Something is happening with the illegal business of growing coca leaves and selling coca paste in what some call the “invisible Colombia.” This country extends beyond what sociologists have labeled as agricultural borders and where the state presence seems like a distant echo. A group of researchers, most of them from the University of the Andes in Bogotá, has just published a revealing study on one of the most shady parts of the Colombian economy. The most solid conclusions of this new contribution to understanding an activity so little given to statistical precision are three. The main one is that the contribution of peasant producers—the first link in the chain—to the country’s growth is around 0.4%, in years where the country’s total economy grew by an average of 3%.
The second result is that its local impact, however, is vital. In small coca-growing municipalities it is the backbone of life, accounting for around 10.5% of their GDP. Finally, it is a field that is as lucrative in the short term as it is unprofitable in the medium or long term for the farmers involved in the first phases. It is a business that has barely alleviated poverty in the producing regions. Several of them, in fact, are currently experiencing a humanitarian and food crisis unprecedented in decades. Also, according to the research entitled Local coca-based growth and its socioeconomic impact in Colombiahas become a voracious synonym for deforestation.
In addition to the environmental damage caused by the felling of trees, which is necessary to extend coca leaf harvests, there has been an accelerated increase in the transition of coca-growing lands to ranches and pastures for cattle raising: “In the Colombian Amazon, the increase was 302% between 2014 and 2019,” explains economist Lucas Marín-Llanes, director of the research.
This closeness between livestock and coca has become closer in some parts of Colombia. One of the explanations is the fact that a significant part of the beneficiaries of state programs for the substitution of illicit crops have chosen to migrate to livestock projects. “Livestock has some benefits and yields some profitability. It serves as a flow of income through the sale of milk and investment for households. But our conclusion is that there is a direct interaction between these two economies and that their promotion has become the main drivers of deforestation in Colombia,” explains Marín.
The work has been published by the Center for Studies on Economic Development of the University of the Andes. Its scope does not extend to the trafficking, distribution, export or money laundering chains associated with the criminal dimension of cocaine. The latest studies on this world date back to 2019 and at that time estimated its weight in Colombian GDP at 1.88%.
The focus of this investigation, which lasted just over three years, is on the rural production of the leaves and their transformation into base paste, a previous stage that includes the use of some chemicals to produce the alkaloid. Marín-Llanes says that since 2019 the sector has undergone a significant change. The paralysis in world trade due to the pandemic forced traffickers to rethink the formula for the business. Colombia witnessed an overproduction of coca leaves that still accumulates in mountains in the plots of land in departments such as Norte de Santander, Nariño or Putumayo, on the border with Ecuador.
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Prices plummeted and life in hundreds of municipalities underwent a latent metamorphosis: “The socio-economic consequences are impressive. In periods of prosperity, municipalities in departments such as Caquetá open stores, shops are filled with tennis shoes and clothing of all brands. Restaurants, discos, bars and pool halls are full. But with the fall in prices in the market there is an obvious impact. These same places now seem deserted, uninhabited, the infrastructure looks neglected and activity disappears,” explains Marín.
This is an accurate portrait of an industry that moves millions of dollars in other, higher ranks of the criminal chain, but which in the towns and fields of the coca-growing regions of Colombia barely supports a weak economic structure. It is clear that, if in the frothy days it serves as an oasis of progress, it does not solve the structural roots of vulnerability and marginality of a Colombia that often seems forgotten. “It is the main economic sector in these territories. Even when there are state interventions to tackle it, there are also problems. Any shock to a source that produces 10% of the GDP generates imbalances in the organization of society,” says the researcher.
This refers especially to areas where crops and business have grown for decades due to their proximity to neighbouring countries or maritime exit routes. Clandestine landing strips and docking piers for submarines and other vessels are reproduced on the coasts of departments such as Nariño, Cauca or Chocó, on the Pacific. But also in areas of Casanare, Meta or Guaviare, in the eastern plains of the country.
Another revealing finding of the study conflicts with the classic academic postulates that have linked the correlation between violence and cocaine as an inseparable binomial. As in recent works on the subject, such as those of historian Lina Britto on marijuana, this study also prepared by economists María Alejandra Vélez and Manuel Fernández, and geographer Paulo Murillo-Sandoval, establishes that violence is not “inherent nor a strategic behavior within the organizations or communities that participate in this market,” Marín explains.
The indicators collected during the research indicate that in those years of coca bonanza (2014-2019), when satellite images suggested that the country was flooded with crops, violence, measured by the presence of armed groups, victimization rates or homicides, did not increase in the municipalities.
Although the research does not dismiss the bloody struggles between criminal groups that today dispute the primacy of territories and control of production, co-author Manuel Fernández recalls that during the years he scrutinizes there was no visible increase in the records of forced displacement: “This, perhaps, contrasts with part of the literature that shows a very large association between illicit economies and violence, but the boom coca grower did not exacerbate that factor.”
The boom is over, even though the number of hectares under cultivation remains high, according to monitoring by agencies such as the UN. Prices in more than one area remain rock bottom and sales stagnant. What method did the researchers use to support their work? “We used satellite data produced by different sources on the level of luminosity,” explains Fernández. “The increases in luminosity in municipal capitals are highly related to changes in economic activity. This information on the amount of light emitted in rural areas over time served to relate other statistical processes,” he adds.
Marín argues that the production of each coca leaf functions as a resource multiplication axis: “For each additional peso in production, the country’s GDP receives between 1.17 and 2.3 additional pesos. For this reason, it generates great liquidity and energizes the entire economic life of these areas. However, the partial evidence that we have, and on which we continue to work, suggests that the five years of prosperity did not promote structural changes or sustainable variables of development in health or human capital,” concludes the economist.
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