COLOMBIA
COCA MAMA - The War on Drugs
A 52 Minute investigative Documentary – January 2001, By Jan Thielen
Mountains. Subtitle ‘The Peruvian Andes’. An old Indian man in traditional clothes, sitting on a stone in the Peruvian highlands, tells a story in the Quechua language: (Subtitled)
“When the whites came, our ancestors consulted the Sun God. He told them to trust in the coca leaf. The coca will feed and cure you, he said, and give you the strength to survive. He also said that the white men would discover the magic force, but they wouldn’t know how to make use of the coca. Coca will turn the white man into brutes and idiots. I ask God that he will give us always plenty of coca”.
01:13
Images Andes Highlands. Snow peak, dissolve to cocaine on a piece of mirror. North American addict prepares cocaine.
North American addict using cocaine:
“When you’re on cocaine everything is good. You feel strong. You feel ok.
When I don’t use it, I feel depressed, low.
I like the feeling I get. You’re not in so much pain.
A lot of it comes from South America, made from the coca plant, from the leaves of the coca plant.
02:04
TITLE: (Over coca leaf) “COCA MAMA, The War on Drugs.”
02:16
Images US Congress
Eric Sterling, Washington based lawyer: “These are copies of the laws that I helped to write in 1984, 1986 and 1988, very harsh laws. Those particular provisions came right out of my word processor and I gave them to the members of Congress and they debated them and adopted them. Provisions dealing with money laundering, with the powers of the DEA, with many other law enforcement agencies”.
Images of people being arrested in Bolivia. Prisoners in jail.
Eric Sterling: “And I was the council to the house committee on the judiciary who was principal responsible for the drug portions of these laws. Tough laws that are adopted for political purposes, or by countries like Bolivia to satisfy the demand of American politicians and the US State Department. When America goes to Bolivia and says ‘show me the people, show me their crimes’, they simply pick up a report. The Bolivian government says ‘we arrested 700 major traffickers last year’. ‘That’s great minister, terrific, we applaud the hard work you’re doing, how can we do more to help you?’ It’s a fraud there just as it’s a fraud here”.
03:15
Images in heavy crowded Bolivian jail.
Female prisoner (crying): “I do have relatives but they are very poor. I’ve got nobody who could help me.”
Prisoner: “We’re living here like sardines. They don’t give us anything to clean with and that makes many of us ill. Because there are so many of us we infect each other with all kinds of diseases and there’s no health care service that can help us. We are totally abandoned.”
04:47
Sanho Tree, (Institute for Policy Studies IPS, Washington) (over images): “If the drug warriors were to focus on the drug kingpins, the people who really make the most money out of this. They know who they are, they know where they live. They know how to get them. It’s much easier for them to round up the little people, at the lowest level. (En camera) And they can go back and say, ‘oh look at the numbers of people we have locked up, look at the people we have arrested, look at the hectares of coca we’ve eradicated’ And they go back and the Congress gives them the budget. And give them more money every year. More money, more money, more money.
05:19
Music. Mountains in the Andes. (subtitle “PERU – Near Quillabamba”). Music. An indigenous couple, Alejandrina and Teodoro, is harvesting and drying the coca-leaves.
05:40
Text: Coca has been grown by Indian peasants for centuries on the lower slopes of the Andes.
Coca leaves are read to predict the future; to combat hunger and fatigue as coca is an extremely rich source of vitamins, minerals and protein; it’s offered to the Gods and used to cure the sick
Teodoro: “Yes. It is Inca culture, very old. It’s from before old times, from our great-great-great grandfathers. During the day and the night we love coca.
Yes, it’s Coca Mama, like a mother who feeds her children. Everything is maintained by the coca. It’s Coca Mama.”
06:25
Text: The artificial increase of the coca-crops started with the first industrial use of the leaves by the Coca Cola Company and the government started buying harvests. Later came the demand for drug trafficking. Bolivia and Peru came to have enormous coca fields to supply that demand.
06:45
Teodoro and Alejandrina in a coca-ritual.
Alejandrina: “With coca everything is possible. It’s sacred for us. Father God gave it so that we can live. Coca is very valid for us. Always coca….. just coca. With coca we buy things. We buy clothes for us and the children. Everything… with just coca. With just coca we buy everything to eat and to live.”
Teodoro: “Other people make cocaine. Therefore they are eradicating. But we peasants don’t know how to make cocaine. I don’t know how that would be.”
07:58
Soldiers UMOPAR (militarised anti-narcotics police) crossing a river. Subtitle: ‘BOLIVIA – Jungle of Chapare’ They stop to study a map and a GPS.
08:11
Colonel Meleán (Commander UMOPAR): “The law says that interdiction has to be executed by a special force in the struggle against drug trafficking. In the rural areas, that is done by us, the UMOPAR, a specialized jungle force. During our patrols we try to locate cocaine factories in the jungle.”
Lieutenant UMOPAR Valdéz: “We’re on the exact spot now, following the coordinates we received by satellite, that means from the DEA. But we couldn’t find the factory.”
Colonel Meleán: “This whole area is considered a red zone, an area of drug trafficking. All citizens who come through here have to be screened”.
09:06
Soldiers continue their patrolling. They search the belongings of a scared peasant-family. Music.
09:48
Text: UMOPAR-patrols enter the peasants’ houses without a warrant and if something suspicious is found the peasants are accused and arrested as drug traffickers.
In the whole Chapare region there are hundreds of small laboratories, known as factories, where poor peasants paid by the drug traffickers convert the coca leaves simply and cheaply into coca-paste.
UMOPAR-soldiers searching a poor peasant-house. Shooting. Patrol attacks a laboratory. Then the burn it.
UMOPAR-soldier: “They escaped. They ran into the jungle. It will be hard to arrest them. We’re going to burn it. Total destruction, total burning”.
11:15
Colonel Meleán (indicating on a map) : “Those factories are not set in stone. One day it’s at point ‘x’, processes some 20 kilos and is then it is transferred to another place for security reasons.”
Logo UMOPAR, Bolivian National Police with US-flag.
11:30
Colonel (R) Bob Brown (ONDCP-Washington - Office for National Drugs Control Policy): “Just talking about the drug supply challenges, interdiction, alternative development, eradication in Bolivia… essentially those programmes are police programmes. The problem to be addressed is fundamentally a law enforcement problem”.
Images control post UMOPAR
11:48
Kevin B. Zeese (Common Sense for Drug Policy - Washington): “Law enforcement is actually counterproductive. It makes the problem worse. It creates new drugs, new drug markets, new drug trafficking routes and more violence. And that has been the history, you can go back to the French Connection in 1960’s, you can go to Nixon, Carter, Ford, Bush, Clinton, every time they’ve tried interdiction or eradication, they’ve made the problem worse”.
Setup Mr. Brown before logo ONDCP. White House.
12:14
Text:
The ONDCP, the Office for National Drug Control Policy depends directly on the White House and is run by the military.
12:23
Colonel (R) Bob Brown: “We assess the cost to us as a society in the US for drug addiction, consuming illicit drugs, to add up to approximately 110 billion dollars. We think we’ve spent about 57 billion dollars in total on all illicit drugs of which some 30 some billion is just on cocaine alone”.
12:49
Coletta Youngers (WOLA, Washington Office on Latin America) “The RAND corporation has done studies which show that it is significantly cheaper to carry out treatment programs for drug addicts than to try to interdict the supplies coming in from abroad. I think you can find overwhelming evidence that it would make more sense to do that. It’s outrageous that you do not have treatment on demand in this country and that’s 80% of addicts who want treatment, can’t get it. Yet we are fighting small peasant farmers in Bolivia who are growing coca plants.
13:23
Bolivian peasant family. Title ‘BOLIVIA – Near VILLA TUNARI’. Music. Bruno walking to his fields.
14:00
Text:
Many years ago Bruno came to the Chapare region to try his luck growing coca. During the first years he made enough money to support his wife and children. When the campaign of forced coca eradication began, and the peasants were told to switch to other crops like banana, Bruno was one of the first to abandon coca.
