The role and relation of the coca industry to the paramilitary and guerrillas

Unless we are clear about the nature of the real enemy in this historical moment in Colombia’s democratic development – the narco-fascist paramilitary project ... An increasing number of political crimes will continue with impunity until home-grown fascism strikes its final blow. (Child as quoted in Pearce, 1990a: 266–7)

THE ROLE AND RELATION OF THE COCA INDUSTRY TO THE PARAMILITARY (AND GUERRILLAS)

The appellation of “narco-fascist paramilitary” is significant; therefore, it is important to address how and to what extent the AUC aligned itself with the drug trade, particularly to coca. During the 1970s the Castaño brothers became deeply involved in narcotics, and later in assisting other localized narcobourgeoisie and large landowners to expand their wealth through increased land acquisitions by displacing peasants and securing increased shipping/smuggling routes. However, by the early 1990s, pressure from the United States and the Colombian state toward narcotrafficking hit new heights.

For more than a decade a central goal of the international war on drugs waged by the United States was to reduce the supply of illicit drugs being cultivated and exported from the Andean region of South America. In the case of Colombia in particular, for most of the 1990s this strategy involved pressuring the government to go after the leaders of the cocaine cartels based in the provincial cities of Medellín and Cali. Washington thought that this “kingpin strategy,” if successful, would deal a mortal blow to the cartels’ ability to ship drugs to the United States. In many ways the strategy worked. By 1995, all of the Cali and Medellín cartel leaders were either dead or in prison in Colombia or the United States. (Crandall, 2005b: 179)

Working together, Washington and Bogotá deconstructed the two infamous cartels by aligning with those who had once worked closely with them (Dudley, 2004; see also Scott, 2003: 89; Taussig, 2004b: 18; NACLA, 2003: 2). The Castaños were quick to support this top-down approach both ideologically and materially, as both brothers had reasons for cutting ties with the cartels, particularly with Escobar. Fidel felt Escobar had watered-down his stringent anti-communist ideology, while Carlos saw the drug lord withdraw his once extensive support for the MAS (Kirk, 2003: 156). The brothers then re-routed their approach to the industry by working with “the police, the Cali Cartel and dissidents from the Medellín Cartel (Henao brothers) to defeat Pablo Escobar” (Livingstone, 2003: 133; see also Avilés, 2006: 71–87; Peceny and Durnan, 2006: 102; Bowden, 2001). Upon the demise of the cartels a looming void was left vacant for the drug trade to redevelop itself in the pursuit of supplying the global demand for cocaine.45 With Fidel dead (in 1994), and the paramilitary needing an

additional outlet to fund its actions, the AUC filled this void and became one of the primary organizations involved in the Colombian narcotic industry.46

The demise of the Medellín and Cali cartels in the 1990s allowed the paramilitaries to diversify their operations into other aspects of drug production and trade .… Due in part to its control of Urabá and other areas close to the border of Panama, a main contraband route, the AUC was able to inherit the narcotrafficking network and contracts in the interior of the country and international markets. In addition to taxing the coca farmers, the paramilitaries provide protection for processing labs, and at least some of the paramilitary groups appear to be directly involved in cocaine production and actual trafficking.

(Felbab-Brown, 2005: 113)

The paramilitary were soon involved in the direct production of coca, and became financed primarily through trafficking, as was admitted by Carlos Castaño himself (Molina, 2001: 205; see also Murillo and Avirama, 2004: 100–1; Crandall, 2002: 88). Throughout the 2000s, the AUC conservatively attributed 80 percent of its income directly to trafficking, involving itself in roughly 40 percent of all narcotic activity in Colombia (see Richani, 2007: 409; 2005b: 102n.77; 2002a: 108–9; Scott, 2003: 39). What is interesting about these figures in relation to the FARC-EP is that the guerrillas derive only a minority of their income from taxing drug merchants and have no direct involvement in trafficking (Holmes et al, 2006: 163; Schulte-Bockholt, 2006: 130; El Tiempo, 2005; Miami Herald, 2005; Semana, 2005; Röhl, 2004: 4; Cooper, 2002: 951; Richani, 2002a: 64; Rangel Suárez, 2000: 585; Halliday, 1989: 88; Shannon, 1989: 161–6). Furthermore, the FARC-EP’s indirect involvement with the industry only equates to roughly 2.5 percent of all drug activity in the country (Scott, 2003: 39, 52n.1, 71, 72, 74–5). In recent years, contrary to claims that the FARC-EP is involved in processing and trafficking, findings have demonstrated that the insurgency actually decreased export rates of coca from regions under its control while sustaining (and increasing) levels of gross domestic product and employment (Holmes and Amin Gutiérrez de Piñeres, 2006: 111–13). Hence, the FARC-EP has stabilized domestic production and economic activity while limiting coca (see Munck, 2008: 191). Such an analysis supports my research related to the FARC-EP’s class-based taxation model and its pre-revolutionary strategy of alternative development via crop substitution. As export levels do not increase and domestic products grow, an argument could be made that the insurgency’s program of commodity sharing via JACs has worked. There is no decline in gross domestic product but there is one in rates of export; therefore, in certain locales the insurgency has enabled small producers to fairly trade surplus goods with other rural-based producers rather than competing against each other in a

formal capitalist market. If, in fact, the FARC-EP were heavily involved in trafficking, levels of illicit export would be high in areas under its control, for it would be the medium through which commodities are transported – as is the case in areas controlled by the paramilitary (Holmes and Amin Gutiérrez de Piñeres, 2006: 112–13).

