The societal and environmental costs of cocaine in Colombia

The emergence of the cocaine industry in Colombia over the past three decades has had profound effects on the country’s political, social and economic structures as well as on the environment. As a result, corruption is rampant in Colombia’s political and security institutions, drug-related violence wreaks havoc on the country, and drug money fuels economic growth in certain sectors and undermines it in others.

The emergence of the “para-politics” scandal in 2006 is the most recent example of corruption related to the cocaine trade. In the 1980s, the Colombian military, drug traffickers, wealthy landowners and business leaders established right-wing paramilitary groups to combat the growing threat from leftist guerrillas. These death squads not only fought the guerrillas, they also waged a “dirty war” against peasants living in rebel-controlled regions and those sectors of society struggling non-violently to achieve social change. According to Colombian and international human rights groups, over the past 20 years, paramilitaries have been responsible for more than 70 percent of the human rights abuses, including the killings of more than 2,000 union leaders. Furthermore, these atrocities were committed with virtual impunity as less than five percent of the perpetrators of these crimes ever brought to justice. By the mid-1990s, following the dismantling of the Medellín and Cali drug cartels, paramilitaries had also become the country’s principal cocaine traffickers.

In 2003, the Uribe government began negotiations with the country’s largest paramilitary force, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). In return for demobilizing their troops and confessing their crimes, paramilitary leaders were offered a virtual amnesty, which called for them to spend no more than eight years in prison despite having perpetrated crimes against humanity. In 2006, evidence discovered during the demobilization process and by investigators working independently revealed that multinational corporations, elected officials, and members of the military and police, had long maintained ties to the paramilitaries.

By May 2007, more than 50 national and local elected representatives were under investigation by either Colombia’s attorney general’s office or the Supreme Court for ties to paramilitaries. More than a dozen had been charged with crimes, most of them close political allies of President Alvaro Uribe. Additionally, US-based Chiquita admitted to providing $1.7 million to paramilitaries to protect the company’s banana plantations in northern Colombia. The para-politics scandal was finally making public what had long been known: Colombia’s political institutions have been infiltrated by the country’s drug trafficking organizations.

Ultimately, the paramilitary demobilization process more closely resembled a re-structuring of the militias. In 2006, Colombian NGO Indepaz revealed that 43 new paramilitary groups had been established over the previous two years in 22 of the country’s 32 provinces. Furthermore, former mid-level AUC commanders head many of the new death squads, thereby making evident the continuity between the old AUC and the new generation of paramilitaries. That continuity is also evident in the fact that the new paramilitaries continue to operate drug trafficking networks and use violence to protect their economic interests.

Much has been written about the so-called positive contributions of the cocaine trade to Colombia’s economy. Cocaine is allegedly Colombia’s largest export and, therefore, a significant contributor to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). While traffickers receive most of the cocaine profits, drug money also makes its way into the pockets of people in different sectors of Colombian society. Farmers, coca pickers, lab workers and smugglers benefit, as do business owners throughout the country whose goods and services are paid for with drug profits.

Very little, however, has been written about the negative economic impacts of the cocaine trade. One significant negative aspect is related to the Black Market Peso Exchange (BMPE). Drug traffickers use the BMPE to convert the dollars and euros they receive for their cocaine in North America and Europe into Colombian pesos and as a means to get their profits back into Colombia. The BMPE launders illicit drug funds through the purchasing with dollars and euros of foreign goods, such as electronic appliances, cigarettes and other luxury items. Those goods are then smuggled into Colombia where they are sold for pesos. Drug traffickers often take a loss on the exchange, but simply write it off as the cost of money laundering. The smugglers, overseas corporations whose products are purchased with drug money, and Colombian retailers all profit from the BMPE, while domestic producers in Colombia struggle to compete with the cheap illegal imports. Consequently, the laundering of cocaine money through the BMPE seriously undermines the country’s domestic manufacturing base.

Another serious consequence of the cocaine industry is the negative effects on the environment of both drug production and counter-narcotics operations. The processing of cocaine requires the use of many chemicals and other additives, including gasoline, cement, sulfuric acid and potassium permanganate. The waste from cocaine processing usually ends up in the soil and waterways of Colombia’s biologically diverse tropical rainforests. This environmental destruction is compounded by counter-narcotics strategies that call for the aerial fumigation of coca plants with chemical herbicides. The spraying conducted under Plan Colombia has not only destroyed coca plants, it has also killed the food crops of Colombian farmers and the surrounding rainforest flora. Furthermore, many peasants respond to the fumigations by simply cutting down more rainforest in order to plant new coca crops.

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