Despite the billions of dollars spent by Washington to cut cocaine traffic at the root for decades, the Colombian cartels seem stronger than ever.
by Marie Delcas (Bogota , correspondent)
Analysis. The war against drugs is a failure, Colombia, which has paid the expensive price, intends to end it. Since coming to power, Gustavo Petro, the first left-wing president of the first world producing country of cocaine, denounces the security and militarist vision which has imposed itself for almost half a century in the fight against narcotics. “Rifles will not solve the drug problem,” summed up Mr. Petro.
“The war against drugs was decided in Washington, initially as an internal war,” recalls Francisco Thoumi, member of the international drug control body. In 1971, for reasons of public health and social control, the American president, Richard Nixon, made the abuse of drugs “the number one public enemy of the United States”. Ronald Reagan will launch the expression “War on Drugs”. In search of external enemy after the fall of the Soviet Union, Washington will make this war its new crusade. Thirty years and a few billion dollars later, Colombia produces and consumes more drugs than ever. The planet, also.
Difficult to precisely estimate the human cost of these years of war against drugs in Colombia, as it is nested in that of the armed conflict. The dead, the missing, the displaced counted by the hundreds of thousands. To these direct victims, we must add collateral damage to human rights, democracy, economy and international position of the country.
vicious circle
Why has Colombia become, and stayed for so long, the world’s leading cocaine producer? The question is still debated. Misery and social injustice are undoubtedly the fertile soil of violence and illegality, but they do not explain everything, since they exist elsewhere. The incredibly fragmented geography of Colombia and its difficulty in making nation, its unique strategic position between two oceans, its long experience in smuggling and corruption, the ancient presence of armed groups are all elements of explanation. None is enough by itself. The vicious circle has long started: drug trafficking flowers on fragile institutions which it continues to corrupt.
In the 1960s, the Americans discovered that the best marijuana in the world pushed on the sides of the Colombian Sierra Nevada, by the Caribbean Sea. A few years later, cocaine entered – or rather its return – on the American scene. White powder stands out as trendy drugs, that of actors, artists and yuppies (English acronym for “young urban executives”). Colombians understand the interest of this new market.
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