What has been found in areas of FARC-EP territory is simply an involved relation between the guerrillas and the rural population in making sure peasants remain protected from external threat so as to enable them to produce what they need to subsist. One reason for this FARC-EP success may be its distinct approach toward coca growers when compared with the AUC. The FARC-EP protects peasants who choose to cultivate coca (on incredibly small plots of land) whereas the AUC violently forces peasants to harvest coca on immense land tracts or coca plantations (Stokes, 2001: 65–7; see also SchulteBockholt, 2006: ch. 5; Cassidy, 2005).47 Explanations for the AUC’s structural involvement in the drug trade have been the removal of the Cali and Medellín cartels coupled with the systemic over-attention given to fumigating coca in regions predominantly controlled by the FARC-EP (O’Shaughnessy and Branford, 2005: 5, 35, 62; Sweig and McCarthy, 2005: 15; Kruijt and Koonings, 2004: 75).

[F]or all the success in apprehending narco-traffickers, the kingpin strategy did little to reduce the overall drug trade. Instead, a drug production atomized from the large, visible Medellín and Cali cartels to a much greater number of small drug producers. These “boutique” drug traffickers became harder to track and apprehend, making subsequent operations much more difficult.

(Crandall, 2005b: 179)

As the large cartels of the 1980s and 1990s decentralized, the AUC – that is, their former employees and security – established micro-level drug processing labs (Kenney, 2007: 90; Brittain, 2006d; Padgett and Morris, 2004; Selsky, 2004; Livingstone, 2003: 84–5; Richani, 2000: 40). This was facilitated by Washington and Bogotá’s support for the AUC’s counterinsurgency efforts (Peceny and Durnan, 2006: 111–13). As argued by Mark Peceny and Michael Durnan:

the coercive military and police activities of the United States and its allies often determine which set of private actors in which countries benefit the most from the drug trade. As the United States focuses its prohibition efforts on one set of actors or countries, the profits of the drug trade shift to other actors. (Peceny and Durnan, 2006: 96)

It has been suggested that this strategy was systemically orchestrated to enable the United States and the Colombian state to keep a close tab on the narcotics industry and/or take up the “slack” following the demise of the cartels (Taussig, 2004b: 18; NACLA, 2003: 2; Scott, 2003: 89).

In 2003, the Uribe administration’s policies “coincided with the ‘strong expansion’ of paramilitary groups” enabling the “ultra-right groups” to increase “their presence in various regions of the country” (NACLA, 2003: 2). This is no mere coincidence according to former Canadian diplomat Peter Dale Scott, who suggested this inter-connection is the true purpose of the US narco-methodology, which has no means or desire to eliminate the narcotic industry. On the contrary, Scott (2003: 89) has argued that Washington and Bogotá seek to “alter market share: to target specific enemies and thus ensure that the drug traffic remains under the control of those traffickers who are allies of the Colombian state security apparatus and/or the CIA” (see also Taussig, 2004b: 18). Putting this into perspective from an economic standpoint, Carlos Oliva Campos demonstrated the tremendous amount of (prohibited) capital that the narcotic industry provides US-based banks. Washington has no systemic interests of curbing the dynamics of the global drug trade because of its economic spin-offs. Campos (2007: 38) noted that “there are many unclear questions on the real interest of the United States to put an end to drug trafficking due to the economic benefits received by the big American transnationals, especially the main banks of the nation” (see also Petras, 2001b; Petras and Morley, 1995: 86). As one commercial bank executive astonishingly revealed, considerable fiscal benefits are derived from illicit transfers:

The 500 billion dollars from the illegal origin coming into the main American banks and circulating among them exceed the net income of all computer companies in the United States and, of course, their benefits. This annual income exceeds all net transfers made by the main oil and military companies and aircraft manufacturers. The largest banks in the United States – the Bank of America, J.P. Morgan, Chase Manhattan and, above all, the Citibank – receive a high percentage of their banking benefits from services provided to the accounts of criminal dirty money. The larger banks and financial institutions in the United States support the global power of the United States through their laundering operations and management of illegal funds. The Citibank, the first money laundering bank, is the largest bank in the United States, with 180,000 employees across the world distributed throughout 100 countries, 700,000 wellknown deposits and over 1 billion deposits of private individuals in secret accounts and carries out private bank operations (investment portfolio management) in more than 30 countries thus turning it into the bank with the largest global presence compared with all financial institutions in the United States.

(quoted in Campos, 2007: 38–9)

Regardless of whether or not this hypothesis is true, scholars have clearly demonstrated that US involvement in counterinsurgency tactics has allowed criminal bodies to increase their political, monetary, and militaristic foothold (Peceny and Durnan, 2006).