14:24
Bruno: “Bruno: “In the beginning it all seemed fine. I thought, now I can support my family with bananas, but I had a lot of difficulties. When I cut the banana in order to sell it, it’s hard work getting it to the nearest village. I bring it to the road with my bike and wait for a car. But that’s very expensive.”
The banana I sell is hardly enough to buy salt and oil, nothing more. For 3 years I’ve worked with banana and I make 16 dollars a month. That’s not enough to maintain my family.”
Bruno’s family in extreme poverty. Poor food being prepared by his wife. His neighbours.
15:33
Text:
Bruno’s neighbours are much better off. Their children are learning to read and write and go to school.
12 year old Cesar is his mother’s pride. In her childhood Tomasa didn’t know the luxury of going to school.
Cesar reading for his mother. Cesar going to school.
15:58
Tomasa: “My mother was very poor and never sent me to school. That’s why I never learned to read and write. I tried to learn it myself but nobody was able to help me, so I was never successful.”
16:13
Text:
The 100 dollars that she and her husband Pascual manage to make every month comes from one source.
Tomasa’s husband Pascual harvesting coca-leaves. Cesar drying harvested coca-leaves.
16:20
Pascual: “There’s no other crop that allows me to make money.”
Tomasa packing and weighting coca-leaves.
16:38
Tomasa: “That’s coca. With this we can buy provisions. This makes us a living.”
Tomasa goes to sell coca. Music.
Bruno sowing coca.
17:00
Bruno: “I failed miserably with the banana. I don’t believe in anyone any more, even less in the government and whatever they say about alternative development. I’m now sowing coca because coca means life. I’ve now decided to grow coca regardless of the consequences.”
The government says all coca will be eradicated, but I’ve been seeking strategic places that cannot be seen. Nobody will see my coca, not the helicopters, or the army or even my neighbours. Only I know where I’m growing coca so that I can feed my family.”
Continues to sow coca.
18:03
Text:
He’s taking a huge risk because if a peasant stopped growing coca, he breaks the law by growing it again. If Bruno’s coca crops are discovered, a long prison sentence awaits him.
18:15
Bruno: “I don’t care. I will grow coca anyway because I’ve no alternative. Yes, helicopters fly over. Almost every day I see them but they won’t see my coca crops.”
Bruno leaving the fields. Noise of a helicopter. Colonel Cabrera gets into an army helicopter. Helicopter takes off. Air-shots from the Chapare-jungle.
18:46
Text:
Colonel Cabrera from the Bolivian army is the second commander of the military anti-narcotics base in Chimoré, in the middle of the Chapare region. In 1998 the army was mobilised to execute eradication. Every day helicopters take off to locate coca crops in the immense Chapare jungle, which are later destroyed by the soldiers. The Colonel admits it’s getting harder to locate the crops.
19:21
Colonel Emilio Cabrera (Bolivian Army): “Now they hide it under the weeds and it’s very difficult to identify the coca during the reconnaissance flights.”
19:33
Soldiers in a military base, then leave in military trucks. They arrive at a coca field and start destroying the crop.
19:36
Colonel Cabrera: “Our mission is to eradicate.
The government has its mechanisms for coordinating with the USA. They define the strategy and we execute it.”
Soldiers eradicating. Lieutenant yelling: Hurry up …. Hurry up.
20:30
Colonel (R) Bob Brown: “It has frankly been, from our perspective a most notorious success. Since the time that the Bolivian administration has been in office the net production and cultivation of coca in Bolivia has dramatically declined”.
Colonel Cabrera in the coca-field.
20:51
Text:
The Bolivian military is not entirely comfortable with its role. Officials know that forced eradication has its price.
20:59
Colonel Cabrera: “The price is that all those peasants who depend exclusively on the coca are caused tremendous trauma once they lose it all, and obviously it means an increase in the number of dispossessed.”
Soldiers withdrawing.
21:19
Text:
As the very last coca plant is pulled up and Colonel Cabrera orders the troops to withdraw, the owner of the destroyed coca field appears: Pascual, accompanied by his son Cesar.
21:32
Pascual: “Maybe you think I’m going to leave now. No, I’m going to die right here. I’ll keep on working on this ground. It’s just that I don’t know ...... my children. For God’s sake, how am I going to feed them now? It’s them I feel sorry for. How am I going to make my living now?”
Colonel Cabrera: So don’t you have any faith in the promises for alternative development?
Pascual: “No! That only exists on radio and television. We don’t see anything like that here. Nothing.”
Images destroyed coca-field. Tomasa and her children arrive to see the destruction.
22:22
Tomasa (Crying): “How am I going to support my children now? This fucking useless government. I’m ready to take poison and kill myself. I don’t want to live in this world anymore. I’ll do anything to make my children to go to school. I will sell my clothes… try to get one or two pesos to send my children to school. But where do I get the money, what can I do?”
Music. Twilight. Night. Sunrise.
23:21
Tomasa and Pascual replanting coca plants.
23:40
Tomasa: “I hope that God wants it to rain now. With a little bit of rain and God’s blessing it will grow again.”
Dark sky. Thunder. Heavy rainfall on field/field.
24:04
Bob Brown: “We’re comfortable with our successes. In the Andean countries, we have a declining production capacity for cocaine, coca cultivation, that’s success as well. That’s not US success, that’s Peruvian and Bolivian success with ours and others’ assistance”.
Image of ONDCP-report “Drugs Policy is working”.
24:26
Coletta Youngers: “It’s a virtual success. What has happened is that you’ve had a reduction in Peru and Bolivia that have been offset by increases in Colombia. So just as much coca is produced in the Andean region”.
24:34
Children playing the ‘Whack a mole’ game.
24:46
Sanho Tree: “There is a game called whack a mole, where a little mole pops out of the border of many holes and you have to guess which one it is and whack it down with a hammer and then it pops up in another hole. And that’s what we were doing with our drug policy. We’re chasing drugs around from one region to the next, from one country to the next. And pretty soon, we’ll be chasing it from one continent to the next”.
25:02
Images River and small villages Southern Colombia. Title ‘South of Colombia’. Music.
25:42
Text:
With the decrease in number of coca hectares in Peru and Bolivia, coca found a new breeding ground in the inhospitable regions of southern Colombia. The land along the Caguan-river was known as a no man’s land, without law or government.
Many families fled to this region from other parts of the country when they experienced violence and massacres at the hands of the army. Until, in the early 1980’s a guerrilla movement sprang up. But even for the guerrillas it wasn’t easy to set down roots in this hostile land of men who knew no law.
26:24
Local FARC-commander ‘Fermin’: “In the 80’s there were few guerrillas here in Caguán. Here the mightiest ruled. There was no control, everybody carried guns, revolvers. They were hanging in the bars, drinking and then fighting. Not with knives, but with guns. Bullets were flying everywhere. It was so tough that they even shot at guerrillas. Yeah, they shot the guerrillas.”
Images FARC-guerrillas.
26:55
Text:
But the guerrillas of the FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, set down firm roots in the region. The FARC was born from an armed peasant self-defence movement and is now the oldest left-wing guerrilla movement in Latin America.
27:10
‘Fermin’ “The government never spent a penny in this region. Never, because they weren’t interested in this region. So the FARC did the job. And now we have 100 per cent control here.”
Highways in the jungle under construction.
27:25
Text:
The FARC established political, military and social control over an enormous area, where its guerrillas are building an extensive network of highways.
Coca fields. Peasants harvesting coca leaves.
27:37
Text:
For the colonizers in these territories abandoned by the state, growing coca became an excellent alternative for survival. Especially because of good prices after the eradication in Peru and Bolivia. The FARC, in keeping with its puritanical revolutionary spirit, tried to prohibit coca growing, but soon had to reconsider.
28:00
‘Fabián’, Commander 14th Front FARC: “We told them, “Stop growing coca, forget that plant.” But they answered, “And you guys from the FARC, are you going to maintain us? If the FARC will maintain our families we will destroy the crops.”
