Colombia’s coca wars | DW Documentary

Colombia’s coca wars | DW Documentary

the katat tumbo forest is at the heart
of the largest kocoa growing area in
Colombia the country is producing more
cocaine than ever before and the drug is
now Colombia’s most important
export but in recent times a new trend
has emerged while coca production is
booming many farmers are having trouble
finding buyers the reason over
production
[Music]
[Music]
Franco my name is wer Franco and I work
in
agriculture the income I earn from Koka
allows me and my family to get what we
need to live the
essentials why do I grow coca katat
tumbo is known for being very large and
remote you are far away from the main
roads and highways it’s much easier to
transport 10 kilos of Coca paste which
fits into a small bag than 20 or 30
loads of bananas which take up much more
space
[Music]
[Music]
there’s just one step missing to turn
this into cocoa paste it’s not yet been
fried that means it’s still impure you
throw it into a pot heat it up and
remove the water and all the
impurities two years ago this was worth
2,750,000
pesos about €
640 now it’s worth nothing because
nobody buys it
anymore there are about 120 to 130,000
plants here we use them to make 30 or 40
kilos of Coca paste that’s about 75 to
80 million pesos around 17 to
18,000 but now I’m in danger of losing
everything
because nobody is buying coca paste
right now I harvest and store it all but
nobody buys
it I think this is the biggest crisis
coca farmers in katat tumbo have ever
faced it doesn’t just affect katat tumbo
in north santand but other parts of the
country as
[Music]
well my name is
joh and I’m 17 years old
I’ve been working here for about 2
years before that I went to school in
Venezuela but because of the economic
crisis I had to come here to work back
then I lived with my
grandparents my grandmother was getting
more and more sick my grandfather had an
injured arm that’s why my grandmother
said I should come work
here to help them out I sometimes send
them money coca is strictly illegal
sometimes government soldiers come to a
cocoa farm and destroy the coca plants
if you’re working there you get arrested
they can even burn down the lab and
Destroy
Everything who are
you johandry how much do you have 31 kg
we used to have lots of money and little
Coco paste now we have lots of paste but
no
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
money many people here work with Coca
because its cultivation accounts for 70%
of economic output everything here
revolves around coca the problem right
now is selling it which has a huge
impact on trade everything is
affected anything
[Music]
else here’s what Koka does it’s the
plant that kills armed groups are
fighting for more land so that they can
expand koca cultivation it’s the reason
behind all the conflict if we were
growing casava plantains and other
things on these lands nobody would be
fighting over it and we the entire
population are the ones caught in the
middle my name is Claudia Patricia manri
Rios I’m working to help victims of
sexual violence
[Music]
it’s difficult to be a woman in this
area some of us have endured horrible
things in my case it was sexual
violence we live in constant
fear my personal experience is difficult
because you can’t fathom how someone
would think of using your body as a
spoil of War
I fought with all my might but I
couldn’t when you have a gun to your
head it’s very
difficult also because my daughter was
there and I thought what else can I
do I had no strength
left and then after I had fought for as
long as I
could they hit me in the face with one
of the weapons they had with
them I passed out and then regained
Consciousness I was gone and came
back I remember it
well but these are memories I would like
to erase
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
this experience destroyed me emotionally
sexually
personally I wish we didn’t have Koka in
our region
because if there was no coca we wouldn’t
have to live with all these dangers all
the time with the
confrontations we wouldn’t live in
[Music]
fear I need to tell you
something I’ve checked our
finances and the situation is
tough I hardly have any work and that
affects wage
payments on the one hand there’s no more
work we can no longer Harvest Coke on
the
farm and on the other we have to talk
about my debt to you the wages I still
owe you for the last few
weeks I’ve already done the math and I
think I’ll have to pay you with a few
grams of Coca
paste because as you
know there’s no cash right now
if there’s no more work because things
are so hard I don’t want coca paste I’d
rather wait until you can sell coca
paste and when you have cash to pay me
let me know and I’ll come back then to
collect the
money you tell me when there’s money or
work and I’ll come back
this is going to be my house this will
be my little
house there are two rooms
here one on the right is a
bathroom the other room is the living
room dining room and kitchen
one room I’ll make available to victims
who need a place to
stay and what we can do here in this big
dining room is have
conversations we can talk about topics
like empowerment so we can feel
better this house is a
start it’s a rebirth for me in my own
healing
process if I could only manage to finish
building this
house there are not that many women in
this
area one way or another I’ll help them
heal their wounds if I could do that for
myself bit by bit then I can do that for
them too
[Music]
[Music]
we’ve paid a steep
price sometimes I wish the government
was a bit more Humane and would help us
more we often feel abandoned and
alone and sometimes we get
tired still we have no choice but to
carry
[Music]
on always with the hope that maybe one
day we’ll have peace
[Applause]
[Music]
because of this crisis of not being able
to sell cocoa paste has dragged on so
long it’s now become impossible for us
to make a living from Coco cultivation
but selling palm oil could be a good
business for one it requires only a
small investment it’s also easier to
cultivate the Palm is cut every 4 to 6
months and it’s harvested with a side
you don’t need to be a slave to
cultivation like you do with
Coca the new danger I see as a farmer is
that Palm cultivation will lead to the
development of a
monoculture I fear it will spread too
much and degrade the soil as a result
many farmers have switched from Coca to
palm oil production but Violence by
armed groups continues
[Music]

The Catatumbo forest is at the heart of the largest coca-growing area in Colombia. Cocaine has become the country’s most important export.

Armed groups seeking to expand coca cultivation are fighting a war for land, power, money, and influence. The main victims of this brutal rule by the guerrillas are civilians. But for some time now, the boom in cultivation has led to overproduction, leaving many farmers struggling to sell their coca. A report by Daniel Sager.

00:00 Intro
00:51 The coca farmer
02:58 Working the harvest instead of attending school
04:57 Women: victims of the coca wars
09:12 A glimmer of hope: a women’s shelter
11:22 Palm oil as an alternative to coca cultivation

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