COLOMBIA SADDLED WITH MIXED BLESSING OF THE COCA

Drug Plant Results In Decadence, False Prosperity, Violence.

LA GABARRA, Colombia -- When police planes swooped down and sprayed
herbicides over the fields outside this dusty little village, they
dented more than the numbers of coca plants used to make cocaine.

The following weekend, the number of prostitutes in town was way down,
residents say. Their spendthrift young clients wouldn't have had a
peso in their pockets.

Authorities have launched a major anti-drug offensive in this remote
eastern region near the Venezuelan border -- fumigating the green
fields and setting jungle cocaine laboratories on fire.

The police strikes -- which in an 11-day span this month have
destroyed 120 drug "kitchens" and sprayed 3,700 of the area's nearly
25,000 acres of coca -- will hit hard at a local economy that has come
to depend on the illegal plantings.

But some residents of La Gabarra are welcoming the offensive. They see
it as a way out of a cycle of vice and violence that has overtaken
their formerly quiet, pastoral home since the coca moved in.

"The only thing this plant has brought us is war," said Lina Carrero,
whose shop in La Gabarra's main square could go bust if the local cash
crop disappears.

Once living off cattle ranching and crops like plantains and cacao,
the Catatumbo region that includes La Gabarra has metamorphosed into
Colombia's second-largest coca-growing area, after the leftist
rebel-controlled south.

It also has become one of the South American country's most violent
places.

The squat, shiny coca bushes began sprouting up in the area in the
early 1990s, officials said. The crop expanded exponentially a few
years ago, aided by a scarce government presence and armed gangs who
protect the coca for a cut of the profits.

When right-wing paramilitary militias moved in to the region, long a
stronghold of leftist rebels, they left a trail of massacres and refugees.

A paramilitary incursion in April left 21 people dead in Tibu, the
township that includes La Gabarra. Massacres last August killed at
least 51 people and sent nearly 3,000 frightened villagers fleeing
into Venezuela.

For many, as worrisome as the violence is the ethical breakdown the
drug trade has wrought.

"There has been a transformation in values," said La Gabarra's Roman
Catholic priest, the Rev. Sady Castaneda. "Now what we have are
anti-values, a culture of money by any means."

Personifying the new decadent lifestyle, Castaneda said, are the
estimated 20,000 coca-pickers known as "raspachines" who have came to
eke out a living in the fields of Catatumbo.

Many migrated from depressed regions where they worked on coffee and
cotton estates. Most are bachelors who spend a good portion of their
earnings on booze and women. They can make as much as $25 a day --
nearly five times the minimum wage.

The cash influx, however, has driven prices of ordinary commodities
through the roof. An egg in La Gabarra costs 50 cents, more than five
times its price in the capital, Bogota.

When officials came from Bogota to see the spraying last week, some
residents asked why the government destroys crops, but doesn't bring
jobs, education or security.

"We all live off of this," said Asdrubal Perez, a clothing-store owner
who once farmed coca. "What are we going to do now?"

The government is pledging to provide adjustment loans to coca farmers
when its begins a major fumigation thrust planned for later this year
in southern Colombia.

But as he stood in a coca field in La Gabarra that had just been
sprayed, Defense Minister Luis Ramirez warned people not to expect a
handout.

"Before there was coca," he said, "the people didn't get any aid."