Peasants and guerrillas in villages. Set up priest. Travelling over the river. Guerrilla-patrol post on the river stopping a passenger-boat. Guerrilla-fighters distribute utilities in rural school.
28:46
Father Jacinto, Parish of Remolinos: “If the guerrillas rule, they do it badly. But if government would like to rule, they lack the instruments to do that because they simply are not here. You have to travel at least 300 kilometres, to Florencia, to find the state’s presence.
The guerrillas create all kinds of obstacles in order to prevent suspicious people, who might cause them troubles, from entering the region. They are the other state, a state with its privileges and total territorial control, because the government hasn’t existed here for many years.
The guerrillas control the local economy, and as the economy is based on the coca, the guerrillas control everything related to the coca here.”
29:53
Text:
It’s this fact that makes the US government insist the FARC are now narco-guerrillas.
29:59
Commander Raúl Reyes, National Secretary FARC: “It is not because the FARC wants it that way. People took up this way of living because they have no other way of surviving. That’s why we emphasize that these peasants are not drug traffickers, but workers who depend on their land and have been completely abandoned by the state.”
One hand passing Colombian pesos to another hand.
30:17
Text:
But the FARC admit they do profit from the business in the regions under their control.
30:23
Commander Reyes: “The FARC collect tax. From the cattle farmers, the coffee farmers, those who grow banana, soy beans and we also tax the buyers of the coca.”
Village of Remolinos. Peasants and guerrilla-fighters walking in the streets. First images of Edilberto Vargas and his neighbour Omar. Peasants doing their shopping, paying with coca-paste.
30:47
Text:
Sunday morning in the village of Remolinos, along the Caguan-river. Farmers from all over the region gather to do their shopping. However there’s little to buy since for months no coca buyers have been by and all hard cash disappeared. The farmers pay with the only currency left: coca-paste.
Edilberto Vargas runs a little coca-farm 2 hours from Remolinos, together with his friend and neighbour Omar. Edilberto can only afford the most basic provisions.
A big part of his paste has to be invested in fuel for his laboratory.
When the shopping is done Edilberto and his companion return home.
Edilberto and Omar on their horses. Edilberto coming home in his poor house with the shopping. His family. Burned jungle.
32:17
Text:
Edilberto lives with his family in the middle of the jungle in a run-down house without electricity or drinking water. They came here after fleeing the violence in the region in which he grew up in. About a year or two ago Edilberto and Omar burned down several hectares of virgin jungle to grow coca.
The crop grows quickly and can be harvested 3 or 4 times a year.
Coca crops. Edilberto and Omar working in their laboratory.
33:07
Text:
They now process the coca leaves in a small laboratory near his house to make the basic coca paste. This is later bought by the buyers from the coca mafia, who take it to sophisticated chemical labs where it will be crystallised into pure cocaine. With this harvest alone Edilberto and Omar produce 200 grams of coca paste.
33:29
Edilberto Vargas: “This allows us to survive for more or less one month. Just to cover the main costs and to buy food for about a month.
33:44
Omar: “This is the misery we’re producing. If there were other crops, that would be much better off.”
33:54
Edilberto Vargas: “We know it’s harmful. People fight over the money and profits of coca. They steal from each other. Families disintegrate. Young people who grow up surrounded by the coca business only end up with two options: they either join the guerrillas or the army.”
34:16
Text:
Edilberto and his neighbour didn’t come to the region to grow coca. They used to grow legal crops. That was until 1998, when the helicopters and fumigation planes flew over.
Fumigation planes. Edilberto shows his fumigated fields
34:33
Edilberto Vargas: “When the fumigation….. there came two planes. They came from there, where you can see, there’s no coca, there’s nothing. They sprayed here where I had 1000 fishes. They were all poisoned.
This, as you can see, once was cacao. Like this one, they’re all rotten. A lost harvest… because of the fumigation. And not just this. They fumigated the bananas, the pineapples, the guayaba crops, young trees for reforestation. It’s all gone. So, what are we supposed to do?”
Edilberto walking in destroyed field. Cattle, fishes.
35:30
Father Jacinto: “The consequences of the fumigations are catastrophic. They do it in a hurry. They don’t care that they also fumigate corn plantations, prairies, lakes, fish, animals” ...
Coca fields. Burned rainforest.
35:56
Text:
Despite all the fumigation in recent years, the amount of coca hectares has tripled. When fumigation takes place, there’s a shortage of coca. Prices rise and the peasants are tempted to grow more coca because of the high returns. For each fumigated hectare of coca, peasants burn down 3 or 4 hectares of rainforest for new crops.
In this way fumigation leads to the destruction of thousands of square kilometres of Amazon rainforest.
36:41
Fumigation plane spaying.
36:48
Peasant Delio Anacona, Father of Jessica Lorena: “When the planes came, they fumigated my house, everything. Shortly afterwards, because of the fumigation, my little daughter died. The poison went all over her and she started to vomit.... and then she died.”
37:10
Peasant Alfredo Bocanegra, Father of Bianei: “Two planes came and they fumigated… around 10 o’clock in the morning. It affected everything and my little girl was poisoned...... and I found her dead. She was just 17 months old.”
Fumigation-planes.
27:29
Voice other peasant: “The planes came over ….and he died….”
Voice other peasant-woman: “He died intoxicated by this poison….”
37:41
FARC Commander Reyes: “What is likely to happen, when the fumigations are intensified, is that our troops will fight those planes and helicopters. When the peasants are targeted by these fumigations, they will look for the FARC’s support. And we will be their allies. “
38:05
FARC Guerrillas in a meeting with the peasants. Guerrilla-commander having a speech. Peasants listen. Edilberto and Omar in the meeting.
Local Commander: “Receive a warm and revolutionary greeting from the Revolutionary Armed Forces FARC, the 14th Front.
You are the ones who suffer most from the war without even being a part of it.
The state abandoned Caguan.
We fight for what you need. We fight because life here is not guaranteed.
What would you prefer? Bear it, or wait for Yankee intervention? Better to bear it, isn’t it?”
38:47
Image US Congress. Schoolchildren.
Text:
The War on Drugs is a sensitive issue for American politicians.
.
38:54
Rep. Doug Ose (R) during Hearing US Congress (C-Span): “I want something to happen. I’m tired of reading about the kids in the streets of America dying from this poison. We can’t get 10 stinking helicopters into Colombia”?
Schoolchildren New York.
39:04
Sanho Tree: “No one wants to look soft on drugs. This is the most common fear among politicians. They’re afraid of being attacked by their challengers, ‘congressman so and so is soft on drugs, vote for me, I’ll protect your children from drugs”.
Colombian children playing on a tropical riverside.
39:25
Rep. Mark Souder (R) during Hearing US Congress (C-Span): “It’s similar to coming up to a river where the babies are drowning and you’re busy pulling these babies out like crazy trying to save their life and somebody says: I wonder how those babies are getting in here. I’m wondering what’s happening up river. Well, Colombia is the source at the river. It’s coming from Colombia”.
39:45
Sanho Tree: “Most of them couldn’t find places like Colombia on a map. They hear from people in the DEA or General McCaffrey’s, the Drugs Tzar’s office, or people in congress who have taken a quick trip down there and they’ll say ‘we have a terrible crisis on our hands, the drug situation has gotten out of control, we have to act properly, we have to send money and guns and helicopters”.
40:11
Coletta Youngers: “Over the last 15 years the US government has spent over 30 billion dollars on international drug control efforts alone, not to mention the 100’s of billions that are spend here at home. Yet there is absolutely no evidence that any fewer drugs are coming into this country than before. First of all you have a bureaucratic labyrinth here in Washington. You have over 50 federal agencies all involved in one way or another in the US war on drugs in Latin America. There are tremendous rivalries between the CIA, the DEA and the DIA in particular and you often find conflict”.
Images NY. Travelling in car. Street images. Sylvester Salcedo (with sunglasses) driving his car.
