Cocaina: A Book on Those Who Make It

by Magnus Linton

  The scent of rain fills the air. In a doorway, the silhouettes of two large sets of hips are swaying to the beat of salsa music, but the priest just looks on in misery. ‘What the state should be responsible for today has fallen into the hands of the guerrillas and charity organisations. There isn’t a single Colombian nurse here, and hardly any doctors. Everything to do with civilian life is controlled by foreign NGOs: Lutheran Help, Doctors Without Borders, UNICEF. And guerrillas are in charge of coca production. It’s all very sad.’

  RELYING ON HIS arms, both stretched straight out for balance, Graciano attempts to cross the terracotta-coloured creek on a log that serves as a small bridge. All of a sudden he starts to lose his balance, but finally manages to jump the remaining metres, with only one foot slipping down to splash in the water.

  It is Monday afternoon. Crescendos of birdsong stream out of the remains of a lush and vibrant rainforest like melodies from a music box, and everything is dry for a change. The sun beats down on a patchwork quilt of carved-out, clear-felled land, and standing on a slope in the middle of a coca field are the charred remains of a felled tree.

  ‘These are almost ready to be harvested.’ He runs his hand through the ripened leaves in a few of the bushes. A couple of hundred metres separates them from Graciano’s own field and lab.

  In a month’s time, the family will begin harvesting. Today he will just tend to his viveros, small flowerbeds from which the new seedlings will later be separated and planted out in the fields. His purple gabardine pants flap in the breeze and his straw hat sits on the back of his head as he takes the final steps up to his property.

  ‘Look over there,’ he says pointing with his machete.

  There are several cleared hectares on the other side of the valley, but the lime-green coca bushes that usually cover the clear-cut areas are missing. Everything is brown and grey. Burnt.

  ‘That family cleared their land but couldn’t afford to grow anything. It’s very common here for people to run out of money halfway through the process. The land just lies there dead. It’s a terrible shame.’

  For every gram of cocaine consumed four square metres of rainforest have to be cut down, and because the farmers are pushed deeper and deeper into the jungle, they have to make do with land that is increasingly less suited for coca, and thus end up using even more pesticides. About 550 kilos of weed-killer, fertiliser, fuel, ammonia, cement, and sulfuric acid go into transforming one hectare of coca into paste, and around 154,000 tonnes of chemical waste a year are dumped into some of the world’s most diverse ecological systems, often in nature reserves and national parks.

  In 2006 the Colombian government launched Shared Responsibility, a campaign designed to call attention to the global environmental damage being caused by the cocaine industry by appealing to the new wave of eco-activism in Europe and the United States. Since neither the violence nor the corruption associated with the cocaine trade had deterred Western consumers from using the drug, the government thought that the environmental perspective might make more of an impact.

  However, the initiative was quickly met with thundering criticism, for as it turned out that the basis upon which the claim was made — that coca cultivation was ‘the major cause of pollution of the Colombian rainforests’ — was a lie. In comparison with the military’s herbicide spraying, the farmers’ contribution to the destruction of the environment was quite marginal, and nearly all of the hectares devastated during the first decade of the millennium were the result of the cultivators being forced to relocate to other parts of the country due to the lack of alternatives after their fields were sprayed with chemicals. And the industries the government had subsidised as alternatives to coca — cattle breeding and biofuel cultivation — were far more hazardous to the environment than coca cultivation. Colombia is about the same size as Spain and France combined, and today the main threat posed to Colombian ecosystems and food production is cattle raising, an industry whose expansion has driven away small farmers and caused large-scale deforestation. The same goes for biofuel. Palm oil — the main raw material for biodiesel, and one of the industries in which the government invested heavily as a part of its strategic plan to eradicate coca — not only causes serious environmental problems, but has also functioned as an economic base for paramilitary terrorist networks and money laundering by the drug mafia.

  Graciano examines what resembles a dense patch of clover and says that his little crop is doing just fine. Every cultivator has these small light-green beds of new bushes here and there on his property, and in just a few months each of the plants will have grown into a bush and thus have made its own contribution to the global cocaine complex. ‘This little patch will result in some 300 bushes,’ says Graciano.

  As one of the older men in the village born and raised in El Caraño, he has greater authority and a more thoughtful approach to what goes on than younger people. His comparative for how well or how badly people are doing in the village has to do with eating: ‘They eat more than us,’ ‘He eats the most,’ ‘She eats the least,’ and his way of thinking about what coca has done to El Caraño extends far beyond how many home renovations people have accomplished with their earnings.

  Graciano was one of the residents who were sceptical when coca first came. ‘But I didn’t take a clear stance against it. Today, I agree with those who said coca was going to cause lots of problems. A lot of people have been killed in our village alone. Those who lost their lives were completely innocent guys, foolish enough to get involved in things they shouldn’t have. When people get a lot of money, they act stupidly. Ask the wrong questions. Talk about the wrong things. Fight with the wrong people. It’s most often little things, but here even the little things can get you killed.’

