December 3, 2001

The Tragedy of Alternative Development in Colombia

by Adam Isacson

Go to one of Colombia's coca-growing zones, and almost everyone there will tell you that they hate having all those green bushes in their fields. This message, which I've heard dozens of times, cannot be dismissed as a case of "tell-the-gringo-what-he-wants-to-hear." There are compelling reasons why they despise growing coca. Certainly, coca has given many southern Colombian campesinos something approaching a lower-middle-class lifestyle -- no mean feat in a country with 20 percent unemployment, 30 percent underemployment, and a minimum wage equal to $120 per month. But it has also brought Colombia's brutal civil war to their doorstep.

In southern Colombia's coca-growing zones, the crop has brought immense levels of violence and insecurity, placing them at the epicenter of a conflict fueled by profits from the very product that supports them -- the one crop that can be marketed in these neglected corners of Colombia's countryside. Coca-growers' keen desire to change should be a golden opportunity for those who would reduce the flow of drugs from Colombia. Instead of spraying herbicides on the campesinos -- a strategy that, recent history shows, only succeeds in moving them and their crops deeper into Colombia's lawless wilderness and out of the spray-planes' reach -- why not take advantage of their strong desire to go legal and help them develop alternatives?

Indeed, eight percent of the United States' program in Colombia (about $145 million of $1.8 billion from 2000 to 2002) seeks to seize this opportunity. The money is funding a Colombian government program to provide alternative development to campesinos under a system of "social pacts."

Under this system, a community of coca-growing peasants agrees to eradicate its crops manually within a year of the arrival of government assistance. This assistance includes short-term, in-kind aid (such as livestock, seeds and tools) valued at 2 million Colombian pesos (about $850) per family, and assistance, such as technical advice, infrastructure projects, or credit, for the development of "productive projects" specified in each pact. Those who don't sign pacts, or who fail to eliminate their coca in twelve months, will have their crops fumigated by U.S.-owned aircraft flown by State Department contractor pilots.

The twelve-month delay is an important vindication of peasants' repeated claims that, under current conditions, it is impossible to support oneself growing a legal crop in places like the department of Putumayo in southern Colombia. For the most part, there were few non-indigenous Colombians in these jungle-covered areas until the 1960s and 1970s, when migrants -- many of them campesinos forced from other zones by violence or landlessness -- cleared land and sought to make a living. The Colombian government, however, did nothing for these migrants to the so-called "agricultural frontier," leaving them without farm-to-market roads, schools, hospitals, courts or police stations.

Forced to operate without credit, easy access to seeds and fertilizers, and low-cost means to bring products to market, the region's farmers found it impossible to avoid losing money -- especially after the country's economic opening drove down prices for many agricultural goods. They were saved only by the narcos who came to them offering good prices, in cash, for easily manufactured, easily transported coca-leaf paste. The social pacts' twelve-month grace period at least partially recognizes that, if soldiers or spray planes were to force them to abandon their illicit crops overnight, the region's campesinos would end up starving, growing coca elsewhere, or swelling the ranks of the guerrillas and paramilitaries.

Nonetheless, the "social pact" plan is deeply flawed, reflecting a failure to take into account the repeatedly expressed recommendations of local leaders and peasant groups. The twelve-month deadline was dictated to the pact-signers, despite their repeated calls for a more realistic three-year transition period. The amount of short-term in-kind aid -- less than the gross income from a single one-hectare coca harvest -- was far less than what the signers had requested.

The state drew up and handed down the pact scheme after only perfunctory consultation with local government leaders, and almost none with the recipient communities themselves. Plus, negotiation of the pacts' terms resembled an ultimatum from above more than a mutual accord, as any who found the government's offer unacceptable would face fumigation and no aid whatsoever.

Despite these flaws, Putumayo coca-growers have flocked to sign the pacts. 35,000 families, accounting for roughly 45 percent of the department's population, have joined the scheme since the first pact was drawn up near the 24th Brigade military base in Santana, Puerto Asís municipality, in December 2000.

All eyes are on the pacts in a zone where the government has much to prove after repeatedly failing the local campesinos. Cynicism about Bogotá's social initiatives runs very deep after years of broken promises, including a set of written commitments for major development programs made after massive protest marches in 1996, which followed initial large-scale fumigations. Nearly everyone -- including local officials -- freely voices their doubts about the ability of the central government and its alternative-development agency, PLANTE, to follow through with the promises made in the social pacts.

So far, the pacts' performance has done little to dispel this mistrust. The U.S. and Colombian governments' actions have made clear their desire to get counter-narcotics army battalions and fumigations underway as soon as possible. But aid to the pacts' signers -- channeled in a bureaucratic maze from the State Department's counter-narcotics bureau to U.S. AID to PLANTE to Colombian non-profits hired to administrate the pacts -- has been painfully slow in arriving.

