Colombia is Fighting Cocaine by Making Coca Farmers Choose “Poverty or Prison”

TUMACO, Colombia — Under a canopy hiding his laboratorio from patrolling military aircraft , Ricardo shreds green coca leaves until they carpet the jungle floor like confetti. It's an initial step in a process that will turn the leaves into a light paste called pastabase, which Ricardo will sell to narcotraffickers after they arrive at his farm and name their price. In turn they will use boats, mules, and even submarines to surreptitiously move 55-gallon drums of pastabase to refineries on the outskirts of the nearby port city of Tumaco.

There, it will be processed into cocaine.

Ricardo — he asked that his real name not be used — has perfected his routine after more than a decade in the coca farming business. But today, like thousands of other Colombian cocaleros, or coca farmers, he is at a crossroads. The country is by far the world's largest grower of coca, but the government plans to eliminate half of all coca crops this year, and farmers are being given a choice between a "garrote and carrot": swap their illegal coca crop for bananas, plantains, and coffee, or face prosecution.

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Coca farmer Ricardo shreds green coca leaves, which he'll then process into a cocaine base. Harriet Dedman