Cocaina: A Book on Those Who Make It

by Magnus Linton

  Barack Obama has now removed the term ‘war’ from the vocabulary of Washington’s anti-drug efforts, but after yet another big military budget for Plan Colombia was drawn up and the United States had been given the green light to use the country’s military bases, Bolivia’s red president Evo Morales sarcastically stated the pattern looked familiar. The concept of ‘drug terrorists’, he said, had been updated and transformed — the prefix now no longer needed — into a tool the White House could use to obstruct Latin America’s left wing and to prevent the continent’s increasing economic integration: ‘So now we’re narcoterrorists. When they couldn’t call us communists anymore, they called us subversives. Then traffickers. And since the September 11 attacks, they call us terrorists.’ It seems, he concluded, ‘that the history of Latin America repeats itself’.

  The White House had a different view. The DEA was not thrown out of Bolivia and Venezuela because the organisation had conspired with the state’s right-wing forces, but because so much incriminating evidence had been gathered to indicate that both nations were deeply involved in the cocaine business that it was easier for the presidents just to kick the DEA out than to deal with the problem. Today Bolivia is not only a state in which cocaine production is on the obvious rise, but also, according to Washington’s global narcotics investigators, a nation whose government is increasingly being overtaken by a drug mafia. And after the doors to the outside world have been slammed shut, collaboration between the state and drug traffickers will, they argue, flourish undisturbed.

  But the hub of cocaine production and the war on drugs remains Colombia. In the last decade the police have blown up 20,000 labs in the country, and over a million hectares of rainforest have been sprayed. During the same time period, a resilient system of production has continued to satisfy the world’s growing demand and Colombia’s armed groups.

  However, while John Freddy Sanchez, one of those participating in today’s operation, admits that he has lost count of how many labs he has blown up, he remains hopeful that he will be able to make a difference. ‘I think our method is working,’ he says. ‘It’s expensive for those involved in cocaine production. It costs a great deal to get all the equipment and chemicals out to the boondocks, and when we blow up the labs they’re put at a severe financial disadvantage. They lose a lot of money.’

  He adjusts his machine gun and straightens his bandana. Nightfall is near. Birds are chirping in the tall shadows of the glade, completely unaware that the entire site is about to be blown up. Just as Edgar, Nelcy, Graciano, Andrea, Solin, and César make up the lower stratum of the global cocaine industry, Sanchez, Rivera, Quiroga, and the rest of the soldiers find themselves at the bottom of the counter-war hierarchy. They are just doing their job. Satisfying demands.

  The platoon is on its way up to the crest of the hill when the jungle gives a start, as if it has been given a fright. The blast fills the entire valley, transforming the glade into a giant black hole. Today’s quota has been met.

  A cloud of smoke rolls out across the rainforest while animals cry out.

  MAÑANA

  the future of the powder

  ‘The very idea of drugs being illegal is an extremely recent one,

  dating back less than a century.’

  — MIKE JAY, HISTORIAN

  SHADOWY CLOUDS FLOAT over the mountains of Bogotá as Melissa, 17, takes her mother by the hand on their way to the Plaza Bolívar to take part in a demonstration against what Melissa calls ‘the rise of Christian dictatorship’. ‘Prohibition is abusive. If it’s not warranted,’ she says.

  The megacity is tucked away at the foot of the green mountains like a tattered rug: while the lower classes reside in the shantytowns scattered along the southern fringes, the wealthy make their homes in the well-planned neighbourhoods in the north, and between them lies the chaotic city centre, with its skyscrapers and hubs of highways. Accompanied by friends, mother and daughter turn off onto Seventh Avenue, right where Gaitán was shot down in 1948, and walk past the Palace of Justice, rebuilt like a garrison after the fatal military attack in 1985. It is 6.00 p.m. The demonstration will commence as the sun sets in Soacha, the western suburb where Escobar’s men assassinated Galán in 1989.

  ‘I never think about drug abuse. I always think about war.’ Ivonne, Melissa’s mother, is hardly even able to say the word ‘abuse’ as she explains that she feels an unfathomable disconnect between North and South America with regard to drugs. Prohibition perpetuates wars and corruption; legal drugs may of course generate more consumption and abuse, but what she cannot understand, she says, is if neither can be eliminated, why war is not seen as the greater evil. ‘I honestly don’t think drug abuse would increase if drugs were legalised. I really don’t think so.’

  The House of Congress is located by the historic Bolívar Square in the capital city, along with the statue of Simón Bolívar. The plaza, covered with pigeons as usual, quickly fills with other people who have come to take part in a demonstration over the ‘right to enjoyment’.

  ‘Cannabis is my drug of choice,’ says Melissa. ‘It’s safe, a plant. Cocaine is different, a powder. All chemicals. Up your nose. Huh. I worry about what it can do to me. But I respect the rights of others who want to use it.’

