To Colombians, US drug war a toxic foe

By Larry Rohter

American-financed aerial spraying campaigns like the one in Ioblanca de Sotará have been the principal means by which the Colombian government has sought to reduce coca- and opium-poppy cultivation for nearly a decade.

The Colombian government fleet has grown to include 65 airplanes and helicopters, which fly every day, weather permitting, from three bases. Last year, the spraying effort resulted in the fumigation of 104,000 acres of coca and 20,000 acres of opium poppy.

Yet despite such efforts, which have been backed by more than $150 million in American aid, cocaine and heroin production in Colombia has more than doubled since 1995.

In an effort to reverse that trend and weaken left-wing guerrilla and right-wing paramilitary groups that are profiting from the drug trade and threatening the country’s stability, the Clinton administration is now urging Congress to approve a new aid package, which calls for increased spending on drug eradication as well as a gigantic increase for crop-substitution programs, to $127 million from $5 million.

Critics, like Elsa Nivia, director of the Colombian affiliate of the advocacy organization Pesticide Action Network, see the eradication effort as dangerous and misguided. “These pilots don’t care if they are fumigating over schools, houses, grazing areas, or sources of water,” she said in an interview at the group’s headquarters in Cali. “Furthermore,” she added, “spraying only exacerbates the drug problem by destabilizing communities that are trying to get out of illicit crops and grow legal alternatives.”

Those who have been directly affected by the spraying effort here also argue that fumigation is counterproductive. In this cloud-shrouded region of waterfalls, rushing rivers, dense forests and deep mountain gorges, poppy cultivation was voluntarily reduced by half between 1997 and 1999, to 250 acres, said Mr. Chicangana, the former mayor.

He said it was well on its way to being eliminated altogether when the spraying began. “We were collaborating, and now people feel betrayed by the state,” he lamented.

“The fumigation disturbs us a bit,” said Juan Hugo Torres, an official of Plante, the Colombian government agency supervising crop-substitution efforts, who works with farmers here. “You are building trust with people, they have hopes, and then the spraying does away with all of that.”

In an interview in Washington, R. Rand Beers, the American assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs, said aerial spraying flights are strictly monitored and targets chosen carefully. The fumigation program is designed so that pilots “shouldn’t be anywhere close to alternative development projects,” he said, since “officials in the air and on the ground should be equipped with geographic positioning devices that pinpoint where those activities are taking place.” “If that happened, the pilot who flew that mission should be disciplined,” Mr. Beers said in reference to the specific accusations made by residents here. “That shouldn’t be happening.”

But the area fumigated here is wind-swept mountain terrain where illicit crops and their legal alternatives grow side by side, making accurate spraying difficult. And in some other places, pilots may be forced to fly higher than might be advisable, for fear of being shot at by the guerrillas, whose war is fueled by the profits of the drug trade.

As for the complaints of illness, the American Embassy official who supervises the spraying program said in an interview in Bogotá that glyphosate, the active ingredient in the pesticide used here, is “less toxic than table salt or aspirin.” Calling it “the most studied herbicide in the world,” he said it was proven to be harmless to human and animal life and called the villagers’ account “scientifically impossible.” “Being sprayed on certainly does not make people sick,” said the official, “because it is not toxic to human beings.” Glyphosate “does not translocate to water” and “leaves no soil residue,” he added, so “if they are saying otherwise, to be very honest with you, they are lying, and we can prove that scientifically.”

But in an out-of-court settlement in New York state in 1996, Monsanto, a leading manufacturer of glyphosate-based herbicides, though not necessarily identical to those used here, agreed to withdraw claims that the product is “safe, nontoxic, harmless or free from risk.”

The company signed a statement agreeing that its “absolute claims that Roundup ‘will not wash or leach in the soil’ is not accurate” because glyphosate “may move through some types of soil under some conditions after application.”

In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency has approved glyphosate for most commercial uses. But the EPA’s own recertification study published in 1993 noted that “in California, where physicians are required to report pesticide poisonings, glyphosate was ranked third out of the 25 leading causes of illness or injury due to pesticides” over a five-year period in the 1980’s, primarily causing eye and skin irritation.

In addition, labels on glyphosate products like Roundup sold in the United States advise users to “avoid direct application to any body of water.” Directions also warn users that they should “not apply this product in a way that will contact workers or other persons, either directly or through drift” and caution that “only protected handlers may be in the area during application.”

The doctor in charge of the local clinic here, Iván Hernández, recently was transferred and could not be reached for comment about the impact of the spraying on the health of residents. Gisela Moreno, a nurse’s aide, refused to speak to a visiting reporter, saying, “We have been instructed not to talk to anyone about what happened here.” When asked the origin of the order, she replied: “From above, from higher authorities.”

Here in Rioblanco de Sotará, half a dozen local people say they felt so sick after the spraying that they undertook a 55-mile bus trip to San José Hospital in Popayán, the capital of Cauca Province, for medical care. There, they were attended by Dr. Nelson Palechor Obando, who said he treated them for the same battery of symptoms that more than two dozen residents described to a reporter independently in recent interviews. “They complained to me of dizziness, nausea and pain in the muscles and joints of their limbs, and some also had skin rashes,” he said. “We do not have the scientific means here to prove they suffered pesticide poisoning, but the symptoms they displayed were certainly consistent with that condition.”

Source: Civil Liberties Monitoring Project, P.O. Box 544, Redway CA 95560; 707/923-4646

Environmental concerns for China trade deal

By Danielle Knight

Washington, DC, May 11 (IPS)— Nine of the country’s largest national environmental and wildlife protection groups announced Thursday they are joining human rights groups and labor unions in their opposition to permanently grant China the same trade preferences Washington offers to most of its other trading partners. Environmentalists are opposing efforts by the Administration of President Bill Clinton to urge Congress to do away with annual reviews and grant Beijing permanent “normal trade relations’’ (NTR). Joined by several members of the House of Representatives, groups outside Congress here argued that by doing so, Washington will lose leverage with Beijing on environmental issues, in addition to concerns about human and workers’ rights. Groups said granting China permanent NTR would undoubtedly lead corporations to flee the United States to avoid US environmental, labor and safety regulations. “The deal does not encourage environmentally sustainable development in China or improve the transparency of the US trade policy making process, and therefore fails to live up to the promises made last year to ‘put a human face’ on trade,’’ said a statement released by groups including Friends of the Earth, the Sierra Club, and the American Lands Alliance. By granting China permanent NTR, Congress will ratify a far- reaching bilateral trade agreement negotiated with Beijing by the administration last November. The accord, which will give US corporations much greater freedom to sell to the vast Chinese market and take advantage of its vast supply of cheap labor, would also expedite Beijing’s admission to the World Trade Organization (WTO). Brent Blackwelder, president of Friends of the Earth, condemned the effort to give China permanent NTR for not even mentioning the environment. He blasted the Administration for violating its own executive order that required environmental assessments of trade deals before they are negotiated. “China is one of the world’s industrial and economic powers, so its economic development and its trading relationship with the United States have far-reaching environmental implications,’’ said Blackwelder. He said in negotiating the trade deal, the Administration missed an opportunity to elevate environmental standards and trade that would help China “leapfrog’’ dirty forms of power generation, manufacturing and transportation.