Freedom of Choice —
Aerial Spraying in Sur de Bolivar

This reflection was shared via a July 2003 email from a Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) member who is witnessing the effects of U.S. drug policy in strife-ridden Colombia. Edited and used with permission.

The policy of aerial spraying of illicit crops so far hasn’t fulfilled its intended purpose -- to eradicate the complicating factor of the cocaine trade in funding both sides in Colombia’s civil war. Even the U.S. drug czar admits that the flow of drugs from Colombia to the U.S. has remained stable despite fumigations (article in Colombia’s leading newspaper, El Tiempo, 7/30/03). And recent studies by the conservative think tank, the RAND Corporation, have shown that money put into rehabilitation and prevention programs to reduce the demand for drugs is 23 times more effective for the dollar than is source country “eradication.” Aerial spraying poisons the air, the water and the land; is inaccurate and sloppy; and we are only beginning to learn about the long term health effects on the people on the ground below.

On a recent exploratory visit to fumigated areas in Sur de Bolivar, CPTers and members of other non-governmental organizations documented dead and dying food crops rice, maiz, yucca -- far from any visible coca. We also photographed dead and dying food crops which surrounded tiny plots of coca and plots of dead and dying food crops which were interspersed with the infamous plant.

It’s true that coca exists, that poor farmers here plant it, harvest it, and sell it to make a living. Why do they do that, knowing they risk fumigation of their legal as well as their illegal crops? And why do they risk the health of their families to save their crops after they have been fumigated? Why does any one do anything apparently dangerous in Colombia? The answer is to stay alive and survive this deadly war.

"Hunger allows no choice," W. H. Auden says in his poem, September 1, 1939, “to the citizen or the police.” Is there a choice for the campesinos whose families are desperately poor and who could not survive growing yucca and maize? Is there a choice for the young people who join the paramilitary groups or the guerrilla? For the teenage boys who serve out their obligatory term in the army? Where are the choices in a war zone?

In Deuteronomy 30, God proclaims that “I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live.”

But for many of the world’s poor majority, there seems to be no choice at all. The rich minority, however, chooses freely and our choices affect most of the world. What happens to them when we choose death instead of life? By pushing and funding the policy of aerial spraying in Colombia, are we stepping between God and Her people to eliminate options for healthy just relationships? There are few things more arrogant than imposing our will over God’s.

U.S. policy is making it nearly impossible for subsistence farmers here to choose life and grow crops that nourish the body and soul instead of destroying it. People here are forced to choose to produce something that destroys the lives of others in order to preserve their own. They do just what the hardy coca plant does: push ahead in poor, unforgiving soils in the pursuit of life despite the ubiquitous poison of war.