Cocaina: A Book on Those Who Make It (14 page)

‘But after I’ve paid all the workers, including those who’ve delivered the chemicals, there’s only 1.5 million pesos left over for me,’ César says. ‘It’s not great business. Just a little better than others.’

Like Graciano, César is one of the thousands of new coca cultivators along the San Juan River, a growing agrarian proletariat who, on the one hand, are simply happy that some money has finally come to the region, but on the other are also very much aware that the prosperity will be short-lived, and that the military aircraft can come at any time and chemical-bomb everything, just like in Putumayo. This is what makes it a rush. In fact, the whole idea of striking while the iron is hot has, along with cocaine’s grip on Colombia, become one of the most distinctive cultural hallmarks of the nation. Some would call it a national disease:
el cortoplazismo
, shortsightedness.

Andrea peels a banana while Solin and César kick about in the green mound in an effort to mix all the leaves together before the pulpy mass can be dumped into the oil drum filled with fuel. Andrea is 24 years old and César’s live-in partner, and she hopes to become pregnant soon. For her, the rush was a godsend because, as she says, it rescued her ‘from slavery’: ‘I’m free now. I can do what I want.’

Although slavery was abolished in Colombia in 1851, a deep-seated historical racism continues to characterise both city and country life alike, and it is quite common to see young, white couples driving through remote villages in search of girls ‘to take care of’: that is, offering them lifelong servitude in exchange for room and board and Saturday nights off. Destitute families have received verification via television that life in the city is better than in the country, and because this analysis is often correct, daughter and parents alike often consent to such arrangements when they are offered. The white couple feels as if it has done a good deed, and the African or indigenous family is happy to have one less mouth to feed. The demand for boys is also great — most often for custodial work — but not at all to the same extent as for girls, which is why thousands of young men are sent to join the guerrillas or a paramilitary group, either of which the family often regards as a better option than life at home.

Problems arise for the girls when they become pregnant, which often occurs around the same time that the woman of the host family also finds herself expecting. Usually, the servant is around 15 years old and the lady of the house 25. Since the intention is that the domestic help, that is, the person of colour, is to take care of the white couple’s child, one of the newborns has to be given up, and often the solution is adoption. An excursion to an orphanage is arranged, where the servant, assisted by the lady of the house, hands over the child and verifies in writing that everything has been done of her own volition. A visit to the church follows, where the priest offers forgiveness and the matter is closed once and for all, after which the young woman of colour is expected to project her motherly instincts onto the white child.

Andrea began working as a domestic servant in Cali at the age of 12. Her only exposure to the big city and its enticements was through the bus window, for when she did have a Saturday night off she was always either broke or on call, and thus was never able to enjoy it. After a number of years of this, she sensed that her life was becoming increasingly meaningless. Then she started longing to have her own children. And as soon as she realised what sort of life a black maid without money had in store, she contacted people from her hometown, who told her that coca had come to the village and that there was now, finally, money to be made.

‘I just left. Escaped. We don’t have much here either, but at least I’m not locked up. Today we own this plot of land and can make our own decisions. I also sell candy in the streets. I purchase it in a town upriver and sell it in the village.’

The village is El Caraño, a small riverside community consisting of a hundred simple wooden houses, where everyone who owns coca fields on the surrounding hills lives. Graciano has lived in El Caraño his entire life, whereas César and Solin wandered around the country for many years searching for money, but like Andrea, were enticed back by coca. Solin is not a landowner, but because he is the chemist he is the team’s most important member, without whose itinerant skills the industry could not function. In historically experienced parts of the country such as Putumayo, just about any farmer can handle the proportions, the chemicals, and the simple process coca demands, but in more recently converted areas the chemists play a crucial role.

‘It’s not difficult, but no one can afford to make a mistake.’

Solin’s dirty cap teeters slightly atop his curly head. He is one of a few Caucasians living among the thousands of Afro-Colombians in El Caraño. With a calm voice and a steady hand, he leads the work for which César pays him 60,000 pesos, or 30 USD, a day. During the harvest they live in the lab day and night, and when all the work is done they travel the five kilometres home to the village by canoe, where they sell the paste and rest for a few days.

Solin is originally from Meta, a region in the east where coca quickly emerged after Putumayo was sprayed, but the area was also eventually visited by the planes. ‘I had a small farm there with coca, yucca, bananas, and other things. They sprayed everywhere, so leaving was the only option. The chickens died — everything. It’s extremely poisonous. The first time it happens you just start over, you replant everything. But after they come back and spray again and again, it begins to take its toll. I knew a guy who lived here and said it was peaceful and quiet. So I came here.’

His wife lives with their three daughters in Armenia, a city in the coffee region. He sends them money, but as long as there is work to be done here, he only sees them once every other month. ‘This is a temporary situation. If I got a job in the city I would leave. But the pay’s no good. I worked at a cardboard recycling plant in Villavicencio and earned 15,000 pesos a day, and while that bought food for the children and my wife, there was never anything left over for me. You just get fed up. It doesn’t work. There are people claiming they can live just fine on 15,000 pesos a day, but those making such claims are also involved in some sort of illegal activity on the side. Everybody knows this is how it works. One hand is legal, the other one isn’t.’

He organises the rest of the chemicals and declares that he just cannot understand how there can be such high demand for what he produces. ‘No one here uses cocaine. Those of us who work with the stuff are all too aware of just how deadly the chemicals are that go into making the powder. We’re already suffering the extreme physical effects from having to stand in these vapours every day, and then to go home at the end of the day and inhale it in a concentrated form would be unthinkable. This is dangerous stuff. You can get totally hooked. If I see a child using drugs I say something, but not if I see an adult. That’s their responsibility. As for me, I’ve never tried it. I would never do it. I know what it consists of. Dangerous, dangerous, dangerous.’

