colombia’s ‘drug triangle’ gets a chocolate high
Last Updated : GMT 06:49:16
Arab Today, arab today
Arab Today, arab today
Last Updated : GMT 06:49:16
Arab Today, arab today

Colombia’s ‘drug triangle’ gets a chocolate high

Arab Today, arab today

Arab Today, arab today Colombia’s ‘drug triangle’ gets a chocolate high

Children sit on sacks of cocoa beans set to be loaded onto
Girima - Arab today

 Isidro Montiel arrived in Colombia’s lawless “drug triangle” in 1982 hoping to get rich farming coca, the raw ingredient for cocaine.

Today, with the country perched at the edge of a new era, he is betting instead on cacao, the little brown seeds used to make chocolate.

“I had heard that planting coca was a good living,” Montiel, a stout 57-year-old farmer, said of his decision 35 years ago to move to the remote triangle of jungle between the villages of Guerima, Chupave and Puerto Principe, in the eastern department of Vichada.

Back then, notorious drug lord Carlos Lehder was building clandestine airstrips across this territory, which is roughly the size of Iceland, to fly cocaine to the United States.

Demand in the US was booming, and “a huge amount of cocaine was being shipped by air,” said Colombian air force commander Jean Paul Strong, who heads a special task force in the region

Word quickly spread around Colombia that Lehder — the co-founder of the Medellin Cartel, along with Pablo Escobar — needed workers to build this cocaine empire.

But soon after Montiel arrived, the situation took a dramatic twist.

Escobar tipped off authorities to Lehder’s whereabouts, leading to his arrest and extradition to the United States in 1987.

That left a power vacuum in the triangle that was soon filled by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, a Marxist guerrilla group at war with the government since 1964.

The FARC imposed a “tax” on coca paste, the substance produced by farmers like Montiel.

Taking a cut of the lucrative drug trade quickly became one of the rebels’ main funding sources, along with ransom kidnappings.

In Colombia, the world’s top cocaine producer, that nexus between leftist rebels and drug traffickers has fuelled a half-century conflict that has killed more than 260,000 people and left 60,000 missing.

It also translated into a bleak reality for farmers like Montiel.

“It was humiliating. It was either pay up or pay up — no alternative. It’s not right, having to work and then give away your product,” said Montiel.

He said the FARC used to extort more than 30 per cent of the $760 (Dh2,790) he made on each kilo of coca paste.

But then history shifted beneath his feet again.

In 2012, the FARC entered peace talks with the government, eventually signing a historic peace deal that saw the rebels begin laying down their arms this week.

That same year, Montiel signed up for a new government programme to encourage coca farmers to switch to legal crops.

It subsidises cacao farming, and also gives producers direct deals with chocolate manufacturers so they can sell at the market price — no middleman to take a cut.

That has made cacao even more profitable than coca — and a lot less risky.

Farmers say they make up to $1,700 for each of their two annual cacao harvests under the programme.

With coca, which had to be harvested four times a year, they made between $275 and $840 annually.

“The ones who make money [on coca] are the drug traffickers,” said Jesus Sanchez, 59, who spent 16 years farming coca.

Coca paste is still used as currency in the triangle, where stores sometimes accept it instead of cash. Lunch costs five grams of coca paste, or the equivalent of about $3.50.

But cacao is gaining ground.

Today, 240 families are enrolled in the crop substitution programme.

Colombia hopes such programmes will convince farmers to switch away from coca on 50,000 hectares of fields this year.

Under the peace deal, demobilised FARC fighters are to be enlisted to promote the initiative in the country’s most war-torn areas.

The effort kicked off last month in Vichada and Caqueta, another region hit hard by the conflict.

In Vichada, where there were 10,000 hectares of coca fields in 2002, there are just 683 today.

The goal is to have the number down to zero in three years.

But insecurity still dogs the region.

Residents complain they still have to pay “vaccines,” or extortion money, to criminal gangs — an indication of the treacherous path ahead for Colombia as it seeks lasting peace

source : gulfnews

arabstoday
arabstoday

Name *

E-mail *

Comment Title*

Comment *

: Characters Left

Mandatory *

Terms of use

Publishing Terms: Not to offend the author, or to persons or sanctities or attacking religions or divine self. And stay away from sectarian and racial incitement and insults.

I agree with the Terms of Use

Security Code*

colombia’s ‘drug triangle’ gets a chocolate high colombia’s ‘drug triangle’ gets a chocolate high

 



Name *

E-mail *

Comment Title*

Comment *

: Characters Left

Mandatory *

Terms of use

Publishing Terms: Not to offend the author, or to persons or sanctities or attacking religions or divine self. And stay away from sectarian and racial incitement and insults.

I agree with the Terms of Use

Security Code*

colombia’s ‘drug triangle’ gets a chocolate high colombia’s ‘drug triangle’ gets a chocolate high

 



GMT 13:42 2015 Saturday ,04 April

Libyan warplane targets camp in Gharyan town

GMT 15:14 2017 Wednesday ,01 March

UN documents nearly 1,500 child soldiers in Yemen

GMT 07:24 2017 Sunday ,01 October

Mexico unlikely to find more quake survivors

GMT 16:15 2015 Wednesday ,11 November

German intelligence 'spied' on Fabius, FBI, UN bodies

GMT 01:32 2017 Saturday ,15 April

Russia's Putin earns about 157,000 USD in 2016

GMT 16:30 2017 Saturday ,15 July

Minister of planning gives priority

GMT 19:45 2017 Wednesday ,05 April

President of Senegal Meets Attorney General

GMT 05:18 2017 Thursday ,21 September

Over 80 missing after migrant boat sinks off Libya

GMT 19:22 2017 Saturday ,01 April

UN: Number of Syrian Refugees Tops 5 million

GMT 15:16 2016 Thursday ,29 September

FBI to put up database on police use of deadly force

GMT 05:06 2016 Friday ,30 September

Indian markets open flat

GMT 01:57 2017 Tuesday ,10 October

Twin suicide bombs kill 13 near Mogadishu airport

GMT 02:25 2017 Friday ,08 September

UAE celebrates National Day at Expo 2017 Astana

GMT 06:19 2017 Sunday ,08 January

Bleaching poses the gravest threat to coral reefs

GMT 12:35 2017 Monday ,18 September

Elham Shahin happy for “Day for Women”

GMT 09:46 2017 Thursday ,22 June

US existing home sales unexpectedly rise in May

GMT 02:36 2017 Tuesday ,10 January

US embassy condemns Al-Arish suicide attack

GMT 10:34 2017 Sunday ,26 November

czar faces graft probe
Arab Today, arab today
 
 Arab Today Facebook,arab today facebook  Arab Today Twitter,arab today twitter Arab Today Rss,arab today rss  Arab Today Youtube,arab today youtube  Arab Today Youtube,arab today youtube

Maintained and developed by Arabs Today Group SAL.
All rights reserved to Arab Today Media Group 2021 ©

Maintained and developed by Arabs Today Group SAL.
All rights reserved to Arab Today Media Group 2021 ©

arabstoday arabstoday arabstoday arabstoday
arabstoday arabstoday arabstoday
arabstoday
بناية النخيل - رأس النبع _ خلف السفارة الفرنسية _بيروت - لبنان
arabstoday, Arabstoday, Arabstoday