Colombian Army Kills 1 in Attack on Coca Farmers in Cauca

The Colombian army killed one campesino and wounded five others after it raided a rural area Thursday in what military officials say was an effort to “manually eradicate” illegal coca crops.

Clashes erupted when the army came to wipe out the coca harvest in the municipality of Algeria, in the southwestern province of Cauca. This angered local farmers, many of whom depend on the crops for survival.

According to Cauca's Government Secretary Ever Molano, the fighting occurred shortly before noon and left “one dead and five wounded, all civilians,” he told EFE news agency.

Molano said the move was part of a larger government initiative to “manually eradicate” several coca crops—the plant from which cocaine is derived—in the region, which was planned to begin Thursday.

Farmers who are dependent on the crops for their livelihood have protested this initiative because the government has not helped them develop alternative crops—what it had initially promised.

Human rights activist and former Colombian Senator Piedad Cordoba has condemned Thursday's attacks.

“The army has entered brutally the municipality of Argelia, in the Cauca province ... burning homes, burning cars, attacking people instead of speaking with the community ... justifying themselves with the argument that they are stopping illegal crops that would be used to produce drugs,” she said.

The activist added that the army needs to “sit down” with other organizations and social movements and “agree on another way of doing things.”

The Colombian left-wing political movement Marcha Patriotica (Patriotic March) posted a video of Thursday's raid in Algeria on YouTube. In the video, shots are heard while the rural community is seen trying to hide for cover. One person is then dragged in with apparent gunshot wounds to the legs, and another is carried away on men's shoulders in the background.

The video ends by saying, “As a result of the military incursion, the campesinos Humberto Cadena Morales, Jhon Gomez, Ivan Mosquera, Edward Jaramillo, Jhonny Males Gomez, Edwar Sanchez, Carlos Andres Galindez and Jose Yonda were injured.”

They added that 20-year-old Miller Bermeo Acosta was killed from “the impact of the Colombian Army.”

The government initiative to manually eradicate coca crops comes after the Washington Post published a report earlier this week saying Colombia is still the world's top coca producer.

The news contradicts long-standing pronouncements from Washington touting Plan Colombia, a multimillion dollar anti-narcotics strategy marked by a militarized approach to the so-called drug war. Two years ago, this trend seemed to be changing as Peru was found to be the world’s largest coca producer. However, new data has revealed that Colombia now grows more illegal coca than Peru and Bolivia (the third place producer) combined, reported the Post.

In an interview with the Post, Santos reiterated the country's plan to initiate a massive crop substitution campaign to help farmers shift out of coca production, saying that “if we don’t give the farmers an alternative, they’re going to keep growing coca.”

Eduardo Diaz, the economist and former health minister in charge of the crop substitution program, told the Post that farmers who hold out on crop shifting would face forced eradication and criminal penalties.

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