Daughter of Coca

Steven: [00:00:01] There’s a mythology around coca and in at least two of the allegories regarding its mythological origin, the story centers on a wayward, rebellious, and perhaps even promiscuous woman who was killed and whose remains were scattered into the earth. What emerged was the coca leaf, or what many would come to call — and still do — “Mama Coca.”

For some people where it was grown, Mama Coca came to symbolize happiness and well-being. It was integrated into numerous rituals and ceremonies and eventually became a mainstay of people who saw it as a caffeine of sorts.

Later, it helped power empires — the construction of roads for the Inca Empire, and the Spanish pillage of Peruvian gold. Both were fueled, in part, by coca.

Of course, coca is also the raw material for cocaine, which gave rise to organized crime, and as we’ve seen in many countries across the Americas, helped finance brutal civil wars and widespread conflict. If Mama Coca provides happiness, well-being, and energy, the cocaine industry fuels crime, violence, and destruction.

This dichotomy plays out in countless ways across Colombia, where about half of all the coca on this planet is grown. It was there, in the southern state of Putumayo, where InSight Crime met a woman who, for security reasons, we’re gonna call Ana.

Ana: [00:01:41] Respecto al tema de mi nombre? Pues si, sería bueno obviarlo por el tema de seguridad.

Steven: [00:01:46] Coca had, in some ways, liberated Ana and helped her family. But the cocaine trade had cursed her. When our team met with her, she was facing down death threats from various criminal organizations.

Ana: [00:01:57] Yo tengo que bajarme porque si no, me matan. Si no me matan los unos, me matan los otros.

Steven: [00:02:02] “If one group doesn’t kill me,” she said. “The other will.”

Welcome to InSight Crime’s Podcast, where we take you to the furthest reaches of the Americas in order to help you understand how organized crime works. I’m your host, Steven Dudley, InSight Crime’s co-director.

In this episode, we’ll explore this dichotomy: how Mama Coca gives and how cocaine takes away.

It was a Colombian poet who once remarked that Colombia’s a country where “every color is a shade of green,” and it is. Putumayo, for instance, is covered with a lush jungle canopy that connects the base of the Andes mountains with the Amazon basin along the Colombian-Ecuadorian border.

But there is a dark side to this picturesque fairy tale state, one of near-constant conflict stemming from its status as a producer of coca and its position as a strategic trafficking corridor of cocaine. Two of our investigators went to Putumayo in 2022 to disentangle this ferocious knot.

Alicia: [00:03:16] We were doing a story about the peace agreement that the government signed with the guerrillas back in 2016, but we were focusing on one key point of that agreement that was the crop substitution program.

Steven: [00:03:30] That’s Alicia Flórez. She’s one of the investigators.

Alicia: [00:03:33] And we were focusing on Putumayo because around 20% of the families that joined the crop substitution program in Colombia were located in Putumayo specifically.

Steven: [00:03:49] There are many reasons Putumayo had become such an important production point for coca. It has the perfect climate. Its rivers create a kind of natural highway system to bring in chemicals and extract drugs. The government is also largely absent from the state. That’s why the crop substitution program included in the peace agreement was so important to Putumayo.

Alicia: [00:04:10] But the program had a lot of problems because some of the community leaders that were supporting the program were threatened, and others had been killed. So we wanted to find out why was this happening, and that’s how we met with Ana. She was one of those leaders that had been threatened.

Ana: [00:04:30] Hay que decirle al mundo, a Colombia, la realidad que acontece en los territorios.

Alicia: [00:04:35] We met with Ana at the restaurant of the hotel. She was a small woman, but really strong, and she was really straightforward to us. She introduced herself, and she had her notebook in hand. She was ready to talk to us.

Steven: [00:04:53] In many ways, Ana’s story was that of Putumayo’s. In the 1980s and early 1990s, at the behest of multilateral banks, the government reduced its subsidy programs and government assistance. One of these programs had bought excess rice to keep rice prices steady. Rice was a mainstay of Putumayo’s economy and Ana’s family, and once the program was gone, the prices fluctuated wildly.

Ana: [00:05:19] El conversaba con un vecino y había sido quien hacía el negocio de una vaca con semilla. 

Steven: [00:05:26] It was around this time the state saw the rapid influx of coca. It was a new crop then, and farmers, including Ana’s father, were curious. So when the government cut the rice subsidy, Ana’s father traded a cow for some coca seeds and began to grow it on their land.

Ana: [00:05:43] Crecimos con ese sueño de que la coca mejoraba la calidad de vida…

Steven: [00:05:49] “We grew up thinking that coca was the only way we could have a better life,” she said. And the coca did have an immediate impact. It meant more food, better shoes and clothes, and the occasional day off during which Ana would play soccer.

