything that it
involves . . . they never think about the reality of the territory; their thinking is based on
other realities. – Daniel Goez48

Goez’s comment is illustrative of the disconnection between aerial eradication policy

and practice outlined in this article for two major reasons. In the first sense, he signals
three different political contexts – Bogotá (the capital and epicenter of Colombian drug
policy), Buenaventura (the largest port city on the Pacific Coast), and Cajambre (his
small rural community within the larger municipality of Buenaventura) – that each
represent a layer of bureaucracy that residents had to navigate in order to file a
392 A. HUEZO

complaint about aerial eradication. Secondly, Goez refers to the lack of consideration
for “the reality of the territory”, by which he means the reluctance of national and local
government institutions to recognize the territorial rights that rural black communities
of the Pacific region have attempted to solidify.
In theory, black communities should have always been consulted about the best way
to eradicate illicit crops within the borders of “black territory”; however, after years of
deliberations in Colombian courts these communities still had not been granted the
right to be notified of aerial eradication operations. Ironically, part of black commu-
nities’ argument for prior consultation prior to aerial eradication was that coca cultiva-
tion was not part of Afro-Pacific traditions, while the Ministry of Justice’s decision to
deny consultation prior to aerial eradication was based on the fact that coca was being
cultivated in these communities. Meanwhile DIRAN, the primary agency responsible
for the conduct of the aerial eradication program, demonstrated little interest in work-
ing with communities or holding itself accountable via a complaint process that it
oversaw.
On 30 September 2015 the Colombian National Authority of Environmental
Licenses (ANLA) issued Resolution 1214, which officially suspended the aerial eradica-
tion program. It is important to remember this suspension occurred during the middle
of peace negotiations with FARC (i.e. aerial eradication was a subject of contention
during these talks), which eventually resulted in an agreement ratified by Colombian
Congress in November of 2016. In lieu of aerial eradication, the Comprehensive
Strategy for Illicit Crop Substitution (Estrategia Integral de Sustitución de Cultivos
Ilícitos) emphasizes crop substitution via alternative development programs, manual
eradication, and the apprehension of criminals higher up in the narcotics production
chain (Presidencia de la República 2015).
The Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), a US-based NGO that supports
human rights in the Americas, has vigilantly reported on these developments as well as the
current state of drug policy in Colombia. Adam Isacson, WOLA’s Senior Advocate for
Defense Oversight and an expert on US-Colombian relations, notes that Colombia is in the
midst of perhaps its largest coca boom ever, which raises concerns that aerial eradication
might be implemented again at some point. One reason for the boom is that as early as
2014, when the Colombian government announced it would offer benefits – such as land
titles and access to markets – to coca-growing families as part of the peace settlement,
FARC encouraged campesinos to grow more coca (Isacson 2017). Other reasons why coca
cultivation and cocaine production are booming are a decrease in manual eradication
efforts due to budget restraints, the price of gold falling (making the cultivation of coca leaf
a relatively more lucrative investment), the US dollar getting stronger (making cocaine
more profitable), and organized resistance to manual eradication operations in many areas
(Isacson 2017). For instance, Colombian armed forces and police manual eradication units
reported that 400 manual eradication missions were blocked by campesinos in the heaviest
coca-growing regions (Nariño, Putumayo, Cauca, Caquetá and Guaviare) since the suspen-
sion of aerial eradication49. I spoke with Isacson and he explained that all illicit-crop
eradication efforts had slowed during the FARC negotiations because the Colombian
government was wary of sparking another conflict that could have jeopardized the negotia-
tion process.50
 CANADIAN JOURNAL OF LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN STUDIES 393

