The municipality of San Miguel, Putumayo, along the border with Ecuador, is one of the most violent and dangerous in Colombia. So things must be very urgent for hundreds of people to gather in the town center for a multi-day protest.
On March 18, 50 people from the municipality’s rural zone gathered in the county seat, La Dorada; their numbers continued to grow until, on March 26, 3,000 people from 30 villages had converged, and were marching through the town’s streets.
The protesters say that following the wave of intense U.S.-funded aerial herbicide fumigation that took place in December and January, they have been left with nothing to eat, and that levels of hunger have reached crisis proportions.
San Miguel has been subject to regular fumigations since late 2000, when “Plan Colombia” got underway with a large-scale spray campaign in Putumayo. The December-January fumigations are the same ones that caused the Ecuadorian government to lodge high-profile protests with Bogotá, in a diplomatic spat that is still not fully resolved.
The San Miguel protesters are demanding humanitarian aid to address their immediate food needs, and a commitment to fund projects to help them abandon coca, achieve food security and grow legal crops.
About 400 of the protesters remain, at least as of three days ago, in La Dorada’s main school, according to the Bogotá-based human-rights group MINGA. They promise to remain there until Putumayo’s governor and representatives of the central government meet with them.
The U.S. government, which funded the spraying that killed the farmers’ food crops, now has an obligation to help these people feed their families. Even those who see the San Miguel farmers as criminals who got what they deserved – there are plenty of such people here in Washington – should recognize that killing the population’s food crops, then refusing relief, is no way to run a counter-insurgency campaign.
Here is a translation of a letter that the San Miguel farmers sent last Friday to Colombia’s human-rights ombudsman, or defensor del pueblo.
March 23, 2007
Mr. VOLMAR PEREZ
National Ombudsman (Defensor del Pueblo)
Dear Mr. Ombudsman,
Two hundred farmers and indigenous people from San Miguel-La Dorada municipality have been marching towards the town center since Tuesday, March 19. This displacement comes as a consequence of the starvation we are suffering. Mr. Ombudsman, there is nothing to eat, no bananas, no yuca and all of our cacao, pepper, stevia, copoazu, pineapple and Amazonian cacao crops, as well as fish-breeding – some of them funded by Plan Colombia – have all been fumigated.
The national and departmental government institutions, and humanitarian ones like the ICRC, tell us that we do not have the right to petition for humanitarian aid, because the hunger we are suffering, and which is pushing us to protest at this moment, is not contemplated by the laws [for official relief]. They tell us that only in the presence of an armed conflict that forces us from our lands will they consider us displaced people [eligible for aid].
Mr. Ombudsman, we would first like to point out that we are not asking to be considered displaced people, this is not the problem; of course we need the urgent assistance that all types of displaced people need: assistance for children, women and old people, who left their farms under difficult conditions. But we swear, Mr. Ombudsman, that there is nothing sadder for a farmer than to have to beg for food, as he technically possesses the land and the possibility to sustain his family. It is a humiliation, an outrage and, according to us, it is a violation of a right, and it is for this reason that we ask for your mediation.
In addition to the denial of the most basic humanitarian assistance during this mobilization (with the exception of the aid provided by the mayor’s office and the pastoral social [Caritas Colombia]), we also want to denounce that we have not been able to produce our subsistence food crops; we do not have seeds for crops such as cacao and pepper, because they regularly fumigate; nor are there commercial avenues to sell those products that we have vigorously tried to keep producing with our own (limited) resources, as evidence that we want to eradicate coca and live from other things.
Where are the resources invested in social aid through Plan Colombia? Why must projects be brought here that have been designed behind some desk in Bogota? There, they do not know the reality of our soils and the productive guidelines that we tried to establish for so many years. Why, Mr. Ombudsman, do they not try to evaluate with the farmers of San Miguel and Putumayo the ways in which those resources are invested? A serious evaluation, starting with us, those directly affected.
We, San Miguel’s farmers, have proposed to the national institutions the creation of a Rural Agricultural Development Plan, with an initial component based on food security, with farms for self-sufficient development to guarantee basic food for our families, coupled with agreed productive short-term and long-term projects. We have many proposals that have not been heard. Mr. Ombudsman, the institutions can not disregard this serious problem and place all blame on us, the farmers, who, in addition being fumigated, directly feel the effects of the armed conflict.
The government’s institutions disregard both the hunger to which they are condemning us, and the failure of the Plan Colombia projects that have been imposed on us.
Fumigation and forced manual eradication, coupled with inexistent social investments in the countryside, have created severe problems of common crime, theft and robbery, which are now frequent but had never been a problem before.
Mr. Ombudsman, we insist on our right to feed ourselves, to live off of what we produce. We also insist on being able to present a plan which would manually eradicate coca, not only from our economy but also from our minds and consciences. The farmers are tired of this crop because it brings them death, violence, armed actors and wrong values. Mr. Ombudsman, in your capacity as defender of us all, we turn to you to ask you to support us, in both the discussion of this topic and in the development of consensus on solutions to our problem, at the meeting that will take place on March 26 in Dorada (San Miguel municipality) at 11:00 am at the mayor’s office.
Finally, we want to point out that we are not motivated, infiltrated, or anything along these lines, by armed parties; our only reason for protest is basically the hunger that, right now, we are suffering together with our children.
Thanking you for your consideration,
The San Miguel-La Dorada farmers’ roundtable
March 31st, 2007 at 3:41 pm
The letter, rhetorics aside, is just one more sign of how current drug policies are not taking into account the true necessities of the people who either willingly or merely out of desperation resort to the drug trade.