Ana: [00:06:03] El ya nos empieza a comprar las botas, los zapatos, la ropa. Que ya llegue un pan, una galleta a la casa. ¿Y de que él podía hacer eso? Pues de la coca.

Steven: [00:06:13] “He bought us nice bread, cookies, and fish,” she said of her father. “Where did that come from? Coca, of course.”

When Ana was about 11, her father gave her a small plot of land and some coca plants she could grow on her own. Soon, she had her own source of income, and with it came independence.

Ana: [00:06:34] Ya dejo de ser una carga para mí papá. Ya tengo lo que yo necesito, y así sucesivamente.

Steven: [00:06:39] “I had what I needed. I wasn’t a burden on my father anymore,” she said. “I am the daughter of coca.”

Ana: [00:06:46] Yo siempre digo, yo soy hija de la coca…

Steven: [00:06:49] This was the early 1990s, the honeymoon period for Ana when Mama Coca was providing health and well-being. She moved in with her boyfriend, with whom she’d given birth to a little boy. The buyers came right to their doorstep. No one was getting arrested. And while leftist guerrillas kept a close eye on the trade, and even took a small cut from it, the war over the cocaine market in Putumayo had yet to start in earnest.

In August 1995, US President Bill Clinton addressed the media in Washington, DC.

Newscasts: Bill Clinton: [00:07:23] Good afternoon. Please be seated.

Steven: [00:07:26] It was the end of an era. The infamous head of the Medellín Cartel, Pablo Escobar, was dead, and Clinton was celebrating the dismantling of the powerful Cali Cartel. But he was also warning of what was to come.

Newscasts: Bill Clinton: [00:07:40] As long as the raw crops can be grown and processed and distributed, we will have a constant battle — as long as there’s a demand in the United States — to keep any vacuum from being filled. And we are exploring today what the problems created by our successes might be — that is, if we continue to break down existing cartels, who will take up the slack, and how can we prevent it?

Steven: [00:08:02] A new round of cocaine wars had begun, and one of its epicenters was Putumayo.

The new strategy called for airplanes to drop chemicals on the coca, and quickly aerial fumigation accelerated, destroying not just the coca, but all the other crops around it. The rice, plantains, and yuca among them. Furious at the indiscriminate destruction of their basic sustenance, the coca growers organized their first marches to protest the policy and to ask for crop substitution programs. But no programs came. Cocaine production expanded, and more conflict followed.

In 1998, right-wing paramilitaries began appearing. Ostensibly, these paramilitaries were outside the government’s control, but in reality, they worked hand-in-glove with the army, battling guerillas in rural areas and slaughtering suspected guerrilla sympathizers in urban areas.

And what was that like, you know, on the ground for people like Ana?

Alicia: [00:09:07] Well, it’s difficult, Steve, because Ana doesn’t talk much about this. Like many people in Putumayo, I think she’s still traumatized. At the time, she was trying to keep a low profile. Her family was growing. She had her second child, so she tried to stay away from all kinds of conflicts.

Steven: [00:09:31] Can you describe for us what was happening in Putumayo?

Alicia: [00:09:34] Small farmers like Ana were being hit from all sides. First, they had to deal with the government’s aerial fumigation program that was spraying all kinds of crops in Putumayo, not just illicit crops. And second, right-wing paramilitaries became like the power brokers and drug traffickers in Putumayo.

Steven: [00:09:55] It was the darkest part of the conflict in Putumayo. Coca production plummeted to about one-tenth of what it was. Hundreds perished or disappeared, many of them were cut into pieces by paramilitaries and tossed into Putumayo’s vast river arteries.

Alicia: [00:10:12] It was brutal because they were imposing strict rules in the communities, like, for example, curfews. They would decide who could enter the area, who could you do business with, who could be a political or a community leader. They were also setting the prices for all kinds of goods and services, including coca. So they were like the de facto government, and they controlled the whole production chain. So if you went against them, you got killed or exiled. So, it was just keeping a low profile and hoping for the best.

Steven: [00:10:53] In the early 2000s, the Colombian government also began a new project which they devised with the Clinton administration. The US promised $1 billion in assistance, making Colombia the third-largest recipient of US aid in the world.

The money went mostly to fight leftist guerrillas, but for coca growers like Ana it employed the carrot and the stick approach. A carrot for those who stopped growing coca and substituted it for other crops, a stick for those who refused. Many tried to switch, but the money was squandered or stolen by the authorities, so they kept growing coca. And soon, people were arrested. 