In the meanwhile, the immediate future of illicit-crop eradication in Colombia is

still unclear. Colombian Attorney General Néstor Humberto Martínez made it a point
to declare that the prohibition of aerial eradication was not part of the negotiations
with FARC (http://www.noticiasrcn.com/nacional-pais/cne-aprobo-fumigacion-man
ual-y-terrestre-glifosato-erradicar-cultivos-ilicitos). Furthermore, Martínez’s 2016
appeal to CNE to consider reinstating the aerial eradication program – in light of the
increase in coca cultivation and the difficulties with manual eradication – is a reminder
that members of the Colombian government are still actively debating the merits of this
approach (Martínez Hernández and Salgar Antolínez 2016). At the same time,
President Santos has insisted that aerial eradication is not coming back under any
circumstances (Noticias RCN 2016b). Santos has promised to eradicate 100,000 hec-
tares of coca in 2017, a massive leap from the 18,000 hectares eradicated during FARC
negotiations in 2016 (Isacson 2017). Of those 100,000 hectares, Santos has declared that
50,000 hectares will be eradicated through forceful eradication and 50,000 will be
eradicated voluntarily (Isacson 2017). The CNE approved manual fumigation with
glyphosate (handheld spraying) in 2016 despite ANLA’s 2015 ruling that glyphosate is
probably a carcinogenic chemical (Noticias RCN 2016a). Manual spraying had been
conducted in the past on a trial basis in certain areas though and it appears to be
slightly safer than pulling the plants out by hand because it decreases the likelihood of
triggering explosive mines, which are not only planted in the ground but also some-
times tied to the roots of coca plants (though there are also obvious concerns about the
eradicators’ exposure to glyphosate). Isacson believes that the plan for forcible eradica-
tion, now happening with an increased military role and the use of handheld sprayers,
is more feasible than the plan for voluntary eradication (2017). He believes this is
particularly the case because the Santos administration does not have the financial
means to fulfill the agreements set forth under the terms of voluntarily eradication and
because this administration will soon end its tenure in 2018 (2017).
The aerial eradication program, therefore, could be reinstated at some point, albeit
most likely with a different spray mixture that does not contain glyphosate. Isacson
believes that whether aerial eradication returns or not depends on the success of current
eradication efforts and the politics of the incoming administration (i.e. if the new
president is a member of former president Uribe’s Democratic Centre party then
there is a higher probability of the aerial eradication program being reinstated).51 It is
also possible that a new mixture, whether a new chemical or a fungus, would never be
approved out of fear of repeating the same problematic pattern as aerial eradication
with glyphosate and, its predecessor, paraquat.
The demobilization of the FARC guerrillas has left a vacuum of authority in some
areas of rural Colombia, with armed gangs and “dissident rebels refusing to hand in
their guns” attempting to fill the void, in the process killing approximately 100
community leaders and activists in 2016 alone (Graham-Harrison 2017). In
Yurumanguí, also a black community of Buenaventura, the community council is
launching an Internet campaign to raise money to fight coca cultivation and illegal
mining. Frustrated by the lack of government support for crop substitution and
alternative development projects, community leaders have already raised 3 million of
the 20 million Colombian pesos required to finance a local rice project (Verdad
Abierta 2017).
394 A. HUEZO

While many are hopeful that aerial eradication will never be conducted again, there
is certainly a disconnection between political promises and policy descriptions and the
experiences of people having to live with those decisions.