40:51
Sylvester Salcedo: “I am a naval intelligence-officer assigned to Joint Task Force 6 which is the primary US military command assigned to work with federal state and local law enforcements in the prosecution in war on drugs. Most of JTF 6 activities is really limited to the US, but the intelligence effort of course is worldwide, at home and oversees. I can’t talk about any specific activities or projects that I may have worked on”.
Photos of Sylvester in uniform. Sylvester (with sunglasses) walking on the streets of NY.
41:27
Text:
Lieutenant Commander Sylvester Salcedo entered the US Navy in 1980 as a young officer. He took part in several naval exercises throughout Latin America. Later -in the 1990’s- the Military Intelligence Service mobilized him for the War on Drugs.
Sylvester walking in the streets of New York.
41:45
Sylvester Salcedo: “I went through a personal conflict within my own personal career in the Navy. On the one hand, I had that own personal ambition to fulfil, to prove myself as a good naval officer. On the same time I was facing a so-called war that I did not fully believe in”.
42:08
Text:
The War on Drugs in Colombia produced his first doubts.
42:15
Sylvester Salcedo: “When you carry out air fumigation and the airplane goes across a mountainside with the intention of spraying to destroy certain drug producing plants, children who live in a certain village or even the villagers, the adults themselves, are affected negatively by some of the say accidental mistaken fumigation efforts”.
Images Sylvester chatting in the street (NY).
42:45
Text:
In 1999 Salcedo met community workers who showed him that the War on Drugs also had its consequences at home.
Sylvester listens.
42:55
Sister Leontyne O'Gorman (works in East/Spanish Harlem of New York) :
“There’s almost a war against the poor. I went to Right Raise Island, the prison and there were hundreds of mothers and children visiting their men in prison. And I thought everyone of them represents a family that is disrupted and those men in prison are there because of drugs. Most of them because they couldn’t find work, they became addicted, because there weren’t other activities. We have failed utterly to do something about the drug problem”.
Sylvester and community-workers enter a very poor house in NY. He meets ex-prisoners. Sylvester listens.
43:33
Ex-prisoner: “I’ve spent 15 years of my life in jail because of drugs. There are 2 million people in jail in the United States right now, probably 90 % drug-related, but the people they’re putting in jail for drugs, are only small amounts of drugs. Since 1968 when Richard Nixon declared his War on Drugs, that was 32 years ago, there’s more drugs today then there ever was before, there is more people in jail than there ever was before and drugs does more damage then it ever had before”.
44:02
Sylvester Salcedo: “You are the guys, who in my work as a naval intelligence officer, I’m the guy who was hunting you guys down. And in this war on drugs, I’m supposed to be the good guy and you guys are supposed to be the bad guys and all my work is dedicated towards locking you people up in jails.... and I’m saying this is really crazy, this is really a war against ourselves”.
Sylvester walking in Bronx, sits down thinking.
44:28
Text:
Sylvester Salcedo started having doubts about the War on Drugs.
44:32
Sylvester: “From my experience as a naval intelligence officer and of what I know within the American intelligence community and their effort to assist in the war on drugs, I just think, we are wasting our time, because of the attempt at crop eradication and interdiction efforts, the goal is to capture the top level of the drug trade but again what tends to happen is that the people, who tend to suffer, who become the enemy, are the poor peasant farmers trying to make a living”.
45:09
Text:
With this in mind, Salcedo decided to abandon the War on Drugs.
45:15
Sylvester writes a letter : “Dear Mr president. I am returning the enclosed Navy and Marine Corps achievement medal to you in protest of your administration’s current national Drugs Policy. In my opinion narcotics use and abuse are our problem here at home. The solution should be applied here and not in Colombia or elsewhere. To spend this additional amount of money overseas is wasteful and counterproductive. I implore you to call for an end of the War on Drugs as we know it today”.
Sylvester signs the letter.
45:54
Folk singer in Bolivian village: “…..that white product is the devil, that left me abandoned in jail…”.
Music, Street images Bolivian village. Title ‘BOLIVIA, Region of Chapare’. Lots of indigenous women selling pineapples. Rotten pineapples.
46:07
Text:
After their coca crops were eradicated, many peasants in Chapare were convinced to grow bananas or pineapples. But no one told them where to sell the fruit. The price has fallen to 50 pineapples for a dollar. But the peasant-women are barely able to sell that amount daily. The peasants now say it’s a waste of time even harvesting the pineapples.
46:39
James Jones: “I think many things at different times have gone wrong. Sometimes the development project planning itself had been deficient. Crops have been promoted without real guarantees of markets”.
Setup James Jones in Washington. Images abandoned projects UNDCP in Bolivia. Zoom UNDCP.
47:02
Text:
James Jones now lives in Washington DC as a retired United Nations drug control-expert. In Bolivia he was the co-ordinator for alternative development projects of UNDCP, the United Nations Drug Control Program. Many of those projects ended as discarded and rusty remains of failure. But eradication goes on.
Forced eradication in Bolivia and Colombia.
47:30
James Jones: “If the disincentive takes the form of forced eradication this is not good. You create a great deal of unrest and what is the potential for that unrest to be disruptive or in the worst case it will take the form of an insurgency”.
47:51
Military control post in Colombia. People being screened by soldiers. Subtitle ‘South of Colombia’. Víctor G. Ricardo talking with guerrilla-commanders.
48:02
Text:
While the hot issue in Washington is the War on Drugs, for common Colombians the main issue is the almost 40 year old civil war between the government and a guerrilla army, the one unable to defeat the other. Because this hopeless war had reached a stalemate, the Colombian government and the guerrillas agreed to start peace negotiations. Negotiators from both sides meet frequently for talks and they express optimism.
48:31
Victor G. Ricardo (Former Government Negotiator): “We’re talking with them because we consider that they do have political ideas and they aren’t a narco-guerrilla. Two years ago it was unimaginable that we would establish contact with the guerrillas and now we have a dialogue.”
Setup congressman (R) Souder
48:46
Text:
But the peace talks with the guerrillas are regarded with a distrustful eye by the main proponents of the War on Drugs.
48:54
Rep. Mark Souder: “I believe that its a highly technical argument to say that at present they aren’t narco-terrorists. I believe that their future power is depending on the funding coming from drugs. And they’re clearly terrorists”.
49:09
FARC Commander Reyes: “We emphasize that the Colombians are permitted to resolve their internal problems in their own way, without any pressure.”
49:22
MacCaffrey during Hearing US Congress (C-Span): “The peace process is not working”.
Diputado Ose (C-Span): “I don’t care about the peace process in Colombia. I just don’t care. I don’t care”.
Congress.
49:32
Text:
The US Congress decided to intensify the War on Drugs in Colombia with more military means, only opposed by a small minority.
49:41
Jan Schakowsky: “I think that we’re beginning on a path that doesn’t have a clear endgame here. When I’ve asked repeatedly at hearings ‘how do we know we have won? When do we get out? What happens when helicopters get shot down”?
Images Vietnam memorial
“The part that I’m concerned about is helicopters going in and spraying and helping to kill even more people there, a strategy that has not worked so far”.
Images Vietnam memorial
50:27
Sanho Tree: “We know what’s effective in this war, we know that treatment works, that we must reduce demand in the US. It is absolutely insane that we are willing to consider a billion dollar of military aid, but we’re not willing to give even a fraction of that amount of money to drug treatment in the US”.
50:47
American addict using cocaine.
51:14
Coca leaf. Music.
51:19
Edilberto Vargas: “It’s all right to eradicate, but not with poison. Let’s substitute those crops for others, but we need help. Then we can end the war. We’re tired of war. We are not shooting but we are in the middle of it. We don’t know where the bullets come from, if it will come from here or from there.”
51:36
Music. Mountains in Peruvian highlands. Old Indian man (the same as in opening) and his wife in the Peruvian highlands on a coca-ritual.
An old Indian man in traditional clothes, sitting on a stone in the Peruvian highlands: “For us coca is always good. How can that ever disappear? Some say coca causes harm in other countries. Here it never causes harm.”
52:04
End-credits over Coca-ritual.