Ana: [00:11:31] A mí me procesaron dos veces. Me cogieron con 700 gramos una vez, otra vez con un kilito.

Steven: [00:11:37] Ana, for example, was arrested twice. One time, with 700 grams of coca paste, a gooey substance the farmers would make to sell to the traffickers to process it into cocaine. Another time, she was picked up with a kilogram of coca paste. She didn’t spend much time in jail, but she had to pay a steep fine in legal fees. She spent years in debt to friends and relatives. What’s more, the fumigation of their crops continued.

Alicia: [00:12:03] It was pretty clear that coca had given Ana some of her freedom and economic stability, but it was also a curse because all of the violence and the conflict around it. So she kept her head low for a few years and also began to work with other coca growers to organize themselves because many of them went in and out of this criminal economy. They just couldn’t go public with it.

Steven: [00:12:29] Their clandestine coca growers association, how did they … How did they do that?

Alicia: [00:12:34] Basically they worked under the umbrella of community associations because if they came out as coca growers, then the government will call them drug traffickers or guerillas. And, if they supported the government program to substitute coca, then the guerillas will accuse them of selling them out or to be snitches, so it was an impossible position for all of them.

Steven: [00:13:00] It was around then the Colombian conflict took an unprecedented turn. The paramilitaries signed a peace agreement.

Newscast 1: [00:13:07] También seremos útiles en la lucha por conseguir la reconciliación y el sosiego y la tranquilidad para Colombia.

Steven: [00:13:18] Between 2004 and 2006, close to 30,000 paramilitaries demobilized, including hundreds in Putumayo.

Newscast 1: [00:13:26] Dios los bendiga y muchas gracias a la gente de Putumayo que como creyó en nosotros en la guerra, ahora tendrán que creer en nosotros haciendo paz. Muy amables.

Steven: [00:13:40] Into that vacuum swept the guerrillas again. Specifically, the FARC. The FARC was Colombia’s oldest and largest insurgency, and they were well acquainted with Putumayo’s vast jungle and river arteries. They were also well-versed in the cocaine trade.

Alicia: [00:13:56] Now, the guerrillas set the price for coca paste. They controlled the drug laboratories and the drug routes. It was the main way they were financing themselves.

Steven: [00:14:08] But Alicia, was it as violent?

Alicia: [00:14:10] It was violent because the guerrillas were still in confrontation with the government. But fortunately, there weren’t the massacres and the levels of violence like in the days of the paramilitary.

Steven: [00:14:23] For years, life for Ana continued like this with her community living under the yoke of the FARC, which sometimes retreated to the jungle and other times entered the community to exert more direct control. It was around then that Ana became a community leader herself.

Alicia: [00:14:39] For Ana, this was a huge opportunity. She was always active in her community, but as others dropped, she rose to the top, and she found her place.

Ana: [00:14:50] Entonces ella y sus compañeros se fueron retirando. Entonces yo voy subiendo.

Steven: [00:14:54] It was hard work, but she liked it, and she was good at it. Still, for a long time, she felt like she had to keep her involvement quiet because of the dangers it posed and because she could get arrested again. This changed in 2013 when the FARC guerrillas began their own peace talks with the government.

Ana: [00:15:12] Yo vengo a meterme muy en serio, muy en serio en el liderazgo. Es a partir del proceso de paz.

Steven: [00:15:19] So really, it’s only when the FARC starts to talk peace with the government that Ana feels safe enough to become a publicly recognized community leader, is that right?

Alicia: [00:15:29] Exactly. Because she and the others had hoped that the dynamic was finally going to change in Putumayo. She thought that it was the first time she was not afraid, and she truly believed that the FARC will demobilize and that the armed groups will be out of the territory.

Steven: [00:15:48] There was no turning back. Ana was invested like never before. “It was going to work this time,” she told herself. “It had to.”

Newscast 2: [00:16:00] Muy bien ha llegado el momento que esperaba el país. La firma oficial y definitiva del acuerdo de paz.

Steven: [00:16:08] In September 2016, after almost four years of negotiations, the Colombian government finally managed to hammer out a peace agreement with the FARC. It was historic. The agreement ended the longest-running conflict in the Western Hemisphere.

Newscast 2: [00:16:24] Invitamos a firmar el acuerdo al señor Rodrigo Londoño, comandante de las FARC-EP.

Steven: [00:16:32] Among its many promises was one that called for assistance for small farmers seeking to substitute their coca for other crops. They called it, “The National Illicit Crop Substitution Program.” For Ana, and her coca growers collective, it was a symbol of hope. They’d been written into the national accord.