Notes
1. While PCN is an important Afro-descendant organization nationwide, particularly in the
southwest Pacific region, it is not the only organization working in the defense of black
territories. A combination of circumstances – my access to research contacts, PCN’s
willingness to assist my research, and divisive local politics – factored into my decision
primarily to work with this organization.
2. It is important to note that municipalities in Colombia (municipios) include both urban
and rural spaces. In this sense the term “municipality” is more akin to a county than a
municipality.
3. All translations of Spanish into English, including texts and interviews, are by the author
of this article.
4. Colombia is composed of 32 departments and one capital district.
5. Paisa is used in Colombia to refer to someone from the state of Antioquia. In the Pacific
region it refers to Colombians not from the Pacific (i.e. not obviously black or indigenous).
6. Author interview with Héctor Marino Valencia from Río Naya, Buenaventura, at PCN
office in Buenaventura on 22 September 2015.
7. To this point, he later mentioned that he has three coca plants that he uses for medicinal
purposes, citing the examples of how he cured a knee problem with coca leaf, and that he
and his young daughter chew coca leaves every morning for a boost of energy. I asked
Héctor Marino how he learned about the medicinal uses of the plant. He explained that it
was passed to him through ancestral knowledge. Marino’s interview, however, was
exceptional to me as he is the only interviewee who mentioned growing coca for
medicinal purposes.
8. Author interview with Nemesio Hurtado Torres of Río Guajuí, Cauca, at Encuentro
AfroPazífico in Piendamó, Cauca, on 28 July 2015.
9. Author interview with Juan Alturo, Adolfo Sánchez, Tulio Montaño, and Teodoro
Montaño on their farm in Temuey, Guapi, on 20 July 2015.
10. Author interview with anonymous man at the Hotel Masgorgona in Guapi, Cauca, on 15
March 2015.
11. It normally takes 90 people on the ground – 30 manual eradicators and 60 soldiers (two
soldiers for every manual eradicator) – to manually eradicate one square kilometer of
coca. Author interview with Lieutenant Colonel Miguel Tunjano Villaraga on 8 May 2105.
12. Author interview with Silvano Caicedo, resident of Río Anchicayá, Buenaventura, in
downtown Cali on 22 June 2015.
13. This voluntary manual eradication is documented in the following video, produced by the
community council of Yurumanguí: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v =
UZPsmlBsSQI&feature = youtu.be>.
14. Author interview with Alberto Jesús Arroyo, resident of Yurumanguí, Buenaventura, at
PCN office in Buenaventura, Valle del Cauca, on 9 September 2015.
15. This is not the only instance when PCN described Yurumanguí as a model of resistance
for black communities. Describing a project to strengthen the organizational dynamics of
black communities in the southern Pacific region, Escobar writes, “PCN bet on the
Yurumanguí and Pílamo projects to both develop and demonstrate the validity of their
ethnoterritorial approach in the face of conflict and displacement” (Escobar 2008, 302).
16. William Brownfield, Assistant Secretary of the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law
Enforcement Affairs, responded to author’s question at his public lecture on “Drugs,
Security, and Latin America: The New Normal for the 21st Century?” at Florida
International University on 26 September 2014.
 CANADIAN JOURNAL OF LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN STUDIES 395