April 2nd, 2007 at 9:14 pm
Overall a good piece and it’s nice to see something from Putumayo, though it’s not nice to see something so dire. Yet again, the people of Putumayo have voiced a strong critique of the fumigation program, despite all the possible backlashes. This time, as you note Adam, is huge as so many people have attended. I went to La Dorada in 2006, and I’m looking at the pictures I have of the town and I’m struggling to figure out how 3,000 people can even fit in the area there.
It is also key that they question why people who have never come to Putumayo make the policies “behind a desk in Bogota.” When I was with Witness for Peace last year, we asked a US embassy official, very strongly involved in the creation of Plan Colombia and its fumigation program, and he himself had never gone to Putumayo. Some USAID guys we met with were there for a day or two in August in Puerto Asis, but nowhere rural. I hope they keep you updated.
April 3rd, 2007 at 11:17 am
This letter occasions sadness, and might well have come from farmers elsewhere in Colombia. But let’s jump to policy matters. Mr. Isacson notes that there are “plenty of such people here in Washington” who believe that these farmers are criminals. This observation points to a fundamental US policy flaw, one that would impose a US law-enforcement paradigm on an insurgent setting with poverty and social exclusion. Under this paradigm, both impoverished farmers growing illicit crops, and insurgents who draw on drug money to finance a war, are treated as criminals. Part of the flaw involves a policy failure to distinguish between counternarcotics and counterinsurgency. That an insurgency relies on drugs money does not ipso facto make it less of an insurgency or diminish its stated political program. It is first and foremost an insurgency, and has to be treated first and foremost as such. Another dimension of the flaw involves a failure to address fundamental causes: poverty and social exclusion, or a lack of viable economic and political alternatives, go far to explain both why farmers grow illicit crops and why there’s an insurgency.
The evidence is clear that neither the drug war nor the counterinsurgency war in Colombia are being won, or are even on a track that might enable some vision of a future victory. What’s called for in Washington is a fundamental rethinking of how the US should address illegal narcotics in Colombia as well as the armed conflict there. Current policies and strategies are not working.
April 4th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
It is good to hear from Putumayo again, but it is not good to hear such devastating bad news. Some of the concerns that the campesinos have made here are consistant with concerns made for years. But Adam is right in pointing out the extreme nature of these concerns. La Dorada has been one of the most violent parts of Putumayo for years, and for 3,000 people to show up there is amazing. I’m struggling to imagine just how 3,000 people can even fit in the urban area of San Miguel; I went in 2006, and it’s small. A sign of taking these concerns into thought by the US Embassy in Colombia would be to travel there. I went to a large campesino meeting in Orito last year, where they (partially) made their proposal for the use of USAID funds in Plan Colombia II. At that meeting, there were no gringos at all, besides me. But there were rumors of a Colombian from USAID being there on the first of three days (I missed the first), and some people said a person from Accion Social was there, all unconfirmed rumors, though they may be true. In fact, on US Embassy official who is very high up on the pecking order with regards to fumigations has never been to Putumayo himself, when we asked on a delegation last year. Here was (is) the chance to win some hearts and minds. Show people that you care about their concerns over your basic security. I traveled through Putumayo with very minimal problems last year, including a little at night. If Embassy officials could actually maintain a low profile, and keep some ID badges in Bogota, they might have been able to do the same here.
There is little more discouraging to Colombians when you say, I won’t travel there to listen to you concerns with security, food and human rights because I am afraid of my security. Some understand this; some say, this is how I have to live ever day, you can’t come for one or two? If Putumayo is to become ther great example of US policy in Colombia, it’s already going down the wrong road some more, if it were ever going down the right road. Now the US has a chance to say, We hear what you’re saying, what your problems are, and we are going to address them, instead of just responding with continued fumigations.
April 4th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
P.S. Adam, have you heard back from anyone involved in the campesino proposal meetings in Putumayo? I have not in months and am somewhat concerned. I’ll try to get back onto the documents I have; it’s been a tough couple semesters so free time is sparce. If you want my few pictures/a summary I can send them to you, despite the incredible belatedness.
April 4th, 2007 at 8:01 pm
KyleHanky: Unfortunately, the current U.S. administration doesn’t seem to have much of an interest in actually changing that kind of behavior and the policies behind it. Still, congressional circles might be more receptive and could encourage some of those officials to be more open about the needs of the farmers who see little evidence of U.S. aid, except for rare instances of poorly designed alternative programs and much more constant fumigations.
Camilo Wilson:
“That an insurgency relies on drugs money does not ipso facto make it less of an insurgency or diminish its stated political program. It is first and foremost an insurgency, and has to be treated first and foremost as such.”
That is true. It is a political and military insurgency, which still has a strategic plan openly directed at achieving a military victory somewhere in the future through the combination of all forms of struggle.
Military force alone might not be the answer, but the military balance does play a role, and cannot be taken entirely out of the equation. Even as we argue for a much more balanced and sensible approach.
“Another dimension of the flaw involves a failure to address fundamental causes: poverty and social exclusion, or a lack of viable economic and political alternatives, go far to explain both why farmers grow illicit crops and why there’s an insurgency.”
I would say that the political factor is the key, unifying element there that affects how the others have expressed themselves. Poverty and social exclusion per se, as is evident from many posts and reports here and elsewhere, is not particularly exceptional in Colombia but in fact a common structural flaw inherent to many Latin American nations.
It therefore of the utmost necessity to resolve the political factor first, which by extension also includes seriously listening and responding to the people of San Miguel and other areas.
I do welcome all efforts directed at addressing the other problems, the structural problems of poverty and exclusion, but their ultimate solution should not be considered as an unrealistic pre-condition tied the end of the conflict, as the guerrillas often intend.