COLOMBIAN FARMERS FEEL DRUG WAR'S WRATH

General Using $1.3 Billion In U.S. Assistance To Shut Down Trade, Find Peasants Other Work

ON THE NEMAL RIVER, Colombia -- The general and the peasant farmer
have never met and certainly don't mingle in the same social circles.

But as relative neighbors in this sparsely populated region of southern
Colombia, where most of the world's cocaine originates, the professional
lives of Gen. Mario Montoya and farmer Jairo Hernández overlap in
strange ways.

They currently find themselves on opposing sides in the U.S.-financed war
on drugs. But, ironically, they share many of the same opinions about the
importance of halting a trafficking industry that has immersed Colombia in
warfare and made it the source of most of the cocaine and heroin sold on
U.S. streets.

As the military's commander for southern Colombia, Gen. Montoya will
oversee much of the $1.3 billion in U.S. counternarcotics aid destined for
South America's cocaine-producing heartland. The U.S.-trained brigadier
general, 51, spends much of his time flying around in helicopters and
playing tour guide to reporters, members of Congress and dignitaries such
as White House drug czar Barry McCaffrey.

It is quite possible that the general has overflown the dirt-floor shack
where Mr. Hernández lives with his wife, infant daughter and a couple
of caged guinea pigs on the banks of the Nemal River, near the town of
Puerto Rico.

Mr. Hernández's daughter has persistent chest congestion, which he
hopes to cure by drawing blood from a guinea pig and rubbing it on her
chest like a balm. It is a time-honored cure in these parts, Mr.
Hernández indicates with a confident nod.

If Mr. Hernández stuck to raising guinea pigs, he would not be on his
current collision course with Gen. Montoya. But the problem lies in a
five-acre plot of land just down the path from the Hernández
residence, where a patchof bright-green plants signals to anyone flying
overhead that he is a coca cultivator.

In four years, Gen. Montoya says, he wants to use U.S. funds to put people
such as Mr. Hernández out of the coca-growing business and relocate
them to other areas and other lines of work.

Mr. Hernández says he wouldn't mind switching to a less-risky
business, but some major obstacles stand in the way. Foremost among them
are Colombian guerrillas who profit from the drug trade and who are
encouraging Mr. Hernández to continue his illicit activities.

Mr. Hernández's business is so risky that he identified himself using
an apparent pseudonym.

"For us, the biggest threat is that the government will continue
eradicating coca without helping us. We can't survive here. Other crops
don't pay. There's not enough land for us to raise cattle," said Mr.
Hernández, 25. "So what's left for people like us to do but take up
arms [with the rebels] and fight in the war?"

Mr. Hernández is only one of thousands involved in coca cultivation in
southern Colombia. This region already has 185,000 acres under illicit
cultivation -- roughly 60 percent of the total for the entire country.

"This is the triangle that produces the greatest amount of coca in the
world," Gen. Montoya told reporters during a recent briefing at Tres
Esquinas, in Putumayo province, where the first of three U.S.-trained
counternarcotics battalions is based. Farther north, at Larandia, about 100
U.S. Special Forces trainers are currently training a second battalion.

The main job of the battalions will be to fight the insurgents who protect
laboratories, clandestine airstrips and large coca fields that have been
targeted for aerial eradication.

While overflying a jungle area close to Mr. Hernández's home, Gen.
Montoya pointed out scores of little green patches where peasant farmers
have cleared fields to grow coca. The patches extend as far as the eye can
see.

Just from Mr. Hernández's front yard, at least three other coca farms
are visible on the steep, lush banks of the Nemal River.

Each acre produces an average of 1.5 pounds of coca base every 60 days. The
acreage currently under cultivation in southern Colombia, Gen. Montoya
said, is enough to produce 645 tons of pure cocaine in a year. That is,
southern Colombia alone can produce 20 percent more cocaine than the world
currently consumes, an amount that Gen. Montoya said is 500 to 550 tons per
year.

"None of us can come close to measuring the magnitude of income generated
by this business," Gen. Montoya said. By his calculations, a small spread
like Mr. Hernández's is capable of producing more than 42 pounds of
coca base every year.

In spite of all the U.S. assistance -- which was only around $65
million in 1996 -- Gen. Montoya said the acreage under coca
cultivation throughout Colombia is expected to increase to 370,000 acres
next year. The explosion in small-farm cultivation is one of the main
reasons.

"I don't think this will end," Mr. Hernández said. "The U.S.
government has been working on this for a long time, and they haven't been
able to do anything. They captured the biggest chiefs of the cartels, and
nothing has changed."

Part of the reason is that coca farming consistently pays far higher than
any other type of agricultural activity in isolated rural areas, Mr.
Hernández explained.

Every 60 days, he takes his harvest to a small "kitchen" he built next to
his hillside coca field. There, he shreds the leaves and drops them into a
large barrel of gasoline, where they soak for a day. Then he pours ammonia
into the gasoline, which isolates the coca alkaloid. He siphons off the
alkaloid and mixes it with caustic soda. The mixture dries into a paste
that forms the base for cocaine.

One kilogram, or 2.2 pounds, of coca base earns him about $900. That same
kilogram, once refined into pure cocaine, sells in the United States for
about $80,000.

Compared with other crops like corn, coffee or yucca, coca is simple to
grow, largely maintenance-free, and requires little effort to transport to
market, he explained.

"With coca, you don't have to reseed every season. You strip the leaves
off, and they grow right back," Mr. Hernández said.

"The coca plant is little more than a weed," said Gen. Montoya. "It grows
practically anywhere."

The dominant guerrilla group in the region, the Revolutionary Armed Forces
of Colombia, or FARC, currently controls the coca market, meaning it sets
the price, Mr. Hernández said. Whereas before he was required to pay a
"tax" to the FARC after each visit to the market, now the rebels collect
their fee before Mr. Hernández receives his payment.

Gen. Montoya said an opposing insurgent group, the paramilitary United
Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, is moving into the area in an attempt to
seize control of the market. The paramilitaries pay significantly higher
prices per kilogram, he added.

"When they [the FARC] say they are striving just to get a better price for
the cultivators -- lies. Lies. What they are doing is a business. This
is a huge industry," he said.

But it is not a free market, he added, saying that anyone the guerrillas
catch selling to the paramilitaries is killed, and vice versa.

"From 1998 to this year, it has been a battle between the FARC and the
paramilitaries for what? Simply to see who will wind up with control over
the business," he said.

The pressure it is placing on farmers, along with the looming threat of
capture by the Colombian police and military, is enough to make Mr.
Hernández want to get out of the business.

What keeps him in business, he said, is demand in the United States.
Ultimately, he said, Colombia will be able to solve its drug problem more
easily than the United States will be able to solve its.

"I think it's easier for us to give up this life, because we're tired of
it. We want to do something else," Mr. Hernández said. "But they
(American consumers) will never get tired of using cocaine."