The Colombian coca farmers who said no to drugs

At first, the narcos were their “partners.” Mario Chamorro, his parents and his two siblings left Antioquia in Colombia in the early 2000s on an offer of land. They settled down in San Pedrito, a rural area in the department of Córdoba. “They,” as everyone calls the criminal groups in these areas, gave the Chamorro family a plot of land of their own. Under the deal, they had to plant coca. The money began to flow in, and the family purchased additional land. But with the influx of money came a growing fear. “When there are problems among them, it becomes everyone’s problem. What am I doing here with three kids, I would sometimes ask myself,” recalls Mario.

The community leader of San Pedrito, which once was home to 93 coca-growing families, embraced the peace process signed between the government of Colombia and the FARC guerrillas in 2016. Through a crop substitution program included in the agreement, he encouraged local producers to switch to legal crops. There were public subsidies for doing so, and the Chamorros, along with other families, signed up. But their “partners” were not pleased.

One early morning in January 2018, the narcos drove into town, murdered the local leader and gave everyone else a few hours to get out for good. Grabbing what they could, the Chamorros arrived in San José de Uré, also in the Córdoba department. And that is where they are today, leasing a plot of land in a municipality that nobody dared cross only a few years ago for fear of getting kidnapped by criminal gangs.

The family is now trying to get ahead with a cattle-raising project backed by government funding. But they still dream of returning to San Pedrito and the properties they left behind. The only time they attempted to go back, they received threats that same night. “Who gave you permission to come back?” said the narcos. The family fled again at daybreak.

In San José de Uré, there was a time when the only crop in sight was coca. Not even yucca was to be found here, and all food had to be imported. John Eduard remembers that from the age of 12 until he was 30, the only thing he learned to do was to plant coca. Every three months, the narcos would give him 17 or 18 million pesos (around $4,500) in exchange for his work. It was “a lot of money” that got spent “on drinks and women” and made up for a life of fear.

Eduard is one of 100,000 coca growers who signed up for the government’s crop substitution program, which gives each recipient 39 million pesos (around $9,700). With the first installment of 12 million pesos (around $3,000), which some 76,000 families have already received, the 34-year-old built two ponds and a pig shed on his father’s land, a place that can only be reached via a dirt road full of stones that he skillfully avoids on his motorcycle.

He also purchased 400 cachamas (a freshwater fish) that he says have multiplied and now number 6,000. The fish, which are impossible to count as they move in the dark waters, surface with open mouths when the farmer throws them food. In this sticky, humid heat where thermometer readings show 30ºC, Eduard also raises pigs that he slaughters himself. He has eight now, and three of them “are ready” to feature on the display window of the butcher’s shop that his family runs in town.

Eduard figures that he is making around two million pesos ($500) every two months. But he likes this money better than the cash he earned before. “My mother is happy now,” he confesses. His current occupation also keeps at bay the kind of temptations that remind him of his troubled past. “I prefer this life of sacrifice and family to the old life of cash, violence and death,” he sums up.

Most of the other growers seem to feel the same way. A United Nations study found that under 1% of coca producers returned to their illicit activities after signing up for the program.

I prefer this life of sacrifice and family to the old life of cash, violence and death

John Eduard, former coca grower

The government of Iván Duque, who won the presidential election in 2018 with an ambiguous position on the peace process but was forced by law to uphold it, now proudly showcases the progress made on some of the points of the accord. Crop substitution was one of them, although the program is not infinite. The cap of 100,000 families was reached in 2018 and there are no extensions, meaning that other coca growers who might be interested in making the switch do not have access to state aid. Emilio Archila, a presidential adviser on stabilization issues, admits to a lack of funds and says international cooperation is needed: “We need money. We need for all countries to support [crop] substitution beyond the 100,000 families that we have already supported.”

The program has taken around 40,000 hectares from the drug cartels, according to government figures released in November. The UN has found that illicit crop cultivation in 2020 accounted for 143,000 hectares, a 7% reduction from the previous year thanks to volunteer programs as well as forced eradication programs.

But this does not mean a lower amount of drugs. The production of cocaine chlorohydrate reached 1,228 tons in 2020, representing a rise of 8% from 2019.

On a recent grey Monday, the streets of San José de Uré were full of people and loudspeakers blared out music from the stores. For 14,000 pesos a kilogram ($3.5), a few customers bought Eduard’s cachamas for lunch. Children played outside their homes and dozens of motorcycles kicked up dust as they raced down roads that people are no longer afraid to use. The narcos don’t have much to watch over, although a few kilometers from here, there are still a few coca hotspots – the locals point at them vaguely with arms extended in various directions. But neither Eduard nor Chamorro have felt under threat ever since they began raising pigs, cows and fish. They managed to extricate themselves from the wheel that keeps Colombia as the world’s top coca producer.