Scenes from the Coffee Farmers' Protest

Coffee farmers in front of the Ministry of Agriculture today.

 Today, hundreds of coffee farmers gathered in front of the Ministry of Agriculture to demand government subsidies, cheaper supplies such as fertilizers and an end to free trade agreements, which they blame for flooding Colombia with cheap imported coffee and other agricultural products.

The protesters perhaps did not reflect that those trade agreements also bring their fertilizers and other supplies in more cheaply, or that the same agreements which bring in competing agricultural goods also open the doors to selling Colombian coffee overseas.

Colombia has produced big harvests in recent years - which have not helped boost low international prices. The huge influx of Venezuelan refugees, some of whom have gone to work picking coffee, has helped the industry a little. In some traditional coffee-growing regions, farmers are switching to the new darling of Colombian arquitecture - avocadoes, which Colombia only recently began exporting to the United States.

A poster depicts Juan Valdez, the iconic Colombian offee farmer, as half naked from the waist down.

A protesters' placard portrays a struggling coffee farmer as half-nude from the waist down.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Development by Rural Radio

Popular Cultural Action.

'You should buy a
NEW battery radio.

In the age of the internet and smart phones, old fashioned radio often gets overlooked. That's not yet true, however, in the countryside, where in some areas radio is the only source of local news.

During the 1940s, '50s and '60s, the Colombian government tried to use radio to promote land redistribution and health care, teach literacy and even promote family planning - and got embroiled in polemics with religous conservatives and anti-Communists.

Today, radio is still important in rural areas, in some of which it is the only

The BLAA exhibition.

 local news source. However, in some places that radio station belongs to the military or police, making one question how objective and inclusive the news is.

There's an exhibition about Colombia's rural radio on now in the BLAA library on Calle 11 in La Candelaria.

A priest reads to the radio.

'How to reach a man's mind.'

A young, apparently VP Nixon, talks radio.

Agrarian reform.

'The great communist threat.'

Services for the campesino.

'It's no sin to talk about that' (family planning).

Mother and Child.

'Land Distribution Plan.'

'Agrarian social reform is Christian and not communist.'

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Grow a Leaf, Go to a U.S. Prison

FARC leader Timochenko, accused by the U.S. and Colombia
of  'controlling the production, manufacture, and distribution
of hundreds of tons of cocaine to the United States
and the world,' could soon be in Congress.

Alias Timochenko and other leaders of the FARC guerrilla group, which produces and traffics a big chunk of the world's cocaine (as well as committing countless other crimes), likely will receive little more than symbolic punishments, as well as protection from extradition, before moving into politics, under the peace agreement announced recently.


Yet, while the kingpins who earn millions will likely walk free, impoverished campesinos who grow the coca leaf and earn trifles could end up in U.S. prisons.

Coca farmers like these men could soon be
subject to extradition under a U.S. law.

Those are the dirt-poor peasants who plant coca leaf because they see no alternative to feed their families and may have been pushed into the business by threats from narcotraffickers. They are simple people who may have only vague understanding of what happens to the leaves after strangers buy them and haul them away.

This is thanks to the Transnational Drug Trafficking Act of 2015, now making its way thru the U.S. Congress. According to the Congressional Research Service's summary, the act 'Amends the Controlled Substances Import and Export Act to prohibit the manufacture or distribution of a controlled substance...by individuals having reasonable cause to believe that such substance or chemical will be unlawfully imported into the United States.' If the act passes passes and Colombia cooperates, then the peasant farmer who made a pittance from his coca leaves will turn on the TV in a U.S. federal penitentiary and watch the guerrilla leader who earned millions exporting those leaves making a speech in the Colombian Congress.

According to El Tiempo, only a few dozen campesino farmers are imprisoned in Colombia for the single crime of growing coca leaves. However, some 60,000 Colombian campesino families make their living by growing coca leaf, earning little more than a $1,000 per year per household. All of them - or at least the heads of household - would be subject to extradition and traial and imprisonment in the U.S. The would require lots of new U.S. federal prisons.

It hardly seems likely that entombing a few Colombian peasants in a U.S. prison would have any impact on drug production. After all, there are innumerable other hungry and fearful farmers waiting to take their places. And doesn't the U.S. have any better uses for its tax dollars than to fly peasants north, put them on trial and imprison them for decades - such as, perhaps, treating addicts in the U.S.?

Meanwhile, Colombia itself seems to be heading in the opposite direction: decriminalizing coca farming, in favor of encouraging peasants to shift to legal crops.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Campesinos March

The march followed the 'Cumbre Agraria' - Agricultural Summit - held near Simon Bolivar Park.

Peasant farmers, students. political parties, Afro-Colombian and indigenous groups marched today demanding lots of things - and in particular that the government fulfill obligations it made to aid farmers and block cheap crop imports.

Afro-Colombian marchers.

Marchers carry a banner potraying ex-president and now Senator Alvaro Uribe as a fascist. Uribe's party, the Centro Democratico, did well in Sunday's elections, when Uribe was elected senator.

Marchers carried a flag with the portraits of Latin left icons Che Guevara and Simon Bolivar, as well as deceased Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. Amazing that a man who wrecked his country is seen as a saint. 

The Soviet Union is gone, but Lenin lives on - in Bogotá.

The Marcha Patriotica is widely seen as close to the FARC guerrillas, and could be the guerrillas' vehicle for entering politics if the guerrillas and government sign a peace deal.

Protesting the 'prison crisis.'

The Union Patriotica party, often linked to the FARC guerrillas, did poorly in Sunday's parliamentary elections.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours