Coca Country
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- Adam_Yamaguchi
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- On Current TV, Intro, Outro, Mitch Koss, 4 more
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- tags:
- On Current TV, Intro, Outro, War on Drugs, 9 more
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- credits:
- Adam_Yamaguchi Starring, Adam_Yamaguchi Producer, julian_robinson Editor, more
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xingu
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Good material but very simple analysis , diid not agree that the herbicide used in erradicating only kills coca plants , completely wrong Glyphosate is the herbicide used and this eliminates every single plant.(Banana, cassava,orange trees, you name it)
Please see this other documentary to hear from real Colombian farmers about the effects of the erradication using herbicides "glyphosate - 2 years ago
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xingu
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LucienRafagas
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Here is another piece about Plan Colombia. This one is about the affects of the drug war on small-scale Colombian coca farmers.
It's the story of woman from the Putomayo Region in southern Colombia. She fled Colombia in 2007 and is now a documented refugee in Ecuador. Her family, subsistence farmers, had a small finca in Putomayo where they had many different crops, one of which was the illicit cash crop that is used to produce cocaine.
Her story, from her voice, is one of state-sponsored terrorism. She was pregnant for her sixth child in 2001 when the aerial irradiation programs that you see in "coca country" began. Her daughter was born three months early and came out with sever hearing problems. She is not completely deaf and can hear with the aid of a hearing device. Doctors told her that complications in her pregnacy were related to exposure to chemical defoliants used in the irradication programs.
the Ecuadorian ngo accion ecologica has pulblished scientific studies linking the use of defoliants to a wide range health related issues.
http://www.accionecologica.org/
Her mother had some real horror stories from the conflict. According to her there were problems from both sides but she spoke rather candidly of the Army's use of terrorist tactics. They would come at night and burn their documents, stealing livestock. She also spoke of mass killings.
She also told me of the Armed Forces raping women. For her, one of the the worst part of the situation was that there was nobody to whom she could seek aid. She told me of the code of silence that she, and many others in similar situation had to maintain. She could not denounce the Army's actions because in her case it was the very authorities that were committing the atrocities.
She finally left Putomayo after her husband didn't return from work in the fields one day. She sold what little she had left and fled across the border with her six children.
Today UNHCR estimates that there are approximately 150,000 Colombian refugees in Ecuador. Many of them are still undocumented and are therefore unable to work legally. According to UNHCR many of the women are forced into the sex trade in order to support there families during the six to eight month refugee registration process, many others turn to other illicit or illegal traffic of all kinds.
- 3 years ago
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LucienRafagas
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recolimited
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I enjoyed the piece on the decline in coca production in Colombia. It would have been GREAT to see a full hour long documentary on their trip/research into this topic and related topics. I would enjoy more stories on the drug trail as it originates in South America and arrives here in the US.
- 5 years ago
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recolimited
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khecht
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It's important to also note that coca paste makes up only a small, though important, percentage of the actual cocaine product. The majority of cocaine actually comes from the chemicals added to the coca extract. As such, it is not fair for US officials to label the coca leaf as the sole element of cocaine production. So much more is involved.
- 4 years ago
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khecht
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dmfoster
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Perhaps one of the unforeseen consequences of Plan Colombia was the opening of new trafficking routes. In the proverbial squeezing of the balloon, a good chunk of the trade began making its way through the Brazilian Amazon. The world's largest rain forest is a smugglers paradise. And in this piece, Mariana van Zeller follows Brazil's Federal Police on counter-narcotic operations in the jungle.
- 4 years ago
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dmfoster
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dmfoster
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From the same crew that brought you Coca Country, here's another excellent piece about coca eradication. This time in Bolivia.
- 4 years ago
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dmfoster
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MitchKoss
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Before the U.S. government had a War on Terror, there was a War on Drugs. And there were two approaches to fighting it. In one, law enforcement entities, such as the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, DEA, went after narco-trafficking organizations, while others tried to reduce the demand for illegal drugs in the U.S. by persuading Americans to use them less. The second, approach was to militarize it as seen in the multi-billion dollar plan Colombia discussed in this piece--to cut the demand for cocaine in the U.S. by making it less available due to the application of military might to destroy the supply of coca leaves in Colombia. Similarly, there are two approaches to the War on Terror. One approach would be to use entities such as the CIA or FBI to catch Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar and other leaders closely associated with the 9/11 attacks on the U.S., while others try to reduce the supply of new terrorists by winning the hearts and minds of the world's billion plus Muslims. The second approach is to militarize it, as we see with the U.S. invasion of Iraq... You might also notice that his piece has a lot of do with taxis in the mud. The journalistic reason was that the aerial spraying of herbicide has driven Colombia's coca fields farther from its towns. But we also wanted to show you something about the investigative process: for ten minutes in a coca field, there was hours of pushing taxis out of mud. We shot this the first day that Adam, Tracey Chang and I ever worked together.
- 4 years ago
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MitchKoss