COCA MAMA - The War on Drugs
A 52 Minute investigative Documentary – January 2001, By Jan Thielen
Mountains. Subtitle ‘The Peruvian Andes’. An old Indian man in traditional clothes, sitting on a stone in the Peruvian highlands, tells a story in the Quechua language: (Subtitled)
“When the whites came, our ancestors consulted the Sun God. He told them to trust in the coca leaf. The coca will feed and cure you, he said, and give you the strength to survive. He also said that the white men would discover the magic force, but they wouldn’t know how to make use of the coca. Coca will turn the white man into brutes and idiots. I ask God that he will give us always plenty of coca”.
01:13
Images Andes Highlands. Snow peak, dissolve to cocaine on a piece of mirror. North American addict prepares cocaine.
North American addict using cocaine:
“When you’re on cocaine everything is good. You feel strong. You feel ok.
When I don’t use it, I feel depressed, low.
I like the feeling I get. You’re not in so much pain.
A lot of it comes from South America, made from the coca plant, from the leaves of the coca plant.
02:04
TITLE: (Over coca leaf) “COCA MAMA, The War on Drugs.”
02:16
Images US Congress
Eric Sterling, Washington based lawyer: “These are copies of the laws that I helped to write in 1984, 1986 and 1988, very harsh laws. Those particular provisions came right out of my word processor and I gave them to the members of Congress and they debated them and adopted them. Provisions dealing with money laundering, with the powers of the DEA, with many other law enforcement agencies”.
Images of people being arrested in Bolivia. Prisoners in jail.
Eric Sterling: “And I was the council to the house committee on the judiciary who was principal responsible for the drug portions of these laws. Tough laws that are adopted for political purposes, or by countries like Bolivia to satisfy the demand of American politicians and the US State Department. When America goes to Bolivia and says ‘show me the people, show me their crimes’, they simply pick up a report. The Bolivian government says ‘we arrested 700 major traffickers last year’. ‘That’s great minister, terrific, we applaud the hard work you’re doing, how can we do more to help you?’ It’s a fraud there just as it’s a fraud here”.
03:15
Images in heavy crowded Bolivian jail.
Female prisoner (crying): “I do have relatives but they are very poor. I’ve got nobody who could help me.”
Prisoner: “We’re living here like sardines. They don’t give us anything to clean with and that makes many of us ill. Because there are so many of us we infect each other with all kinds of diseases and there’s no health care service that can help us. We are totally abandoned.”
04:47
Sanho Tree, (Institute for Policy Studies IPS, Washington) (over images): “If the drug warriors were to focus on the drug kingpins, the people who really make the most money out of this. They know who they are, they know where they live. They know how to get them. It’s much easier for them to round up the little people, at the lowest level. (En camera) And they can go back and say, ‘oh look at the numbers of people we have locked up, look at the people we have arrested, look at the hectares of coca we’ve eradicated’ And they go back and the Congress gives them the budget. And give them more money every year. More money, more money, more money.
05:19
Music. Mountains in the Andes. (subtitle “PERU – Near Quillabamba”). Music. An indigenous couple, Alejandrina and Teodoro, is harvesting and drying the coca-leaves.
05:40
Text: Coca has been grown by Indian peasants for centuries on the lower slopes of the Andes.
Coca leaves are read to predict the future; to combat hunger and fatigue as coca is an extremely rich source of vitamins, minerals and protein; it’s offered to the Gods and used to cure the sick
Teodoro: “Yes. It is Inca culture, very old. It’s from before old times, from our great-great-great grandfathers. During the day and the night we love coca.
Yes, it’s Coca Mama, like a mother who feeds her children. Everything is maintained by the coca. It’s Coca Mama.”
06:25
Text: The artificial increase of the coca-crops started with the first industrial use of the leaves by the Coca Cola Company and the government started buying harvests. Later came the demand for drug trafficking. Bolivia and Peru came to have enormous coca fields to supply that demand.
06:45
Teodoro and Alejandrina in a coca-ritual.
Alejandrina: “With coca everything is possible. It’s sacred for us. Father God gave it so that we can live. Coca is very valid for us. Always coca….. just coca. With coca we buy things. We buy clothes for us and the children. Everything… with just coca. With just coca we buy everything to eat and to live.”
Teodoro: “Other people make cocaine. Therefore they are eradicating. But we peasants don’t know how to make cocaine. I don’t know how that would be.”
07:58
Soldiers UMOPAR (militarised anti-narcotics police) crossing a river. Subtitle: ‘BOLIVIA – Jungle of Chapare’ They stop to study a map and a GPS.
08:11
Colonel Meleán (Commander UMOPAR): “The law says that interdiction has to be executed by a special force in the struggle against drug trafficking. In the rural areas, that is done by us, the UMOPAR, a specialized jungle force. During our patrols we try to locate cocaine factories in the jungle.”
Lieutenant UMOPAR Valdéz: “We’re on the exact spot now, following the coordinates we received by satellite, that means from the DEA. But we couldn’t find the factory.”
Colonel Meleán: “This whole area is considered a red zone, an area of drug trafficking. All citizens who come through here have to be screened”.
09:06
Soldiers continue their patrolling. They search the belongings of a scared peasant-family. Music.
09:48
Text: UMOPAR-patrols enter the peasants’ houses without a warrant and if something suspicious is found the peasants are accused and arrested as drug traffickers.
In the whole Chapare region there are hundreds of small laboratories, known as factories, where poor peasants paid by the drug traffickers convert the coca leaves simply and cheaply into coca-paste.
UMOPAR-soldiers searching a poor peasant-house. Shooting. Patrol attacks a laboratory. Then the burn it.
UMOPAR-soldier: “They escaped. They ran into the jungle. It will be hard to arrest them. We’re going to burn it. Total destruction, total burning”.
11:15
Colonel Meleán (indicating on a map) : “Those factories are not set in stone. One day it’s at point ‘x’, processes some 20 kilos and is then it is transferred to another place for security reasons.”
Logo UMOPAR, Bolivian National Police with US-flag.
11:30
Colonel (R) Bob Brown (ONDCP-Washington - Office for National Drugs Control Policy): “Just talking about the drug supply challenges, interdiction, alternative development, eradication in Bolivia… essentially those programmes are police programmes. The problem to be addressed is fundamentally a law enforcement problem”.
Images control post UMOPAR
11:48
Kevin B. Zeese (Common Sense for Drug Policy - Washington): “Law enforcement is actually counterproductive. It makes the problem worse. It creates new drugs, new drug markets, new drug trafficking routes and more violence. And that has been the history, you can go back to the French Connection in 1960’s, you can go to Nixon, Carter, Ford, Bush, Clinton, every time they’ve tried interdiction or eradication, they’ve made the problem worse”.
Setup Mr. Brown before logo ONDCP. White House.
12:14
Text:
The ONDCP, the Office for National Drug Control Policy depends directly on the White House and is run by the military.
12:23
Colonel (R) Bob Brown: “We assess the cost to us as a society in the US for drug addiction, consuming illicit drugs, to add up to approximately 110 billion dollars. We think we’ve spent about 57 billion dollars in total on all illicit drugs of which some 30 some billion is just on cocaine alone”.
12:49
Coletta Youngers (WOLA, Washington Office on Latin America) “The RAND corporation has done studies which show that it is significantly cheaper to carry out treatment programs for drug addicts than to try to interdict the supplies coming in from abroad. I think you can find overwhelming evidence that it would make more sense to do that. It’s outrageous that you do not have treatment on demand in this country and that’s 80% of addicts who want treatment, can’t get it. Yet we are fighting small peasant farmers in Bolivia who are growing coca plants.
13:23
Bolivian peasant family. Title ‘BOLIVIA – Near VILLA TUNARI’. Music. Bruno walking to his fields.
14:00
Text:
Many years ago Bruno came to the Chapare region to try his luck growing coca. During the first years he made enough money to support his wife and children. When the campaign of forced coca eradication began, and the peasants were told to switch to other crops like banana, Bruno was one of the first to abandon coca.