César stirs the pot of leaves with a big branch and begins to tell his own story. He came here in search of gold at 13, from Pizarro, a village by the coast, after the death of his father. Like many others here, César’s father’s death was brought about by a
palo
, a tree trunk, which, word has it, fell on him while he was working out in the forest one day. But in Chocó, everyone knows that when someone is said to have died from a
palo
what they actually mean is that the person was murdered for a reason too dangerous to inquire about. Consequently, it is easiest for everyone to agree that the death was an unfortunate accident caused by a falling tree and not question the matter further. César, his mother, and his siblings all saw the body, which had been dragged up the stairs and left on their doorstep. He had a long machete wound from one of his ears all the way down to his Adam’s apple, but no one dared to discuss why. There are nine siblings in the family, who today are scattered all over the country. César and Andrea take care of his sick mother, and the lion’s share of the income they bring in goes towards the treatments she needs for her rheumatism.

‘There’s something really strange about all this,’ César suddenly blurts out. He is not talking about his parents any longer, but about the guerrilla-controlled cocaine economy in which he is involved. Although the United States is where most of the consumers are, he says, it never seems as though any of the people he refers to as ‘them’ are punished. The punishment always seems to befall those he refers to as ‘us’. ‘Almost everything we produce goes there, and that’s where all the money ends up. But the gringos never get caught. Never. You see the stories on TV, and it’s always a Mexican, Colombian, Brazilian, or Puerto Rican in the hands of the police. That strikes me as very odd. We all know the buyers are in the US. That’s where the money is. The banks. Celebrities. Everything. I really just don’t understand. Why is it like that?’

Andrea whistles to signal that the meal is ready. It is chicken and rice. Plastic bowls are passed around, and Solin dries his green-stained hands on his t-shirt and scoffs down his food, while the wind outside causes the tarp on the roof to rustle. César goes silent. They eat sitting on the ground. Solin has listened to César’s speculations, but he claims that no one who lives along the river is afraid of going to prison for anything to do with coca; they worry instead about being subjected to something much worse. César nods slowly in agreement. The drumstick between his teeth moves back and forth as he chews. Andrea pours brown juice out of a bucket in a way that conveys the topic of conversation is not to her liking. But Solin carries on, and utters the two words of which all destitute Colombians are most afraid these days, whether they live in the countryside or in the urban favelas. Actually, it is not so much the words they fear, but rather what they are terrified of
becoming
.

‘
Falsos positivos
.’

OF ALL THE
scandals to have rocked Colombia over the years, nothing can compare to what is known as
falsos positivos
, false positives. The phenomenon is complicated and horrifying, and occupies what Colombian author Daniel Samper has called a unique place in the history of the nation: ‘In the specifically Colombian chamber of horrors — which expands daily, with new atrocities committed by the drug industry, the guerrillas, the paramilitaries, criminal gangs or our own military, the false positives are in a league of their own.’

The story, which is far from over, is a gruesome response to how poverty and corruption feed into the demand for results, which became increasingly important in Colombia in the first decade of the new millennium. Measuring, calculating, keeping records, and publicising successful military accomplishments in the fight against guerrillas and drugs became a central component of the war in itself, and it produced a completely new trend in violence, built on the fact that such a large percentage of the population consists of homeless people no one cares much about. Numbers that created an image of victory — weakened guerrillas, demobilised paramilitaries, and reduced coca fields — were transformed under Uribe’s administration into strategic hard currency in the struggle for voter sympathies and increased financial support from the United States. Statistics, whether accurate or manipulated, became more important than truth, since a national sentiment of success and good results is crucial for each and every political scheme. The objective was to validate the government’s promise to destroy guerrilla forces once and for all. Fatalities became the currency of war, and everyone from generals to corporals was forced to keep track of how many guerrilla corpses their troops were able to generate.

On 10 February 2004, a street vendor named Edwin Arias was reported missing in Sincelejo, a city near the Caribbean coast, along with three other young men: Luis Campo, José Peréz, and Alberto Arias. Two days later, on 12 February, all four were reported as having been killed in a conflict the military claimed had broken out between themselves and the guerrillas near the Panama border. However, as time went by a number of unanswered questions arose. Edwin Arias had already been reported dead once before, and then, just as now, as a guerrilla soldier who had lost his life in armed combat. Moreover, the helicopter that supposedly flew the four bodies back to the camp had been on another assignment that day.

Edwin Arias was just one of the first
falsos positivos
in what would later become a wave of mass killings, resulting in the execution of nearly 2000 boys — all civilians, most of them destitute and homeless — whose bodies were viewed as attractive merchandise in an increasingly gruesome business practice spreading throughout the nation, the sole purpose of which was to improve statistics. In Colombia, a country with an already long-standing tradition of creative criminality, taking dead bodies, dressing them up as guerrilla warriors, and registering them as slain rebels was a practice that soon gained a life of its own, since everyone working in the military stood to benefit from the operation: in exchange for guerrilla corpses, low-ranking soldiers were compensated with days off and other benefits, while middle-ranked officers in command were given promotions according to their results, and those highest in the hierarchy, the generals, could provide the national Congress, government, and the general public with an image of the war as being won.

But when ready cash began to be factored in, state terrorism exploded and the practice became more organised. In 2008, Soacha — a huge working-class suburb in southern Bogotá — became the scene of one of the most telling events of the entire scandal, after sergeant John Jairo Muñoz of the 15th brigade received repeated complaints from superiors that his platoon was underperforming.