  It sounds a bit like Ivonne and Melissa, a mother and daughter from the lower middle class, are simply marching in yet another nostalgic flower-power demonstration over the global legalisation of marijuana, but in fact this isn’t the case at all. They are not demonstrating for more-liberal drug laws, but instead in defence of their national constitution, written in 1991, which is ‘secular, libertarian, democratic and anti-authoritarian in its entire spirit’, according to the country’s supreme court. In 1994 this documented ‘spirit’ led to a historic decision in which Colombians were given the right ‘to give meaning to their lives’ without state intervention, as well as the right to ‘freely develop their personality’, which included the entitlement to do drugs as long as it did not harm others. It legalised the so-called ‘personal dose’, specified as 20 grams of cannabis or a gram of cocaine. The left supported the change, whereas the Church was up in arms.

  The 1991 constitution came into existence after negotiations with several of the guerrilla movements in the process of demobilising, and it was an unparalleled victory for Colombian socialists and liberals. While it has certainly not delivered social justice or land reform, it has, by virtue of its judicial influence, improved the lives of millions of Colombians, especially women, indigenous peoples, and black citizens: the progressive wording pertaining to pluralism and human rights has challenged the economic cornerstones of racism, judicial boundaries between sexual identities have been erased, and women are permitted a number of new rights, including abortion in certain cases.

  ‘It’s non-paternalistic,’ says Ivonne. ‘I think that’s what they can’t stand.’

  Yet when the more radical Christian right came to power in 2002, they declared war on the constitution, and the clauses they targeted were mostly those pertaining to secularism — the one on dosis personal in particular. A symbolic eight-year battle ensued, and when it came to an end at the closing of the decade, the government’s new policy line had proven triumphant: the clause on legal use was removed from the constitution. The president’s new strategy borrowed from the Scandinavian concept that there is no difference between drug use and drug abuse, that national unity and political emphasis are crucial in the fight against drugs, and that the only ethical and logical aim of the war on drugs is elimination. In fact, in the religiously charged debate prohibition was not just seen as possible but also as a duty. A moral obligation. The more military budgets for the fight against drugs were increased, the more emphasis was placed on the war on terror; and the more closely united the Bush and Uribe administrations became in their joint efforts to fight evil, the more difficult it became for Colombia, the epicentre of the dru
g war, to uphold a hedonistic constitution that permitted drug use.

  Prior to tonight’s demonstration, liberal newspaper editorials across the land have been lavishing praise on the secular ideals expressed in the constitution and damning the recent change regarding personal use. The government’s decision to criminalise drug use was explained in El Tiempo, Colombia’s most widely read newspaper, as an ‘empty populist gesture’ that ‘runs counter to global trends’. This latter comment referred to the new wave of criticism of the US war on drugs, which, in 2009, spread from Buenos Aires to Washington: as the first decade of the new millennium drew to a close, Argentina, Mexico, and several US states adopted policies similar to the one Colombia had implemented 15 years earlier, decriminalising personal use of some or all drugs, and similar reforms were being considered in a number of other South American nations. By the 2010s the legitimacy of global prohibitionist policy was being looked at more critically than ever before, with Latin America at the centre of the contemporary drug-policy debate. Today, a number of nationally celebrated authors and intellectual heavyweights from all over Latin America are proponents of legalising cannabis, at least, and the same goes for a number of former presidents from the larger countries, along with an increasing number of former prosecutors, politicians, police chiefs, and former military officers. Or, in the words of Mario Vargas Llosa:

  Legalisation of drugs is assuredly not without risks; thus, in order for it to work, the enormous funds that are now being spent on repression must be redirected toward information and rehabilitation, two approaches that have worked in the context of tobacco addiction. The argument that legalisation would lead to greater consumption, particularly among young people, must of course be taken very seriously; even so, as all evidence shows, that phenomenon would probably just be temporary — provided legalisation is accompanied by effective prevention campaigns.

  Evidently, many places in Latin America are now doing what Colombia did in 1994, and Colombia — the country in the world most affected by drugs — is doing now what its neighbours were doing then. This signalled a reversal, an about-face in relation to time and politics, a move influenced by ideology, Colombia’s relation to the United States, and a different perspective on the national trauma. Is the nation ahead of or left behind the times?

  Colombia’s decision also exposes wider questions now that the entire drug complex is subject to a new global debate. How will it end? Will it end? Is a drug-free world, if possible, desirable? Is cocaine simply a parenthesis in the history of narcotics? If not, who will produce the powder of the future? Will Colombia, still the supplier of the lion’s share of all the cocaine consumed in the world, be able to satisfy the current boom in demand in Europe, Asia, Brazil, and Australia? Or is Bolivia now taking over? Peru? If so, will the war on drugs relocate?

  In short, what is the future of cocaine?

  Melissa was just two when Escobar was killed, a time when the entire world was rejoicing that the war on drugs was about to be won. Since then, cocaine production in Colombia has quadrupled, and those involved in the drug-fuelled conflict have grown from small, lacerated groups of rebels to formidable and prosperous armies. She says she has only come to defend the constitution, but she does believe that complete legalisation of all drugs is inevitable. Everything, she thinks, is moving in that direction. Yet considering that she is only 17 and already knows people who have succumbed to cocaine addiction, she is also concerned about what such a change could bring. ‘Of course I am. But I think what we’re going through now with drugs is what we have already gone through with homosexuality and abortion — when those were legalised, the same concerns were raised. The fear was that everything would end in disaster. Everybody would become gay. No children would be born. It would, they said, be a total catastrophe. But it wasn’t, and I don’t think there will be one over drugs, either. Maybe consumption will increase for a while, but all the same, I don’t think that can justify all the misery caused by banning it.’

