IN THE WAR ON COCA, COLOMBIAN GROWERS SIMPLY MOVE ALONG

LLORENTE, Colombia, March 12 -- This isolated town used to be as sedate and
dirt poor as all the rest.

Then came coca and its byproducts, discos and prostitutes, pool halls and
cantinas, cheap hotels and the businesses that cater to newcomers, stores
with wood planks, tin sheeting and other materials for flimsy but
serviceable housing.

The change began more than a year ago, local government officials and
residents say, but accelerated with a huge American-backed campaign to
destroy coca fields in adjacent Putumayo Province. The effort, the
officials said, displaced coca growers and their crops, sending them to the
jungles here in Narino Province. It is a familiar pattern. Coca came to
Colombia because of success in eliminating it in Bolivia and Peru, without
aerial spraying.

"What the fumigation did was to transfer the phenomenon from Putumayo to
Narino," said Gov. Parmenio Cuellar of Narino. "And if they fumigate
Narino, the problem will go to another place."

Nowhere are the effects more visible than in this town on Highway 10, once
a sleepy community of poor farmers that is luring hundreds of former
Putumayo farmers, coca-laboratory workers and others drawn by the coca trade.

"They call this Little Putumayo, and they say people who are coming here
are leaving Putumayo because of the fumigation," said the Rev. Domingo
Moreno, a Roman Catholic priest who works in Llorente. "The people, more
and more, are lured by coca, tempted by the magic leaf. Not only are they
starting to plant coca, but they're also leaving behind the other plants
they grew, plantation bananas and cacao."

Critics of aerial defoliation say the expansion of coca in Narino and
elsewhere bore out a central warning about the plan to destroy coca in
Putumayo: that eradication in one region causes coca to move to others.

"The argument I've always made is that the fumigation will not, in any way,
do away with the coca fields," said Carlos Palacios, an expert on the coca
trade and the human development secretary in the town of Valle del Guamues
in Putumayo. "What fumigation does is that it causes the fields to simply
transfer to other places."

Opposition to spraying is so strong in southern Colombia that mayors,
church officials and others have been pushing President Andres Pastrana's
government and the United States to stop the spraying. Mr. Cuellar and
three other governors visited Washington this week to criticize the program
and to lobby for aid to improve agriculture.

American officials counter that the size of the Narino crop, with fewer
than 15,000 acres under cultivation, is manageable compared with the
250,000 acres that existed in the coca-growing heartland of Putumayo and
Caqueta Provinces before large-scale spraying began in late December. The
Americans also note that the movement of people and planting of coca in
Narino began long before the spraying in Putumayo.

The Americans say the defoliation effort, called Plan Colombia, with its
reliance on crop dusters, military helicopters and battalions of Colombian
antinarcotics troops, is intended to contain the spread of coca. The plan
is "intended to apply pressure in more places simultaneously than
previously possible," said Jim Mack, deputy assistant secretary of state
for international narcotics and law enforcement.

But the officials, and their Colombian counterparts, are worried.

"We're concerned about Narino," an official at the American Embassy said.
"Right now, there's a lot more coca there, in Narino, so much so that in
fact it's going to be one of our next priorities."

Mr. Cuellar said the migration into the province began before the spraying
in Putumayo, as farmers and others in the coca trade became convinced that
a broad plan to wipe out coca was going to become a reality. But he said
the movement of people grew significantly in late September, when the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia closed roads throughout Putumayo to
prove that it was in control, strangling the coca trade in the process.

On Dec. 19, Plan Colombia, with a goal of halving the estimated 336,000
acres of coca in five years, began. Financed with a $1.1 billion American
aid package, the operation denuded 75,000 acres of coca in Putumayo in two
months. Those whose farms became instantly worthless quickly packed up and
left for Narino.

Provincial officials and workers from the central government's social
service agency, Solidarity, said the displacement of people from Putumayo
had stretched resources in Narino. Shantytowns have sprouted on the
outskirts of Pasto, the capital. Crime has increased.

An estimated 10,000 people have fled Putumayo since September, with 1,600
settling in neighboring Ecuador, according to the director of Solidarity,
Fernando Medellin. An additional 8,400 dispersed into Narino, Cauca and
Huila Provinces, with most settling in this province, Mr. Medellin said. In
Pasto, nearly 900 arrived in February, and about 40 new families arrive
every week.

Alonso Matta, 36, who arrived two weeks ago in Pasto, said spraying his
four-acre farm "got everything, my plantains, my coca, all of it."

"There are a lot of people who are leaving for that reason," Mr. Matta
said. "They're going to go where they find work, where they can find some
money."

In many cases, experts said, the migrants are going to where they can again
grow coca. Other provinces like Amazonas, which is large, isolated and
laced with rivers that allow the easy movement of contraband, may also have
new coca fields, American officials said. Guaviare Province, which had
large tracts of coca sprayed in 1999 and last year, has shown signs of a
resurgence.

Last month, the army said that it had found thousands of acres of coca on
the border of Guiania and Vichada Provinces in the southeast. In the north,
particularly in Santander Province, coca is also flourishing under the
watchful paramilitary groups.

American and Colombian officials who defend the eradication have noted that
coca farmers with small-scale farms could voluntarily stop their coca in
exchange for a benefits package. Many of those who fled Putumayo for Narino
came from a region where farmers declined to sign pacts with the government
to destroy their crops voluntarily. Ana Teresa Bernal, director of Redepaz,
which works with the displaced, said 65 percent of those who fled worked in
coca fields.

Llorente was in many ways the perfect place to relocate coca and coca labs,
a locale that Mr. Cuellar calls "the door to the vast territories where
narcotraffic is creating extensive coca fields."

Traffickers can take advantage of many rivers to move in the processing
chemicals and move out the finished product. Narino's long unguarded
Pacific Coast is an ideal jumping-off point for northbound cocaine.

And public security is nonexistent in the 100-mile stretch between Tumaco
on the Pacific and Ricaurte, where the Andes rise dramatically, said Col.
Jorge Valencia, the police commander in Pasto. Indeed, some newcomers here
said they were well aware of the slight presence of security forces.

"Here, everyone works in everything that has to do with coca," said a
recent arrival from Putumayo who used to work in coca labs. "There are
farms and labs and transportation, all of that. I'm looking for work in the
lab."

Others seek work in new businesses or those that are booming because of the
influx of cash.

"We've been seeing a lot more business," said Pilar Benavides, 18, who was
born in Putumayo and who was running a pool hall while her parents picked
coca. "They come to play pool, have some beers. The tables are always full
on weekends, all the time. Here, any business will work. If you sell some
corncakes on the street, you'll make money."

Jose Laborda, a vendor from Putumayo, said he left after spraying had dried
up most businesses, including his. He quickly found a job as administrator
of the Hotel Familiar.

"I see friends here and there and I ask them why they came," Mr. Laborda
said. "They all say the same thing. The reason is economic."

Others, like Alberto Tapias, moved to Llorente to escape the violence in
Putumayo. Mr. Tapias, a former coca grower who moved with his wife and
three children, has given up coca for now. He works in a palm field.

"We're poorly paid, have little to eat, live badly, but we're better off,"
said Mr. Tapias, who is renting a newly built house in a crowded
neighborhood filled with flimsy structures.

There are signs of change. Murders and other violent acts are increasing,
officials said. Leftist rebels and their archenemies, the paramilitary
groups, are more visible than before.

"There's a lot of concern," Father Moreno said. "I've said this is a time
bomb. We don't know when it's going to go off. But it will."