Customers in Lorena’s shop place innocuous white pebbles on an electronic scale. In exchange they take away staples like cooking oil and eggs — in the depths of the Colombian jungle, you pay with cocaine base paste.
“Everything is bought and sold this way. Cash is very rare and kept for emergencies,” said the 26-year-old woman, adding that in her lifetime, more white powder had passed through her hands than cash.
It is the same whether locals are paying for beer or the company of a prostitute: Cocaine — or in this case its raw material, coca paste — is king.
Lorena has lived in the tiny jungle village of La Paz for seven years, a hamlet of 300 people whose reddish earth streets turn to mud in the rain.
It lies on the banks of the Inirida River in the remote southeastern department of Guaviare, Colombia’s most underdeveloped region.
The lush greenery of the landscape lends itself to the production of the coca leaf, the basic ingredient of cocaine, of which Colombia, despite the efforts of the Colombian government and the US, is the world’s largest producer.
There is no electricity here, no potable water, no doctor and no police.
Authority is exercised by dissident Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia members (FARC) who have rejected a historic peace deal to remain in the jungle.
“This is another Colombia. There is no healthcare, nothing. And there are seven-year-old children here who have never seen money,” local community leader Orland Castilla said.
The only links to the outside world for La Paz’s 300 residents are the river, one dirt road and two telephone lines. A loudspeaker announces incoming telephone calls.
Everyone here owes their existence to the cultivation and processing of the coca leaf.
Contrary to the end product, flown the classic route from grass airstrips in Colombia to Mexico and on to the US, producing coca paste is far from lucrative.
The price of 1g of cocaine in the US is about US$150, but for the producers here, the gram of coca paste never exceeds 2,000 Colombian pesos (US$0.68).
The state guarantees aid to those campesinos or farmers who will substitute coca for legal crops. Those who refuse have to sometimes face the consequences of police raids, leading to occasional clashes.
A police officer was held for three days by campesinos after clashes on July 20 on the banks of the Inirida.
Under pressure from the US, the main market for Colombia’s cocaine, Bogota, plans to reclaim 100,000 hectares from coca cultivation this year, by force if necessary.
A hoped-for dividend on the peace deal with FARC signed in December last year is that the former guerrilla movement will encourage a move to legal crops.
From first light on the farm of Miguel “Mangos,” laborers empty bags of freshly picked coca leaves in a makeshift jungle laboratory.
Miguel, 56, runs a garden trimmer through the leaves and then sprinkles a mixture of water and lime over them. It is the beginning of a lengthy chemical process involving cement, fertilizer, gasoline and acids to extract cocaine.
The coca paste that emerges from the first rudimentary process in La Paz has a cocaine content of about 35 percent.
For every US$1,000 he invests, he makes US$1,200. It allows him to survive, he said.
“I have planted bananas, maize, cassava, but it is not profitable,” Miguel said.
To bring bananas to the market requires transport and he ends up trading at a loss because of the costs involved, he said.
“1kg of coca, I can take it in my pocket,” he said.
“When people come to buy the merchandise, we do not ask who they are and where they are going,” community leader Diego Parra said.
Buyers make themselves scare when the army or police get involved and might not return for a long time.
Then the campesinos venture out with the coca to the city of San Jose, almost four hours away by car, risking arrest.
“They tell us we are guerrillas or that we are drug traffickers,” Cielo Rueda said. “But we are the last link in the chain. In all of the drug business, we are the poorest.”
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in