14:24
Bruno: “Bruno: “In the beginning it all seemed fine. I thought, now I can support my family with bananas, but I had a lot of difficulties. When I cut the banana in order to sell it, it’s hard work getting it to the nearest village. I bring it to the road with my bike and wait for a car. But that’s very expensive.”
The banana I sell is hardly enough to buy salt and oil, nothing more. For 3 years I’ve worked with banana and I make 16 dollars a month. That’s not enough to maintain my family.”
Bruno’s family in extreme poverty. Poor food being prepared by his wife. His neighbours.
15:33
Text:
Bruno’s neighbours are much better off. Their children are learning to read and write and go to school.
12 year old Cesar is his mother’s pride. In her childhood Tomasa didn’t know the luxury of going to school.
Cesar reading for his mother. Cesar going to school.
15:58
Tomasa: “My mother was very poor and never sent me to school. That’s why I never learned to read and write. I tried to learn it myself but nobody was able to help me, so I was never successful.”
16:13
Text:
The 100 dollars that she and her husband Pascual manage to make every month comes from one source.
Tomasa’s husband Pascual harvesting coca-leaves. Cesar drying harvested coca-leaves.
16:20
Pascual: “There’s no other crop that allows me to make money.”
Tomasa packing and weighting coca-leaves.
16:38
Tomasa: “That’s coca. With this we can buy provisions. This makes us a living.”
Tomasa goes to sell coca. Music.
Bruno sowing coca.
17:00
Bruno: “I failed miserably with the banana. I don’t believe in anyone any more, even less in the government and whatever they say about alternative development. I’m now sowing coca because coca means life. I’ve now decided to grow coca regardless of the consequences.”
The government says all coca will be eradicated, but I’ve been seeking strategic places that cannot be seen. Nobody will see my coca, not the helicopters, or the army or even my neighbours. Only I know where I’m growing coca so that I can feed my family.”
Continues to sow coca.
18:03
Text:
He’s taking a huge risk because if a peasant stopped growing coca, he breaks the law by growing it again. If Bruno’s coca crops are discovered, a long prison sentence awaits him.
18:15
Bruno: “I don’t care. I will grow coca anyway because I’ve no alternative. Yes, helicopters fly over. Almost every day I see them but they won’t see my coca crops.”
Bruno leaving the fields. Noise of a helicopter. Colonel Cabrera gets into an army helicopter. Helicopter takes off. Air-shots from the Chapare-jungle.
18:46
Text:
Colonel Cabrera from the Bolivian army is the second commander of the military anti-narcotics base in Chimoré, in the middle of the Chapare region. In 1998 the army was mobilised to execute eradication. Every day helicopters take off to locate coca crops in the immense Chapare jungle, which are later destroyed by the soldiers. The Colonel admits it’s getting harder to locate the crops.
19:21
Colonel Emilio Cabrera (Bolivian Army): “Now they hide it under the weeds and it’s very difficult to identify the coca during the reconnaissance flights.”
19:33
Soldiers in a military base, then leave in military trucks. They arrive at a coca field and start destroying the crop.
19:36
Colonel Cabrera: “Our mission is to eradicate.
The government has its mechanisms for coordinating with the USA. They define the strategy and we execute it.”
Soldiers eradicating. Lieutenant yelling: Hurry up …. Hurry up.
20:30
Colonel (R) Bob Brown: “It has frankly been, from our perspective a most notorious success. Since the time that the Bolivian administration has been in office the net production and cultivation of coca in Bolivia has dramatically declined”.
Colonel Cabrera in the coca-field.
20:51
Text:
The Bolivian military is not entirely comfortable with its role. Officials know that forced eradication has its price.
20:59
Colonel Cabrera: “The price is that all those peasants who depend exclusively on the coca are caused tremendous trauma once they lose it all, and obviously it means an increase in the number of dispossessed.”
Soldiers withdrawing.
21:19
Text:
As the very last coca plant is pulled up and Colonel Cabrera orders the troops to withdraw, the owner of the destroyed coca field appears: Pascual, accompanied by his son Cesar.
21:32
Pascual: “Maybe you think I’m going to leave now. No, I’m going to die right here. I’ll keep on working on this ground. It’s just that I don’t know ...... my children. For God’s sake, how am I going to feed them now? It’s them I feel sorry for. How am I going to make my living now?”
Colonel Cabrera: So don’t you have any faith in the promises for alternative development?
Pascual: “No! That only exists on radio and television. We don’t see anything like that here. Nothing.”
Images destroyed coca-field. Tomasa and her children arrive to see the destruction.
22:22
Tomasa (Crying): “How am I going to support my children now? This fucking useless government. I’m ready to take poison and kill myself. I don’t want to live in this world anymore. I’ll do anything to make my children to go to school. I will sell my clothes… try to get one or two pesos to send my children to school. But where do I get the money, what can I do?”
Music. Twilight. Night. Sunrise.
23:21
Tomasa and Pascual replanting coca plants.
23:40
Tomasa: “I hope that God wants it to rain now. With a little bit of rain and God’s blessing it will grow again.”
Dark sky. Thunder. Heavy rainfall on field/field.
24:04
Bob Brown: “We’re comfortable with our successes. In the Andean countries, we have a declining production capacity for cocaine, coca cultivation, that’s success as well. That’s not US success, that’s Peruvian and Bolivian success with ours and others’ assistance”.
Image of ONDCP-report “Drugs Policy is working”.
24:26
Coletta Youngers: “It’s a virtual success. What has happened is that you’ve had a reduction in Peru and Bolivia that have been offset by increases in Colombia. So just as much coca is produced in the Andean region”.
24:34
Children playing the ‘Whack a mole’ game.
24:46
Sanho Tree: “There is a game called whack a mole, where a little mole pops out of the border of many holes and you have to guess which one it is and whack it down with a hammer and then it pops up in another hole. And that’s what we were doing with our drug policy. We’re chasing drugs around from one region to the next, from one country to the next. And pretty soon, we’ll be chasing it from one continent to the next”.
25:02
Images River and small villages Southern Colombia. Title ‘South of Colombia’. Music.
25:42
Text:
With the decrease in number of coca hectares in Peru and Bolivia, coca found a new breeding ground in the inhospitable regions of southern Colombia. The land along the Caguan-river was known as a no man’s land, without law or government.
Many families fled to this region from other parts of the country when they experienced violence and massacres at the hands of the army. Until, in the early 1980’s a guerrilla movement sprang up. But even for the guerrillas it wasn’t easy to set down roots in this hostile land of men who knew no law.
26:24
Local FARC-commander ‘Fermin’: “In the 80’s there were few guerrillas here in Caguán. Here the mightiest ruled. There was no control, everybody carried guns, revolvers. They were hanging in the bars, drinking and then fighting. Not with knives, but with guns. Bullets were flying everywhere. It was so tough that they even shot at guerrillas. Yeah, they shot the guerrillas.”
Images FARC-guerrillas.
26:55
Text:
But the guerrillas of the FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, set down firm roots in the region. The FARC was born from an armed peasant self-defence movement and is now the oldest left-wing guerrilla movement in Latin America.
27:10
‘Fermin’ “The government never spent a penny in this region. Never, because they weren’t interested in this region. So the FARC did the job. And now we have 100 per cent control here.”
Highways in the jungle under construction.
27:25
Text:
The FARC established political, military and social control over an enormous area, where its guerrillas are building an extensive network of highways.
Coca fields. Peasants harvesting coca leaves.
27:37
Text:
For the colonizers in these territories abandoned by the state, growing coca became an excellent alternative for survival. Especially because of good prices after the eradication in Peru and Bolivia. The FARC, in keeping with its puritanical revolutionary spirit, tried to prohibit coca growing, but soon had to reconsider.
28:00
‘Fabián’, Commander 14th Front FARC: “We told them, “Stop growing coca, forget that plant.” But they answered, “And you guys from the FARC, are you going to maintain us? If the FARC will maintain our families we will destroy the crops.”