  The farmers in Chocó are in no-win situation, and the strange forces of the industry make it hard for even those who would like to quit growing to do so. Graciano is convinced that the state does not actually want to stamp out coca cultivation, because if the government and military really wanted to, he says, it would not be very hard. ‘What makes us so sure about this is how easy it is to get your hands on all the additives. To buy a bag of fertiliser just a few years ago, you had to go all the way to Quibdó. There was no place to get fertiliser anywhere along the San Juan. But when coca arrived, lots of shops opened all along the river. And those shops have to have a permit from the state. The owners come from inland. No one from here, not a single black man, has ever owned such a shop. We don’t have access to that business. Cement, fertiliser, sulfuric acid, and anything else you’d ever need is there and in endless supply. It’s always in stock. However much you want. If somebody really did want to put a stop to coca cultivation, all they’d have to do would be to cut off access to the additives. But no one is doing that.’

  Graciano sits with his back against one of the posts holding up his little lab. It has been 20 years since the coca boom shook up Putumayo and ten years since herbicide spraying caused coca cultivation to move out all over the country. As he gazes out over the cleared areas — some green, others dead — he maintains that everyone knows the priest is right: it will all come to an end. The farmers by the San Juan have cultivated way too much way too fast, and when military satellite images and computer screens detect that the size of the fields has exceeded a certain amount of hectarage, the planes will be dispatched. Since no one grows any food here today, there will be nothing they can do when the planes arrive, other than to grab their packed suitcases, get in their canoes, and head down the river — to Buenaventura, to join the rest of the four million displaced people in Colombia, who populate shantytowns all over the nation.

  ‘Oooor,’ Graciano says, drawing the word out. Looking a bit uncertain, he strokes his well-trimmed moustache with his thumb and forefinger, while butterflies, soft as velvety pieces of cloth, circle around a banana tree. There is of course an alternative to running away, which is to take up arm
s and join the guerrillas. And the inhabitants of El Caraño will most likely be split 50-50 between these two options. Children, mothers, and the elderly will flee, and younger men will join the FARC. And so the gap between the state and its citizens will continue to widen, while the war will get renewed support.

  Graciano rubs his hand through the bed of little green leaves and says, without specifying who he considers cocaine’s primary victims — or whether he means that the guerrillas, the government, demand, the United States, prohibitions, abuse, global injustice, or the farmers’ new materialistic desires are the root of the evil — that what he thinks about most today when he looks out over his glimmering crops is death.

  ‘Death grows here. We’re cultivating death.’

  PABLO’S PARTY

  the State gets cancer

  ‘There are types of military actions that others

  have to carry out so that the State won’t have to.’

  — CARLOS CASTAÑO, FOUNDER OF THE AUC

  VIRGINIA AND ANÍBAL were zooming along in a dune buggy, and as the car picked up speed she understood, from the wild swill of the glass of whisky in the driver’s hand, that things were getting a bit crazy. Virginia knew that Aníbal, the nephew of president Julio César Turbay, was a typical Colombian madman — not afraid of anything — but she liked thrills and long parties, and this weekend was certainly starting to look promising.

  On any other property of this size it would have been impossible to drive at such high speed on such terrain; fences, barbed wire, gates, walls, and other gloom and doom would be dividing up the property to keep all the cows and bulls in place. But not here. Despite the fact that the hacienda was just ten miles from Medellín, it was as if they were riding through the savannahs of Africa. The owner of the estate, a local politician popular with the poor, was just about to arrive, and as they drove around the 3000-hectare property, their tour took them past elephants, giraffes, zebras, camels, hippopotamuses, and other animals, none of which are indigenous to South America. The property had its own helipads, a bullring, an airstrip, several lakes, luxury villas, a dinosaur park, and a museum with some of the most expensive vintage automobiles in the world.

  She was impressed, overwhelmed. And that was the point. Virginia was the most famous television-news anchor in the country, known for her looks, and a media personality in great demand with every politician and businessman whose career was in need of positive exposure. They all wanted to be on her right side. She was from an intellectual family in Bogotá, and she already knew that Aníbal, her current boyfriend, was too fond of perico to be considered as a serious long-term partner, even though he was a member of the Turbay political clan. Grass could be smoked with style, but only gringos and men on the down-and-out snorted powder. Still, she was curious about and pleased by the invitation to spend a weekend at Hacienda Nápoles, a renowned place. Owned by a renowned man.

  As they zigzagged between the hills, the heat from the afternoon sun only grew in intensity. The treetops aligning the rivers and brooks looked like tightly packed heads of broccoli, and each was home to a myriad of animals and fruits: sloths, monkeys, toucans; mangos, papayas, coconuts.

  On a map Colombia resembles a slightly distorted star, and Virginia and Aníbal were now smack in the middle of this tropical wonderland, just north of the equator. They were in Magdalena Medio, a valley between the eastern and central cordillera whose communities, idyllic at first glance, would later become the settings of some of the most gruesome massacres in history, a replay of sorts of the violence characteristic of the 1950s. Rio Magdalena, a legendary mega-river in Colombia and the setting of much of the action in Gabriel García Márquez’s novel Love in the Time of Cholera, is the dominant transport route in the area; it meanders through the entire country, from the convergence of two mountain chains in the south up to the warm Caribbean basin in the north.

