Town takes stand, makes break from opium riches

By Tod Robberson / The Dallas Morning News

SILVIA, Colombia The profits from farming opium poppy were like
nothing this onceimpoverished Andes mountain town had ever seen.

After the traffickers arrived three years ago, the residents of Silvia,
a Guambiano Indian town of 19,000, suddenly were able to buy trucks and
cars instead of having to walk everywhere. Residents could purchase all
kinds of things they didn't even know they needed before such as
motorcycles, stereos, televisions and VCRs, said Juan Francisco Muelas,
a tribal elder.

Then they started buying guns and drinking alcohol. Children
experimented with drugs. A traditional tribal life of unity and harmony
that had survived for centuries quickly began to evaporate. Violence
erupted.

All of a sudden, the opium riches that rained down on Silvia didn't seem
so wonderful anymore, Mr. Muelas said.

Late last month, Silvia became the first town in Colombian history to
give drug lords the boot. After reaching a tribal consensus, the town
got together and uprooted 1,300 acres of opium poppy, then declared
itself drugfree during a ceremony broadcast live across the nation.

"We don't want to give another drop of blood" for the cause of illicit
enrichment, tribal governor Henry Eduado Tunubala said in a July 22
speech attended by President Ernesto Samper. "We give up this
cultivation . . . so we can be born again, to reconstruct harmony
between our families."

The notion that Silvia had once been up to its neck in criminal activity
seemed almost surreal amid scenes of thousands of Guambianos flocking to
the town soccer field for the ceremony. Men and women wore traditional
purple skirts, colorful woven smocks and dapper, derbystyle hats that
fit on the crown of the head. Children, also in traditional dress,
stepped forward with freshly uprooted opium plants, which they placed on
a bonfire.

Only a few weeks earlier, it was possible to drive along Silvia's main
dirt road and see fields of opium poppy growing in back yards and on
hillsides.

"We had a tremendous economic crisis before. We had to do something to
make money, so we tried opium cultivation," Mr. Muelas explained. "But
it was obvious to everyone what it was doing to our way of life. We knew
this was a very bad thing. If we didn't put a stop to it, there would be
consequences."

Addressing the crowd, Mr. Samper made note of the "social perversions"
that developed in Silvia as a result of the opium trade, which is
estimated to have pumped $9 million into this tiny economy over three
years. Mr. Samper said the town's sacrifice should serve "as an example
to the international community, especially so that consumer nations will
fight harder against drug consumption among their youth."

In exchange for giving up opium cultivation, the Chinese government
offered $129,000 in equipment to help the town earn money legally,
including 19 lawn mowers and 45 sewing machines. The Colombian
government offered $1.6 million in loans and other assistance.

Schoolteacher Luis Felipe Calambos said the town realized it had a
problem when landhungry opium farmers began trying to buy up, or
forcefully seize, other people's parcels. Another troubling sign, he
said, was when teenagers started roaring through town on expensive
motorcycles, upsetting farm animals and making children cry.

"They wanted to live in a way that wasn't Guambiano. They wanted to live
like people they were not," he said.

Nevertheless, when tribal leaders introduced the idea of giving up the
opium trade several months ago, they met with harsh resistance. Some
families still are refusing to eradicate their plants, Mr. Calambos
said.

"They will change. Here we live by one law. We speak with one voice, as
we have for all time," he said. "We are totally in agreement that the
opium must go."