Peasants and guerrillas in villages. Set up priest. Travelling over the river. Guerrilla-patrol post on the river stopping a passenger-boat. Guerrilla-fighters distribute utilities in rural school.
28:46
Father Jacinto, Parish of Remolinos: “If the guerrillas rule, they do it badly. But if government would like to rule, they lack the instruments to do that because they simply are not here. You have to travel at least 300 kilometres, to Florencia, to find the state’s presence.
The guerrillas create all kinds of obstacles in order to prevent suspicious people, who might cause them troubles, from entering the region. They are the other state, a state with its privileges and total territorial control, because the government hasn’t existed here for many years.
The guerrillas control the local economy, and as the economy is based on the coca, the guerrillas control everything related to the coca here.”
29:53
Text:
It’s this fact that makes the US government insist the FARC are now narco-guerrillas.
29:59
Commander Raúl Reyes, National Secretary FARC: “It is not because the FARC wants it that way. People took up this way of living because they have no other way of surviving. That’s why we emphasize that these peasants are not drug traffickers, but workers who depend on their land and have been completely abandoned by the state.”
One hand passing Colombian pesos to another hand.
30:17
Text:
But the FARC admit they do profit from the business in the regions under their control.
30:23
Commander Reyes: “The FARC collect tax. From the cattle farmers, the coffee farmers, those who grow banana, soy beans and we also tax the buyers of the coca.”
Village of Remolinos. Peasants and guerrilla-fighters walking in the streets. First images of Edilberto Vargas and his neighbour Omar. Peasants doing their shopping, paying with coca-paste.
30:47
Text:
Sunday morning in the village of Remolinos, along the Caguan-river. Farmers from all over the region gather to do their shopping. However there’s little to buy since for months no coca buyers have been by and all hard cash disappeared. The farmers pay with the only currency left: coca-paste.
Edilberto Vargas runs a little coca-farm 2 hours from Remolinos, together with his friend and neighbour Omar. Edilberto can only afford the most basic provisions.
A big part of his paste has to be invested in fuel for his laboratory.
When the shopping is done Edilberto and his companion return home.
Edilberto and Omar on their horses. Edilberto coming home in his poor house with the shopping. His family. Burned jungle.
32:17
Text:
Edilberto lives with his family in the middle of the jungle in a run-down house without electricity or drinking water. They came here after fleeing the violence in the region in which he grew up in. About a year or two ago Edilberto and Omar burned down several hectares of virgin jungle to grow coca.
The crop grows quickly and can be harvested 3 or 4 times a year.
Coca crops. Edilberto and Omar working in their laboratory.
33:07
Text:
They now process the coca leaves in a small laboratory near his house to make the basic coca paste. This is later bought by the buyers from the coca mafia, who take it to sophisticated chemical labs where it will be crystallised into pure cocaine. With this harvest alone Edilberto and Omar produce 200 grams of coca paste.
33:29
Edilberto Vargas: “This allows us to survive for more or less one month. Just to cover the main costs and to buy food for about a month.
33:44
Omar: “This is the misery we’re producing. If there were other crops, that would be much better off.”
33:54
Edilberto Vargas: “We know it’s harmful. People fight over the money and profits of coca. They steal from each other. Families disintegrate. Young people who grow up surrounded by the coca business only end up with two options: they either join the guerrillas or the army.”
34:16
Text:
Edilberto and his neighbour didn’t come to the region to grow coca. They used to grow legal crops. That was until 1998, when the helicopters and fumigation planes flew over.
Fumigation planes. Edilberto shows his fumigated fields
34:33
Edilberto Vargas: “When the fumigation….. there came two planes. They came from there, where you can see, there’s no coca, there’s nothing. They sprayed here where I had 1000 fishes. They were all poisoned.
This, as you can see, once was cacao. Like this one, they’re all rotten. A lost harvest… because of the fumigation. And not just this. They fumigated the bananas, the pineapples, the guayaba crops, young trees for reforestation. It’s all gone. So, what are we supposed to do?”
Edilberto walking in destroyed field. Cattle, fishes.
35:30
Father Jacinto: “The consequences of the fumigations are catastrophic. They do it in a hurry. They don’t care that they also fumigate corn plantations, prairies, lakes, fish, animals” ...
Coca fields. Burned rainforest.
35:56
Text:
Despite all the fumigation in recent years, the amount of coca hectares has tripled. When fumigation takes place, there’s a shortage of coca. Prices rise and the peasants are tempted to grow more coca because of the high returns. For each fumigated hectare of coca, peasants burn down 3 or 4 hectares of rainforest for new crops.
In this way fumigation leads to the destruction of thousands of square kilometres of Amazon rainforest.
36:41
Fumigation plane spaying.
36:48
Peasant Delio Anacona, Father of Jessica Lorena: “When the planes came, they fumigated my house, everything. Shortly afterwards, because of the fumigation, my little daughter died. The poison went all over her and she started to vomit.... and then she died.”
37:10
Peasant Alfredo Bocanegra, Father of Bianei: “Two planes came and they fumigated… around 10 o’clock in the morning. It affected everything and my little girl was poisoned...... and I found her dead. She was just 17 months old.”
Fumigation-planes.
27:29
Voice other peasant: “The planes came over ….and he died….”
Voice other peasant-woman: “He died intoxicated by this poison….”
37:41
FARC Commander Reyes: “What is likely to happen, when the fumigations are intensified, is that our troops will fight those planes and helicopters. When the peasants are targeted by these fumigations, they will look for the FARC’s support. And we will be their allies. “
38:05
FARC Guerrillas in a meeting with the peasants. Guerrilla-commander having a speech. Peasants listen. Edilberto and Omar in the meeting.
Local Commander: “Receive a warm and revolutionary greeting from the Revolutionary Armed Forces FARC, the 14th Front.
You are the ones who suffer most from the war without even being a part of it.
The state abandoned Caguan.
We fight for what you need. We fight because life here is not guaranteed.
What would you prefer? Bear it, or wait for Yankee intervention? Better to bear it, isn’t it?”
38:47
Image US Congress. Schoolchildren.
Text:
The War on Drugs is a sensitive issue for American politicians.
.
38:54
Rep. Doug Ose (R) during Hearing US Congress (C-Span): “I want something to happen. I’m tired of reading about the kids in the streets of America dying from this poison. We can’t get 10 stinking helicopters into Colombia”?
Schoolchildren New York.
39:04
Sanho Tree: “No one wants to look soft on drugs. This is the most common fear among politicians. They’re afraid of being attacked by their challengers, ‘congressman so and so is soft on drugs, vote for me, I’ll protect your children from drugs”.
Colombian children playing on a tropical riverside.
39:25
Rep. Mark Souder (R) during Hearing US Congress (C-Span): “It’s similar to coming up to a river where the babies are drowning and you’re busy pulling these babies out like crazy trying to save their life and somebody says: I wonder how those babies are getting in here. I’m wondering what’s happening up river. Well, Colombia is the source at the river. It’s coming from Colombia”.
39:45
Sanho Tree: “Most of them couldn’t find places like Colombia on a map. They hear from people in the DEA or General McCaffrey’s, the Drugs Tzar’s office, or people in congress who have taken a quick trip down there and they’ll say ‘we have a terrible crisis on our hands, the drug situation has gotten out of control, we have to act properly, we have to send money and guns and helicopters”.
40:11
Coletta Youngers: “Over the last 15 years the US government has spent over 30 billion dollars on international drug control efforts alone, not to mention the 100’s of billions that are spend here at home. Yet there is absolutely no evidence that any fewer drugs are coming into this country than before. First of all you have a bureaucratic labyrinth here in Washington. You have over 50 federal agencies all involved in one way or another in the US war on drugs in Latin America. There are tremendous rivalries between the CIA, the DEA and the DIA in particular and you often find conflict”.
Images NY. Travelling in car. Street images. Sylvester Salcedo (with sunglasses) driving his car.