  A few hours on, as Virginia would later describe in her memoir, they crashed the car. But they must have had a guardian angel, for nothing serious happened. While they were getting their scrapes dressed at the estate’s infirmary, a messenger came to announce that el anfitrión, the estate owner and their host for the weekend, had finally arrived. Not long after they had taken a seat in one of the larger formal living rooms, a short man with a broad smile and a well-kept moustache entered the room. He was only 170 centimetres, but carried himself in a way that suggested height had never been one of his problems. Virginia noticed immediately that his was the sort of body that could become quite fat over time; a prominent double chin hung over a strong yet abnormally short neck. Nevertheless, he exuded a youthful and appealing charm, along with what she perceived as an air of modest but natural authority.

  ‘How wonderful to finally meet you!’ he exclaimed. ‘How are your wounds? Not to worry. We’ll compensate you. The important thing at Nápoles is that you’re never bored. I’m terribly sorry I wasn’t able to come sooner, but there were matters I had to attend to. Very pleased to meet you. I am Pablo Escobar.’

  IN THE EARLY 1980s, Hacienda Nápoles was the hub of Pablo Escobar’s empire. In 1979 he and his cousin Gustavo Gaviria had purchased the land, a beautiful mix of dense jungle and wide-open spaces, for a reported sum of 63 million USD. They built, among other spectacular things, luxury homes, six swimming pools, several artificial lakes, and two aeroplane runways. The estate served as a comfortable retreat for business or pleasure, where Escobar could entertain anyone from international partners to beloved family members, close friends to acquaintances.

  But the most amazing feature was the zoo, a completely illegal operation, but a venture that, interestingly, reflected the paradoxical sides of Escobar himself, specifically those vital to his career: an infallible talent for smuggling, ruthless cold-bloodedness, instinctual awareness, and an understanding of the common people, topped off by a monumental class complex.

  How the vast array of exotic animals — including giraffes, elephants, gazelles, buffalos, and lions from Africa and Asia — made it to Nápoles has been a topic of great speculation ever since the 1980s. Nonetheless, there they were. Escobar’s zoo was open to the public, built with the intention of creating something special for the people whose votes he would need to make his dream come true: to obtain a seat in Congress, and perhaps even one day to become president. As he explained, ‘The Nápoles Zoo doesn’t belong to us, but to the people of Colombia. We’ve built it for the enjoyment of all, young or old, rich or poor. Admission is free. Those who own the zoo shouldn’t have to pay for what already belongs to them.’

  In September 1983, after the first congressional debate on the impact of drug money on Colombia, the exotic animals at the Nápoles Zoo were confiscated. Unfazed, Pablo happily paid the fine of 4500 USD, bought the animals back at auction, and took them home to Nápoles.

  Around the same time, Escobar was also investing huge sums of money in regenerating the poorest neighbourhoods of Medellín. He built about 100 soccer fields around the city, complete with lighting and other facilities so that people could make the most of their evenings. The same number of schools received a fresh coat of paint, and many churches in terrible disrepair were renovated. But his most important project politically was the one that would play the most defining role in his longevity as a hero of the working class: the building of Barrio Escobar, 400 single-family homes on the eastern slope of the city, for destitute families who were living on one of Medellín’s landfills.

  It was an ingenious project. Clientelism and populism are the most distinctive features of Colombian politics, but the difference between Escobar and the other politicians who bought public votes was that while the latter simply forgot about the people after gaining their support through false promises, Escobar did not. He kept his word. The day after campaigning for the proletariat vote, he was already working on fulfilling the promises he had made the day before. A few years later, delusions of grandeur w
ould take over — like the time he would scatter dollar bills over the slums of Medellín from a plane — but in the early 1980s, his schemes were much more down-to-earth. The people adored him, and everywhere he went they chanted his name.

  But greater than his philanthropic spirit was his ego. Everything he did had an ulterior motive. In 1981 an extradition treaty came into effect between the White House and the Colombian government, making drug trafficking a crime against the United States; from that point on, smugglers or suspected smugglers would be extradited and tried in the United States. Only members of Congress would be exempt. Escobar determined that if he could get into Congress, not only would he be able to escape a dreaded prison sentence in the United States, but he would also be in a better position to capitalise on his conviction that cocaine would one day be legalised and treated no differently from liquor and cigarettes. History, he felt, pointed in this direction. Or, as one of the men closest to him later said:

  Legalisation was his dream. What Pablo wanted to do was to create an industrial product called ‘Escobar Cocaine’. He used to ask me to cut out every article I could find in the American newspapers about the Hells Angels and to keep a list of various names. For, as he said, ‘When cocaine is legalised, those guys will be my distributors.’

  Yet a political career demanded that a wider audience know about his charitable contributions and good deeds. This was why media coverage, preferably television, was of the utmost importance. Escobar needed a journalist-cum-travelling-companion who could journey with him through the slums to document how he was actively working to improve the lives of the poor and acting as their saviour. As he saw it, a beautiful woman was the fastest way to achieve the media attention he desired.