17. Author visit to the Office of Alternative Development at the United Nations Office of
Drugs and Crime in Bogotá on 28 April 2015.
18. Author interview with INL officials at US Embassy in Bogotá on 4 August 2015.
19. Author interview with anonymous resident of Río Napi, Cauca, in Guapi, Cauca, on 14
March 2015.
20. Author observation from PCN meeting for the association of five communities in Bocas
de Temuey, a community of Guapi, on 14 March 2015.
21. In 2012, it became the Unidad para las Víctimas.
22. Author interview with attorney Carlos Barrios Herrera at author’s residence in Bogotá on
21 March 2015.
23. Ibid.
24. See Oslender (2016a) for other issues with displacement discourses in Colombia, includ-
ing the limitations of statistics in reporting the circumstances of the internally displaced
persons (IDPs), in particular, with regard to the Afro-Colombian population.
25. Author interview with INL officials on 4 August 2015.
26. Author interview with anonymous man on 15 March 2015.
27. In some areas aerial eradication was preceded by aerial bombardment to drive out non-
state armed actors and make aerial eradication operations safer. If the bombardment did
not successfully drive out the armed group in question and it was not safe to conduct an
aerial eradication operation, then the bombardment was often repeated. I learned of these
bombardments from residents who were sometimes forced to retreat from their homes
and camp in the wilderness until it was safe to return. The Colombian authorities I
interviewed declined to address any details about these bombardment missions. However,
documentation of bombardments can be found through nongovernmental organizations
such as the Rural Press Agency (http://prensarural.org) and the Inter-Church
Commission for Peace and Justice (http://justiciaypazcolombia.com/).
28. Author interview with Technical Coordinator of the Integrated Illicit Crops Monitoring
System (SIMCI), at the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime in Bogotá on 28 April
2015.
29. Author interview with INL officials on 4 August 2015.
30. Author interview with Technical Coordinator on 28 April 2015.
31. Author interview with INL officials on 4 August 2015. I also asked Julián Wilches, ex-
director of the Colombian National Council of Narcotics (CNE), how many times an area
was typically fumigated and he believed it was once or twice a year, depending on the level
of glyphosate concentration used the first time around. Author interview with Julián
Wilches Guzmán on 11 March 2015 at La Fiscalía General de la Nación in Bogotá.
Most of the farmers I interviewed, on the other hand, complained about being sprayed
two or three times a year. I did not locate any explicit explanation of the frequency of
spray missions in the resolutions that defined the parameters of the aerial eradication
program.
32. Author interview with Pablo Rueda, former Director of Consulta Previa in the Ministry of
the Interior, at Parque de la 93 in Bogotá on 7 April 2015.
33. Author interview with Technical Coordinator on 28 April 2015.
34. Author interview with Pablo Rueda on 7 April 2015.
35. Author interview with Pablo Rueda on 11 March 2015. Author interview with Julián
Wilches Guzmán on 11 March 2015.
36. Author interview with Pablo Rueda on 11 March 2015.
37. Author interview with Erika Padilla, contracted employee of the Ministry of Justice, at the
Ministry of Justice offices in Bogotá on 4 March 2015.
38. Author interview with Lieutenant Colonel Miguel Tunjano Villaraga of the Colombian
Counternarcotics Division (DIRAN) at the Hotel Tequendama in Bogotá on 8 May 2015.
39. Author telephone interview with Felipe Vernaza Pinzón, Early Alert Analyst of the
Defensoría del Pueblo, on 10 August 2015.
40. Author interview with Lieutenant Colonel Miguel Tunjano Villaraga on 8 May 2105.
396 A. HUEZO

41. The Colombian advocacy organization MamaCoca has posted statistics from the “Grupo
atención a Quejas” of the Dirección de Antinarcóticos (DIRAN) on its website. See: www.
mamacoca.org/docs_de. . ./Resumen_quejas_junio_20008.ppt.
42. Author interview with INL officials at US Embassy on 4 August 2015.
43. Author interview with Technical Coordinator on 28 April 2015.
44. Author interview with Silson Carabalí, the Ombudsman of Guapi, at his office in Guapi,
Cauca, on 19 July 2015.
45. Author interview with Mario Angulo, director of PCN Buenaventura, at his office on 9
September 2015.
46. Author interview with Orfilio Carabalí and Robinson Paz of Río Iscuandé, Nariño, in
Guapi, Cauca, on 13 March 2015.
47. Author interview with Germán Ospina, lawyer representing 40,000 residents of Cauca in class
action suit against DIRAN. Interview conducted in Popayán, Cauca, on 19 August 2015.
48. Author interview with Daniel Goez, President of the Board of the Community Council of
Cajambre at PCN office in Buenaventura, Valle del Cauca, on 9 September 2015.
49. (http://www.eltiempo.com/justicia/cortes/erradicacion-manual-de-cultivos-ilicitos-en-
colombia-frenada-por-bloqueos-38680)
50. Author interview with Adam Isacson at the Washington Office on Latin America in
Washington DC on 11 April 2017.
51. Ibid.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Funding
This work was supported by the Social Science Research Council [Mellon International Research
Fellowship] and Florida International University [Dissertation Evidence Acquisition Fellowship
and Dissertation Year Fellowship].

Notes on contributor
Alexander Huezo completed his PhD dissertation, titled “Contested Natures, Insecurities and
Territorialities: The Aerial Eradication of Coca in Colombia”, in Global and Sociocultural Studies
at Florida International University in 2017. The article that appears here is his first in a series of
forthcoming articles on political ecology, the War on Drugs, and territorial rights in Colombia.
Currently he is working as an independent consultant for damage caused by aerial eradication in
Cauca, Colombia.

ORCID
Alexander Huezo http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3649-7640

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