40:51
Sylvester Salcedo: “I am a naval intelligence-officer assigned to Joint Task Force 6 which is the primary US military command assigned to work with federal state and local law enforcements in the prosecution in war on drugs. Most of JTF 6 activities is really limited to the US, but the intelligence effort of course is worldwide, at home and oversees. I can’t talk about any specific activities or projects that I may have worked on”.
Photos of Sylvester in uniform. Sylvester (with sunglasses) walking on the streets of NY.
41:27
Text:
Lieutenant Commander Sylvester Salcedo entered the US Navy in 1980 as a young officer. He took part in several naval exercises throughout Latin America. Later -in the 1990’s- the Military Intelligence Service mobilized him for the War on Drugs.
Sylvester walking in the streets of New York.
41:45
Sylvester Salcedo: “I went through a personal conflict within my own personal career in the Navy. On the one hand, I had that own personal ambition to fulfil, to prove myself as a good naval officer. On the same time I was facing a so-called war that I did not fully believe in”.
42:08
Text:
The War on Drugs in Colombia produced his first doubts.
42:15
Sylvester Salcedo: “When you carry out air fumigation and the airplane goes across a mountainside with the intention of spraying to destroy certain drug producing plants, children who live in a certain village or even the villagers, the adults themselves, are affected negatively by some of the say accidental mistaken fumigation efforts”.
Images Sylvester chatting in the street (NY).
42:45
Text:
In 1999 Salcedo met community workers who showed him that the War on Drugs also had its consequences at home.
Sylvester listens.
42:55
Sister Leontyne O'Gorman (works in East/Spanish Harlem of New York) :
“There’s almost a war against the poor. I went to Right Raise Island, the prison and there were hundreds of mothers and children visiting their men in prison. And I thought everyone of them represents a family that is disrupted and those men in prison are there because of drugs. Most of them because they couldn’t find work, they became addicted, because there weren’t other activities. We have failed utterly to do something about the drug problem”.
Sylvester and community-workers enter a very poor house in NY. He meets ex-prisoners. Sylvester listens.
43:33
Ex-prisoner: “I’ve spent 15 years of my life in jail because of drugs. There are 2 million people in jail in the United States right now, probably 90 % drug-related, but the people they’re putting in jail for drugs, are only small amounts of drugs. Since 1968 when Richard Nixon declared his War on Drugs, that was 32 years ago, there’s more drugs today then there ever was before, there is more people in jail than there ever was before and drugs does more damage then it ever had before”.
44:02
Sylvester Salcedo: “You are the guys, who in my work as a naval intelligence officer, I’m the guy who was hunting you guys down. And in this war on drugs, I’m supposed to be the good guy and you guys are supposed to be the bad guys and all my work is dedicated towards locking you people up in jails.... and I’m saying this is really crazy, this is really a war against ourselves”.
Sylvester walking in Bronx, sits down thinking.
44:28
Text:
Sylvester Salcedo started having doubts about the War on Drugs.
44:32
Sylvester: “From my experience as a naval intelligence officer and of what I know within the American intelligence community and their effort to assist in the war on drugs, I just think, we are wasting our time, because of the attempt at crop eradication and interdiction efforts, the goal is to capture the top level of the drug trade but again what tends to happen is that the people, who tend to suffer, who become the enemy, are the poor peasant farmers trying to make a living”.
45:09
Text:
With this in mind, Salcedo decided to abandon the War on Drugs.
45:15
Sylvester writes a letter : “Dear Mr president. I am returning the enclosed Navy and Marine Corps achievement medal to you in protest of your administration’s current national Drugs Policy. In my opinion narcotics use and abuse are our problem here at home. The solution should be applied here and not in Colombia or elsewhere. To spend this additional amount of money overseas is wasteful and counterproductive. I implore you to call for an end of the War on Drugs as we know it today”.
Sylvester signs the letter.
45:54
Folk singer in Bolivian village: “…..that white product is the devil, that left me abandoned in jail…”.
Music, Street images Bolivian village. Title ‘BOLIVIA, Region of Chapare’. Lots of indigenous women selling pineapples. Rotten pineapples.
46:07
Text:
After their coca crops were eradicated, many peasants in Chapare were convinced to grow bananas or pineapples. But no one told them where to sell the fruit. The price has fallen to 50 pineapples for a dollar. But the peasant-women are barely able to sell that amount daily. The peasants now say it’s a waste of time even harvesting the pineapples.
46:39
James Jones: “I think many things at different times have gone wrong. Sometimes the development project planning itself had been deficient. Crops have been promoted without real guarantees of markets”.
Setup James Jones in Washington. Images abandoned projects UNDCP in Bolivia. Zoom UNDCP.
47:02
Text:
James Jones now lives in Washington DC as a retired United Nations drug control-expert. In Bolivia he was the co-ordinator for alternative development projects of UNDCP, the United Nations Drug Control Program. Many of those projects ended as discarded and rusty remains of failure. But eradication goes on.
Forced eradication in Bolivia and Colombia.
47:30
James Jones: “If the disincentive takes the form of forced eradication this is not good. You create a great deal of unrest and what is the potential for that unrest to be disruptive or in the worst case it will take the form of an insurgency”.
47:51
Military control post in Colombia. People being screened by soldiers. Subtitle ‘South of Colombia’. Víctor G. Ricardo talking with guerrilla-commanders.
48:02
Text:
While the hot issue in Washington is the War on Drugs, for common Colombians the main issue is the almost 40 year old civil war between the government and a guerrilla army, the one unable to defeat the other. Because this hopeless war had reached a stalemate, the Colombian government and the guerrillas agreed to start peace negotiations. Negotiators from both sides meet frequently for talks and they express optimism.
48:31
Victor G. Ricardo (Former Government Negotiator): “We’re talking with them because we consider that they do have political ideas and they aren’t a narco-guerrilla. Two years ago it was unimaginable that we would establish contact with the guerrillas and now we have a dialogue.”
Setup congressman (R) Souder
48:46
Text:
But the peace talks with the guerrillas are regarded with a distrustful eye by the main proponents of the War on Drugs.
48:54
Rep. Mark Souder: “I believe that its a highly technical argument to say that at present they aren’t narco-terrorists. I believe that their future power is depending on the funding coming from drugs. And they’re clearly terrorists”.
49:09
FARC Commander Reyes: “We emphasize that the Colombians are permitted to resolve their internal problems in their own way, without any pressure.”
49:22
MacCaffrey during Hearing US Congress (C-Span): “The peace process is not working”.
Diputado Ose (C-Span): “I don’t care about the peace process in Colombia. I just don’t care. I don’t care”.
Congress.
49:32
Text:
The US Congress decided to intensify the War on Drugs in Colombia with more military means, only opposed by a small minority.
49:41
Jan Schakowsky: “I think that we’re beginning on a path that doesn’t have a clear endgame here. When I’ve asked repeatedly at hearings ‘how do we know we have won? When do we get out? What happens when helicopters get shot down”?
Images Vietnam memorial
“The part that I’m concerned about is helicopters going in and spraying and helping to kill even more people there, a strategy that has not worked so far”.
Images Vietnam memorial
50:27
Sanho Tree: “We know what’s effective in this war, we know that treatment works, that we must reduce demand in the US. It is absolutely insane that we are willing to consider a billion dollar of military aid, but we’re not willing to give even a fraction of that amount of money to drug treatment in the US”.
50:47
American addict using cocaine.
51:14
Coca leaf. Music.
51:19
Edilberto Vargas: “It’s all right to eradicate, but not with poison. Let’s substitute those crops for others, but we need help. Then we can end the war. We’re tired of war. We are not shooting but we are in the middle of it. We don’t know where the bullets come from, if it will come from here or from there.”
51:36
Music. Mountains in Peruvian highlands. Old Indian man (the same as in opening) and his wife in the Peruvian highlands on a coca-ritual.
An old Indian man in traditional clothes, sitting on a stone in the Peruvian highlands: “For us coca is always good. How can that ever disappear? Some say coca causes harm in other countries. Here it never causes harm.”
52:04
End-credits over Coca-ritual.