When CIP staff visited Putumayo in April, after nearly three months of large-scale fumigations, none of those who had signed pacts in December and January had seen a dime's worth of aid. Putumayo local government leaders interviewed in July told us that the first in-kind aid had arrived at the beginning of the month, most of it in the form of tools, seeds and chickens. The chickens, flown in from Cali, were not suited for the Putumayo climate and began to die almost immediately. "What PLANTE has to send us now are 5,000 tiny coffins to bury all these chickens," a Putumayo departmental legislator joked.

In late August, three Colombian organizations held a three-day forum in Putumayo with several dozen unhappy pact-signers. Among their many complaints about the pacts' management, the campesinos cited "the rigidity and lack of openness of the non-profits contracted with executing the pacts' resources, imposing on us materials, tools and things that we don't need, because the most important goal for those organizations is to fill their allotment of 2 million pesos in aid."

The U.S. Congress voiced concern about the slow delivery of aid to pact signers, noting that fumigation without alternative development was a failed approach that they had not agreed to pursue. The Senate's version of the 2002 aid bill adopted language banning funding for herbicides unless alternative-development programs are functioning in areas to be sprayed.

Prospects for the pacts' success darkened further once the local FARC fronts (the 32nd and 48th) decided that some employees of the Colombian non-profits hired to carry them out were somehow linked to the military and paramilitaries. The guerrillas have killed one aid worker and abducted two others, dealing the program a very serious setback.

Perhaps the most severe blow to the social-pact scheme, however, came in mid-November. Before any aid had arrived to most pact-signers, the fumigations began again for the first time since February. According to Gonzalo de Francisco, the Colombian government official supervising counter-drug efforts in Putumayo, the spraying was a response to "alarming reports in recent weeks about the evolution of illegal coca crops in Putumayo province," charging that several pact signers were in fact planting new coca.

A U.S.-based non-governmental organization, Witness for Peace, was quick to respond, dispatching staff from its Bogotá office to investigate. The Witness for Peace monitors found the November fumigations to be in clear violation of the terms of the social pacts. The group's investigations "found no evidence whatsoever that those who were sprayed were in violation of their manual eradication pacts." As expressions of outrage arrive from the region, it is clear that the November spraying has seriously damaged the credibility of official alternative-development efforts among their target population.

At this point, it's too early to write the social pacts' obituary. Several things have to happen quickly and simultaneously, though, if the program is to be saved and this golden opportunity is not to be squandered. First, the delivery of aid must be vastly speeded up before pact-signers lose all remaining trust in the government's ability to deliver. If that is impossible, clear and frequent communication with the signers is essential to reassure them that aid is still coming and they have not been forgotten.

Second, the U.S. and Colombian agencies responsible for designing and carrying out the program must make a greater effort to hear and address the pact signers' clearly expressed grievances. If signers indicate that the present terms of the pacts are not viable or doomed to failure, they should be re-negotiated, either to allow additional time to eradicate coca or to give direct subsidies to campesinos who have destroyed their coca but have no legal source of income (for instance, if the first legal harvest is still a long way off).

Third, something must be done about the guerrillas, and no pleasant solution exists. The FARC's resilience in the area and the 24th Brigade's well-documented relationship with local paramilitaries makes an anti-guerrilla military offensive impossible to recommend. The price in human lives (most of them likely innocent non-combatants) would be too high, while the likelihood of military action actually removing the FARC from rural Putumayo is too low.

If threats to alternative-development workers are to end, then, the only option is to talk to the FARC and win their acquiescence, holding them to their written and oft-stated support for alternative development programs. It's not a pretty solution, but there already exists a forum where guarantees for aid workers' safety can be discussed -- the floundering peace talks taking place in the demilitarized zone, not far to the north of Putumayo. Such discussions are what many Colombian drug-policy experts mean when they say that alternative development is most guaranteed of success if it takes place "within the framework of the peace process."

If these changes don't come soon, the outcome for the social-pact experiment is grim indeed. Without real alternative development programs in place, we will end up with the same spraying-only strategy that has done nothing but move coca around Colombia's rural landscape for the past several years. Before Washington decides to plow ahead with such an unbalanced approach, decision-makers should recall that while Colombia's sparsely-populated jungle zones are the size of California, the 136,200 hectares of coca planted in Colombia last year could fit into a zone one-half the size of Rhode Island. No matter how many spray planes are deployed against them, coca-growers will still have lots of room to move.

Adam Isacson is senior associate at the Washington DC-based Center for International Policy (CIP).

This article originally appeared in Colombia Report, an online journal that was published by the Information Network of the Americas (INOTA).

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