The substitution program on trial: progress and setbacks of the peace agreement in the policy against illicit crops in Colombia

Navigating Chemical Toxicity in Coca Production in the Colombian Borderlands of Putumayo

In Putumayo, a jungle borderland in southern Colombia, thousands of farmers derive their livelihood from the cultivation and processing of coca leaf, exposing themselves to fertilizers, pesticides, and other toxic chemicals on a daily basis. In this article, we show how the coca growers' relationship with chemicals and the health risks to which they are exposed, are politically and institutionally structured. We discuss the specific impact of anti-narcotics policy in a broader context of deep inequalities and document the emergent and adaptive day-to-day attempts of the farmers to navigate the structural risk environment.

Caring for coca, living with chemicals: Towards ecological harm reduction

In this paper, we show how the materialisation of chemical harms linked to the cultivation of coca and its processing into coca paste reside in a wider politics of structural violence which is also situated ecologically. Drawing on the qualitative interview accounts of coca farmers in Putumayo, Colombia, we attend to practices of care in the field and in the laboratory. We look first at chemicals used in coca's cultivation (herbicides, fertilizers, pesticides), and second at chemicals (such as sulphuric acid, sodium carbonate, magnesium permanganate) used in the processing of coca leaf into paste (before the paste is sold on for refinement into cocaine). Our analysis highlights the tensions which inevitably arise in the balance and multiplicities of care - for crops, livelihood, and environment. We trace how farmers' narratives of the neutralisation of chemical risks habituate chemical harms as mundane, even uneventful, in an economic imperative to 'carry on as normal' in the coca economy. We emphasise health and harm as matters of care which not only affect humans but living environments. Accounts of 'risk environment' can give insufficient attention to Nature, and this leads us to consider 'ecological harm reduction'.

From strong leadership to active community engagement: Effective resistance to illegal coca crops in Afro-Colombian collective territories

In this paper, we study whether leadership and community organisation can explain differences in the presence and expansion of coca crops in rural Afro-Colombian collective territories. Following a mixed-method approach that combines the analysis of satellite imagery, semi-structured interviews and household surveys, our results suggest that leadership and community organisation help explain differences in the presence of illegal coca crops by activating pre-existing 'stocks' of social capital that enable rural Afro-Colombian communities in the country's southern Pacific region to resist the penetration and/or expansion of illegal coca crops. Results also show that resistance is more effective when the interests and strategies of leadership and communities are aligned. We argue that the effectiveness and sustainability of resistance depend on: (a) the stock of social capital that determines organisational capabilities, (b) the specific normative content with which this capital is infused, (c) the legitimacy and influence of leadership on the community, and (d) synergies among different levels of grass-root community organisation. We conclude that investing in social capital and community capabilities is thus one way to reorient policy interventions, a goal to which the Colombian state can only partially contribute given its policy priorities and structural limitations.

Cocalero women and peace policies in Colombia

BACKGROUND

Illicit crop economies are shaped by gender arrangements that can play an important role in the experiences of illicit crop workers. In Colombia, the coca production -considered a war economy- granted peasant women a source of access to productive resources (land, credit and seeds) and paid work, conditions that are difficult to find in other legal agrarian economies. For this reason, policies pursuing a transition from war to peace, such as the ones that emerged from the 2016 Peace Agreement between the Colombian government and the FARC guerrilla, must incorporate a gender perspective in order to acknowledge the social progress that women can achieve in war scenarios.

METHODS

The empirical evidence comes from thirty-one in-depth and semi-structured interviews with cocalero peasants, social leaders and public officials; ethnographic fieldwork in two municipalities with the highest levels of illicit crop production (Puerto Asís and Tumaco); official documents of anti-drug and Alternative Development policies in Colombia, and other official information from the agencies in charge of implementing these policies; and data from the survey of participants of the National Comprehensive Program for the Substitution of Illicit Crops (PNIS) (National University of Colombia, 2019), and one dataset from the Colombian National Administrative Department of Statistics (the Quality of Life Survey of 2018). For the analysis of the data we used an open-codification method and conducted hypothesis tests with Welch's correction.

RESULTS

In Colombia, women involved in the coca economy experience a degree of empowerment that leads to increased income, time control and decision-making power. When we compared the lived experience of cocalero women with what the National Crop Substitution Programme -PNIS- offers, we found that the programme falls short from offering viable gender-sensitive alternatives, producing a setback in women's empowerment.

CONCLUSION

Illicit crop economies in war contexts can be a source of social advancement for marginalized populations, particularly women. Thus, peace policies that do not recognise these advances, i.e. that do not incorporate a gender perspective in their design, deepen gender-based inequalities.

Beyond the narco frontier; rethinking an imaginary of the margins

The 'narco-frontier' is frequently invoked in policy and popular narratives about drugs and armed conflict. The frontier is represented as an unruly, marginal and 'ungoverned' space, a magnate for drug traffickers, rebels and migrants. These 'non state' or 'anti state' spaces are believed to have a comparative advantage in illegality, with borderlands and frontiers becoming centres for the production, consumption and trafficking of illicit drugs. Linked to this representation is a policy narrative and set of assumptions that statebuilding, peacebuilding, development and counter narcotics policies are mutually reinforcing, and involve the extension of a state presence into these frontier zones, along with effective drug eradication, substitution and development activities. In spite of the evident inaccuracy of this portrayal of the 'narco-frontier' the imaginary is extremely resilient and continues to be reflected and reinforced in policy texts and narratives. This paper asks why has this been the case. What ideological work does the imaginary perform and for whom? And what are the implications of an alternative imaginary of the margins?