Chocho says his community doesn't grow coca, but adjacent communities do. But that hasn't stopped their fields from being fumigated with the herbicide glyphosate, which government planes spray onto coca fields. In March 2012, without prior warning, the Colombian government conducted aerial spraying and chemicals drifted onto their land. The fumigations "impact the trees, the animals, the fish, the rivers, and the creeks," says Chocho.
The U.S. government says glyphosate is safe, but others disagree. A French research team found the chemical to be harmful to human placental cells. Meanwhile, a University of Pittsburgh study reported that glyphosate "can cause extremely high rates of mortality to amphibians and that could lead to population declines."
Colombia is the only country that allows aerial fumigation of drug crops. Manuel Rodriguez, Colombia's first environment minister, authorized aerial spraying in the early 1990s under strict guidelines. But Rodriguez believes the next administration abandoned these regulations: The Environment Ministry "was weakened by the government of [President Alvaro] Uribe, and it has not really recovered," he says.
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When Santos first floated the possibility of legalizing drugs, he was mindful of the vested interests he was taking on. "What I won't do is become the vanguard of that movement because then I will be crucified," he cautioned.
The contrast between Washington's reaction to Santos's statements and those of an earlier Colombian drug war critic are indicative of waning support for the status quo.
Pablo Escobar, head of the Medellin cartel, stood at the top of Colombia's cocaine business in the late 1980s. With the United States pressing for his extradition, Escobar launched a campaign of terror to prevent it. He launched regular bombings in the capital and his henchmen murdered senior politicians who supported extradition -- including the man once tipped to be the next president, Luis Carlos Galán.
In 1992, Colombia appointed Gustavo de Greiff as its first attorney general. He was given a security detail of 17 armed guards and tasked with taking down Escobar. De Greiff did just that: Escobar was killed in 1993, and then de Greiff set about dismantling the Medellin and Cali cartels. But new paramilitary groups continued to fill the void -- and a drumbeat of corruption scandals revealed the drug trafficking organizations' success at buying everyone from small town mayors to members of Congress.
Some 20 years on, sitting in his home office lined with legal tomes, de Greiff wonders what was accomplished. "We killed Escobar. We dismantled many, many small cartels and nothing happened," he says. "Cocaine continues to flow to the United States, and the narco-traffickers getting rich.... So I started to say, ‘let's try to study another strategy because prohibition is doing nothing.'"
De Greiff called for legal, regulated markets for drugs as a way to take profits away from violent syndicates terrorizing Colombia. That provoked the ire of both the United States and then-Colombian President César Gaviria.
De Greiff says Gaviria was almost in tears over his attorney general's outspoken criticism of prohibition. "He told me please don't talk about legalization, the United States government doesn't like that, they will create problems for us."
In November 1993, U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno met with her Colombian counterpart in Washington. It was a stormy meeting. De Greiff says Reno accused him of sending the message to narco-traffickers that the Colombian government was blessing their actions. Halfway through his four-year term, the Colombian government forced him out. Later, as Colombian ambassador to Mexico, the United States withdrew his visa, accusing him of ties to the Cali cartel.
Times have changed. De Greiff notes with a wry smile that Gaviria is now an outspoken critic of the drug war. Meanwhile, not only did Santos and Molina call for a reexamination of global drug policy at the April 2012 Summit of the Americas, President Barack Obama responded by saying he was open to a debate on drug policy. Meanwhile, the U.S. drug czar's office contends that it is committed to a "21st Century approach" that rejects the old drug war model but also the creation of legal, regulated markets for prohibited drugs.
So far, Santos's statements have not been accompanied by policy changes at home. But his outspokenness has emboldened some unlikely people.
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