Ana: [00:16:52] Y en ese acuerdo de paz había mucha esperanza del pueblo. Había, como digamos, alegría. No es cierto?

Steven: [00:16:59] “People were happy,” she said. “Happy because things were going to be different. There was going to be more investment and a higher quality of life.”

Ana: [00:17:07] La alegría es porque se consideraba que las cosas iban a ser diferentes, que iba a haber más apoyo al tema productivo, que iba a mejorar la calidad de vida, porque siempre se hablaba de un tema integral.

Steven: [00:17:21] Many others, however, were not so optimistic. They’d seen in the past other crop substitution efforts fail, or watched as the money for their programs was stolen or misused by corrupt officials.

Because of this sordid past, the program drafted leaders like Ana to sell the project to the skeptics. At first, Ana embraced the role. She went door to door and called meetings to try to convince these farmers they should leave the coca business. Many of them were her friends and neighbors, and eventually, she got 400 growers, almost half of the inhabitants of the area, to sign agreements to voluntarily abandon coca.

Ana: [00:18:01] Por eso la gente creyó que todo era posible, que se iban a dar las cosas, y por eso la gente sustituyó voluntariamente el cultivo de hoja de coca.

Steven: [00:18:13] “The peace accord gave strength to the people who thought that anything was possible,” she said. “That was why many of them started to voluntarily substitute coca for other crops.”

However, once again, the program failed.

What happened? Why didn’t it work?

Alicia: [00:18:32] It’s sad, but it’s the same that always happens. The government didn’t live up to their promises. The money never came, or it was stolen, or the government agencies never arrived, or they didn’t do the work to implement it.

Steven: [00:18:47] At the same time, Colombia was suffering from what a prominent journalist had once dubbed “The recycling of war.” Former FARC units were breaking out of the peace agreements, and remnants of former paramilitary groups, who’d started their own criminal organizations, were returning to Putumayo.

Ana and other community leaders found themselves in the line of fire.

Alicia: [00:19:11] Because she and the others had been the ones pushing the program, so they became the villains. In other words, everyone blamed them when the program failed, and the criminal groups blamed them for getting people to stop growing coca. So they became the target of criminal groups.

Steven: [00:19:31] It was not just people saying bad things about them, but physical attacks from these armed groups. Around the country, hundreds of leaders were killed. And soon, Putumayo was again swallowed by war.

Newscast 3: [00:19:46] Mucha atención, esta noche se reporta el asesinato de otro líder social en Putumayo … 

Newscast 4: [00:19:51] En Putumayo un otro líder social fue asesinado …

Newscast 5: [00:19:53] El líder social campesino más emblemático del Putumayo fue asesinado … 

Newscast 6: [00:19:56] En las últimas horas, fue asesinado en zona rural de Orito, Putumayo, otro líder comunitario …

Steven: [00:20:07] Around Ana, dozens of community leaders were assassinated. Many others fled. The threats came from all sides. The army, criminal groups, and ex-guerrillas.

In 2020 alone, 22 leaders were killed in Putumayo. That same year, at the onset of the pandemic, Ana received what she called a pamphlet, in which a group of former FARC guerrillas accused her of being part of a rival dissident guerrilla group.

For months, she stayed away from her house, moving from place to place like a fugitive.

Ana: [00:20:40] Me estigmatizan, me sacan en el panfleto. Me tratan como lo peor, que eso es lo que más me ha indignado.

Steven: [00:20:46] “They made me the enemy,” she said about the threat. “That’s what galls me.”

Ana: [00:20:52] Todos los compañeros ONGs que me distinguen, me buscaban a mí, que mi vida estaba en riesgo, pues yo estaba tranquila en mi finca, no? Claro, ya no. Se acaban con mi tranquilidad, acaban con mi buen nombre, porque mucha gente piensa bueno, algo debe …

Steven: [00:21:08] “I’m known in the community, and now they’ve destroyed my name because now many people will say: ‘Well, she must have done something.'”

Ana: [00:21:17] Muchos creyeron ver apagado mi voz, pero se equivocaron porque como yo no debía nada.

Steven: [00:21:23] Eventually, Ana got tired of running and, in a fit of desperation, went to find the commanders of the armed group who threatened her.

Ana: [00:21:33] Yo fui. Busqué en el sector armado y les dije, “Yo soy dirigente y hago esto, esto y esto, y aquí estoy. ¿Qué pruebas tienen para que hablen de esa forma de mí?”

Steven: [00:21:43] “I’m a community leader,” she told them. “What proof do you have that I’ve done what you’ve said?”

Ana: [00:21:50] Que había una persona que se había desmovilizado del otro grupo armado, y estaba diciendo que yo hacía parte de eso.

