P L A N* C O L O M B I A
BEFORE
PLAN COLOMBIA
Situation
in the U.S.
Situation in Colombia
Policy Before Plan Colombia
PLAN
COLOMBIA
Role
of the U.S.
Military Mission
Coca Eradication
RESULTS
OF PLAN COLOMBIA
Ecological
Devastation
Socio-Economic Devastation
Cultural Devastation
A
CRITICAL PERSPECTIVE
Plan
Colonia
Parallels: Colombia and Vietnam?
By.
Carmen Guhn-Knight
cmguhnkn@mtholyoke.edu
Updated 05.05.06.
With Thanks To Mount Holyoke College
and Thanks to the Beehive
Design Collective
for the Black and White Cartoons
Results of Plan Colombia:
Glyphosate from aerial fumigation does not reach only coca. The planes, spraying 200 feet in the air, allow Roundup to spread widely. Sometimes, a farm is targeted and sprayed even if it is not growing coca at all. When a farm is hit with fumigation, just about all of the harvest is lost and the ground often becomes unfit for planting.
Plan Colombia has sprayed over 370,000 tons of harmful chemicals into the Andean region, the “lungs of the Earth”. Laboratories that process coca leaves into cocaine base have sent over 20 million liters of toxins into the Amazon and the Orinoco.[10] Over 178,000 animals, mostly cattle and fish, have died from glyphosate poisoning.[2,4]
Farmers whose soil was ruined by the herbicides are cutting down the tropical rain forest to create new farmland. Over 3 million hectares of rainforest has been lost to coca cultivation.[10] This area is increasing because farmers still have no economic alternative to growing coca.
Additionally,
the increased military action in Colombia has caused hundreds of bombings
of oil pipelines. This oil leaking into the ground is just
as harmful as an oil spill in the Arctic.
"When they're spraying, the herbicide drifts in the air. It doesn't just fall where it's supposed to fall. It falls on food crops. It falls where there are animals. It falls into drinking wells." Soria[5]