  SEVENTY BLOCKS NORTH, in one of the city’s more affluent districts, Colombia’s foremost advocate of legalisation strokes his well-trimmed beard. His tinted office windows look out over Bogotá’s economically vibrant urban topography, a place where a sparkling new shopping centre opens each month, cranes are continually completing new skyscrapers, and, in a maze of evenly dispersed alleys, chauffeurs wait in SUVs for members of the growing upper class to finish lunch in the ever-increasing smorgasbord of exclusive restaurants. ‘Colombia has a very strong and sophisticated economy. The cocaine industry is just a fraction, making up no more than two or three per cent of the GDP, but what it does produce a lot of is misery. That’s the first thing you have to understand in this debate.’

  Despite his attitude towards drugs, Alfredo Rangel — a columnist for Semana, Colombia’s equivalent of Newsweek, and head of a leading Colombian think tank — is not overly critical of the right-wing government. On the contrary. For a long time he was president Uribe’s adviser, and he belongs to a long list of right-leaning intellectuals who believe that the nation did indeed make great strides during the first decade of the new millennium, in terms of reducing violence, curbing corruption, and weakening the guerrillas. Yet on his desk are piles of books with titles about the topic he has, to the chagrin of the government, come to devote much time to, a subject whose adherents are otherwise leftists and liberals. In his most recent book in the field, written in conjunction with three other of the country’s top scholars in crime and conflict, he argues that the global approach to drugs in the future must strive to achieve an in-depth ‘understanding of prohibitionism’. ‘The use of psychoactive drugs, everything from coffee to heroin, is as old as mankind,’ says Rangel. ‘People of all cultures and time periods have attempted to find ways of altering the mind, and always will. Creating a completely drug-free society would require us to change man’s genetic makeup, something I don’t think many of us would want to do. If you look at history, you will also see that all the widely popular drugs have gained social acceptance sooner or later regardless of their legal status, and this is what makes bans impossible to uphold. That’s exactly what’s now going on with cannabis. The attempt to keep on defending the bans with military action has led to a completely failed policy, if the goal in the first place was to reduce use. Prohibition is an absurd denial of all of these facts, and thus is ultimately doomed to failure.’

  Rangel represents both of the quite different perspectives that dominate the legalisation trend in Latin America. The Colombian constitution, in the process of being dismantled, expresses the libertarian notion that everyone has the right to do with their body what they wish, provided it does not hurt others, while the resolution to decriminalise drug use in Mexico in 2009 was based on consequential ethical principles: the Mexican lawmakers were not primarily concerned about where to draw the limitations of state control but about pragmatically estimating the degree of suffering, and came to the conclusion that some bans generate more misery than they prevent. Hairsplitting, one might think, but this distinction is essential in order to understand the constantly changing role that drugs new and old play in all cultures of the world.

  But the libertarian and pragmatic traditions almost always coincide in hands-on politics — as they have for Rangel — and today their mutual counter pole is prohibitionism: now making a comeback in Colombia and already strong in the United States, Scandinavia, and the Muslim world, but support for which is on the rapid decline in much of Europe and Latin America. The philosophy behind the bans originates in a religious or Kantian imperative in which it is simply morally wrong to do drugs, regardless of the consequences. Harm-reduction initiatives such as methadone and needle-exchange programs, or recognition of the existence of ‘unproblematic drug use’, is, in this tradition, very hard to accept, since the imperative is absolute and loses meaning as soon as it is made relative; the so-called warning signs carry more weight than the factual consequences, in th
e same way that it is always wrong for those who oppose abortion to terminate a pregnancy, irrespective of the circumstances.

  It is exactly the economic and social consequences of Latin America’s entire bitter experience with cocaine — including the counter war — that have prompted several of the continent’s nations to abandon prohibitionist standpoints. In the 40 years since the war on drugs began, supply and demand have only increased, and the costs of the counter efforts have also increased continually, if counted in drug-war killings, swelling prison populations, escalating corruption, and democracies eroded by the mafia.

  ‘The basic idea behind the war on cocaine,’ says Rangel, ‘was that if supply could be decreased then the going rate on the end markets would increase dramatically, after which a significant decline in overall consumption would occur, the ultimate result being the complete elimination of demand. But after decades of employing this strategy, the results have been exactly the opposite. Today, there is more cocaine in the world than ever, the prices have fallen, and more people than ever before are consuming. To this already mounting list one could add all the problems directly attributable to the actual ban: organised crime, violence, corruption, and loss of quality control over substances. After taking everything into consideration, I believe that decriminalisation of drugs and total legalisation is, in the long run, all included, the least damaging option. Drug trafficking is a hydra that can sprout a new head at any time and has the ability to withstand every attack through a new mutation.’