Steven: [00:21:57] They told her that a demobilized member of the guerillas had told them she was working with the rival faction. In response, Ana demanded that if the demobilized guerrilla was so sure, he should make the accusation to her face.

Ana: [00:22:13] … mucha pena. Yo soy dirigente. Yo vivo en mi vereda, tengo mi familia, tengo mi finca, mi vereda, y yo no hago parte de ninguna estructura ni de las FARC, ni de nadie.

Steven: [00:22:23] “With all due respect,” she said, “I’m a leader. I’ve lived in my village for years. I have a family. I have a farm. I’m not part of any criminal group, not the FARC, not anyone. I’m a civilian and part of a civilian-led process, and I never want to be part of the guerillas.”

Ana: [00:22:45] Y lo que menos me ha gustado en la vida es involucrarme con esos temas de la insurgencia armada.

Steven: [00:22:53] At the end of the meeting, they seemed somewhat placated by her answers, but still they had one more demand. She had to resign as the president of her coca growers association. She thought about it for a few weeks, but eventually, in order to save her life, she decided she had to resign. So she did.

By the time InSight Crime met with her, Ana had gone full circle. It was about three decades after her father had traded his cow for some coca seeds. Now, Ana had stopped growing coca and was tending cattle.

She tried to get her teenager to help her, but he said it was too little money. He was right, but for the first time during the interview, a smile broke across her face.

The cows, her son had told her, were “too mean” for him. The thought of it made her laugh.

Ana: [00:23:50] Mami, esas vacas son bravas.

Steven: [00:23:53] Instead of working with her, her son started a farm of his own where he is growing coca. He didn’t see any other way, she said, and she can’t tell him not to, especially given her own history and the economic reality of the region.

Ana: [00:24:07] Si mi hijo está haciendo coca, lastimosamente. Eso me duele, pero que puedo hacer?

Steven: [00:24:13] “It hurts,” she said. “But what can I do? I would rather he plants a coca bush than pick up a weapon.”

Ana: [00:24:19] Yo prefiero que antes de que mi hijo empuñe un arma, es mejor que va a sembrar una matico.

Steven: [00:24:27] Her son is not alone. Ana estimates that some 70% of those who signed the agreement to stop growing coca in her area are growing it again. She says it’s the only thing they can rely on. Without it, they’ll starve. She’s seen that poverty first hand — parents who stave off their kids’ hunger with things like a glass of aguapanela, which is just boiled water with a dash of unrefined sugar.

Ana: [00:24:53] Con un aguapanela que es lo poco que pueden conseguir.

Steven: [00:25:01] What was Ana’s big takeaway from this whole experience? What did she tell you?

Alicia: [00:25:06] Frustration. I mean, she was just frustrated and sad. I remember her telling me that the only thing that had filled their bellies, built their roads, and sustained their school was coca.

Ana: [00:25:19] La coca no solamente sustituye el plato de comida, sino que también es educación, también es salud.

Alicia: [00:25:26] People like Ana were going out, door to door, telling people to leave coca behind. And then, when it falls apart, she and the other leaders are the ones who pay the highest price. Some of them with their lives.

Steven: [00:25:44] What about you, Alicia? What was your big takeaway?

Alicia: [00:25:48] I don’t know, Steve. I mean, you want to find some hope, and Ana says, many farmers still hope that someday, some government will finally come through for them. But it’s hard not just to see the cycles of violence, poverty, and organized crime repeating themselves in places like Putumayo. It’s just exhausting.

Steven: [00:26:15] Mama Coca. It gives, and it takes away. Ana, a daughter of coca, had lived it, and she’s survived it, at least for now.

This show was a co-production of InSight Crime and La No Ficción. This episode was produced by me, Steven Dudley, with help from Elisa Roldán.

Special thanks to our reporters, Alicia Flórez, Laura Ávila, Sara García, and Juliana Manjarrés; to our team at InSight Crime; and of course, to Ana, for sharing her story.

Our editors are Elisa Roldán and Tomás Uprimny. Our sound designer is Valentina Fonseca and our graphic designer is Isabella Soto. The poem I mentioned earlier is called “Morada al sur,” by Aurelio Arturo — you can find it online. And the Colombian journalist I referenced was the great María Teresa Ronderos.

If you think these stories are important, consider making a donation. Every little bit helps and will go directly to reporting these types of stories.

We’ll be back in a couple of weeks with a story from inside a Honduran female prison, where a gang war is about to get very bloody.

Ana: [00:27:47] Yo soy hija de la coca. Sí.

Steven: [00:27:52] Thank you for listening. See you next time.