COLOMBIAN COCAINE RUNS THROUGH IT

As Plan Colombia kicks in to full gear, the ground and air routes
long traveled by drug runners are being blocked. Their solution?
Transporting along the country's many rivers.

SANTA FE, COLOMBIA -- Like most of the remote communities on the
Caguan River, Santa Fe is a place on the ragged edge of civilization.

It is where poor Colombians come to make easy money, fast money,
planting and picking and processing coca leaves into a product sold
on the streets of Los Angeles and behind the school gymnasiums in the
suburbs of Chicago.

For the small-scale coca growers, the illicit crops harvested from
the inky soil equal a one-way ticket out of poverty. But most farmers
here would gravitate to a less volatile cash crop if it were
profitable.

"We grow coca for survival, not because we like it. That is why we
could eradicate it if we had a viable substitute," states a coca
farmer here in southeastern Caqueta state.

And that is just what the Bogota government is trying to accomplish
with its $7 billion "Plan Colombia." With $200 million in support
from the European Union and at least $1.3 billion from the US, this
massive effort focuses on fumigation and convincing farmers to plant
crops other than narcotics.

As ground and air routes are increasingly blocked by Plan Colombia
strictures, rivers have become the latest frontier in Colombia's
40-year war on drugs. Waterways like the Caguan now serve as the main
transit for the country's endless flow of cocaine.

And to those living in the remote communities along the river, coca
production and trade is a means of survival.

The Caguan is a Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)
security corridor that runs close to their 12,000-square mile zone
given by the government to the left-wing guerrillas in 1998 as a safe
haven to initiate peace negotiations.

Coca substitution is by no means a new idea to Cagu=E1n river
communities. In 1989, when the Colombian Army began to repress the
drug business, a priest in this area created their first organization
to eradicate illicit crops and initiate alternative substitution
crops like fruit, rubber, and cocoa.

"We became partners with [a European nongovernment organization] to
acquire machinery and make the chocolate factory a reality," says a
local coca farmer. "But we never had a chance to put this alternative
into practice, due to massive and indiscriminate fumigations that
killed all crops in 1996. We blame our government and the Colombian
antinarcotic police force."

He has since joined the new Cocaine and Heroin Growers Cooperative
(COCCA) for the people who farm coca and poppies here along the
Cagu=E1n River.

Another co-op member adds, "We are all coca growers in this region,
and at least 90 percent of us believe in the eradication and the
substitution of illicit crops, but we have to do it in an intelligent
way. The crops are bringing death and misery to our country."

"There is no infrastructure to support traditional crops that could
bring us the profit like coca," says another Cagu=E1n coca grower. The
narco-buyers come practically to their front door, effectively
displacing traditional cash crops like, yucca, bananas, rubber or
chocolate, whose transportation costs make them prohibitively
expensive.

At present, the raw form of cocaine, coca paste, prior to further
chemical processing, averages about $1000 per kilo in the Cagu=E1n
river communities.

Small-scale coca farm owners can earn a few thousand dollars a week
to pay their employees, feed, clothe and house their families, and
even buy a few extra goods.

Narco-buyers typically come down the Caguan River every 15 days to
purchase the paste, but sometimes they do not show for months, and
locals have to adapt to a lack of cash. The result is a bartering
system where grams of coca paste equate to the value of food,
supplies, and medicine - or are used for recreational activities,
like gambling at weekend cock fights. This de facto currency is not
seen as a pleasure drug but as mercancia, or merchandise.

A campesino, or peasant, sitting at another table in the restaurant
shows a small bag of coca paste: "It weighs six grams - about $5.50,
which is equivalent to four pounds of beef, lunch for me and my
family," he says.

"I started here with nothing. We had to crawl inside our home - it
was so small," says a wrinkled old man. "Today, as you can see, we
are standing tall." For him, the illicit crop made his family live
better. He owns a few acres of coca, as well as a small processing
lab. "Someday I will eradicate my coca plantation," he continues.
"But today, that is impossible."

But the quest for a profitable alternative to coca continues. Early
this year, for example, the FARC agreed to collaborate with four
medium-size Caguan coca farm owners. They switched their land to
cultivate a licit crop, sugar cane; the FARC harvests it, while a
newly built factory produces the pure sugar. There are plans to
create a rice factory with machinery from India, and to eventually
create a nature reserve in the rainforest of the lower Caguan river
region.

Although small-time coca campesinos aren't targeted in Plan Colombia,
their association with the FARC creates problems - whether they side
with the guerrillas or not.

"Just because we live here doesn't mean we agree with FARC politics,"
says a coca grower.

"They just happen to have the guns."