Let Them Plant Coca!

Working a coca leaf plantation in Colombia.

El Tiempo has reported the controversy over a proposed law to reduce the penalty for having a plantation of less than 3.8 hectares of coca leaf, the base ingredient for cocaine, to only 4 years in prison.

It's polemical in particular because sentences of less than four years can be served outside of prison. Since the great majority of family coca plots measure less than 3.8 hectares, this new legislation would in practice make coca growing a non-prison crime.

Of course, in practical terms it's been this way for a long time. Logistically, in terms of prison space and for the sake of rural peace, Colombia could not possibly imprison the more than 100,000 families which survive by cultivating coca leaf.

But there are also economic and legal reasons why decriminalizing coca leaf cultivation is a good idea - no matter what the Trump White House says.

First of all, erradicating coca leaf is futile. The United States has poured well over $10  billion into Colombia, in great part to combat the illegal drug trade. What does Colombia now have? Very possibly a record coca leaf harvest this year!

At the same time, removing a coca-planting family from the business only reduces demand and raises prices enough to make it worthwhile for someone somewhere else to start planting coca leaf.

But there's a third reason: Reducing coca acreage makes little difference in the drug war, because cultivation is clearly not the limiting factor for cocaine production. We know this because most of cocaine's final cost is paying for the danger of producing and transporting it. And campesino coca leaf farmer earns only a tine fraction of cocaine's street price. The tough, and expensive, part of cocaine production is transporting the stuff across international borders and distributing it on U.S. streets.

Even if ALL  of Colombia's surface area were planted with coca leaf, it would make little difference in the drug trade.



By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Blaming Colombia

A Colombian coca leaf farmer. Guilty for cocaine
consumption boom? 

This not-so-recent Washington Post article about the boom in Colombian coca leaf/cocaine production places the blame on Colombia for the reported big increase in U.S. cocaine consumption.

'U.S. officials say the flood of cheap Colombian product is so large that it has quietly created its own demand,' says the Post.

At first glance, that seems to make sense: More supply generally means lower prices and higher sales.

But many cocaine consumers are addicts, making the market somewhat inelastic. More importantly, according to Tom Wainwright, a former correspondent in Mexico for The Economist who wrote a recent book about narcotics economics called 'Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel', around 2016 a ton of coca leaves that sold for $500 in Colombia retailed for $150,000 on a U.S. street.

Causing U.S. consumption? A Colombian coca field. 

That's a 30,000% mark-up - which is pretty good.

So, virtually all of cocaine's final price comes from the trouble, expense and danger of shipping the stuff across oceans, dodging bullets, hiding it in secret compartments, bribing officials, and paying people to risk prison. The farming cost is such an insignificant proportion that even if Colombian cocalers gave their leaves away for free, it wouldn't make a noticeable difference to buyers in New York or Los Angeles.

Colombian production hasn't caused U.S. consumption to rise. Internal U.S. factors, such as a strong economy, social stresses, unemployment and others are to blame for that.

And that is why all the billions of dollars and innumerable lives expended in the war on drugs have been for almost nothing.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Trump and Tumaco

A bus burns in Tumaco, where police have clashed with
campesinos resisting coca leaf erradication. (Photo: El Pais)

It's not difficult to draw a line from Donald Trump's more aggressive anti-drug policies to the recent violence in Tumaco, on Colombia's Pacific coast.

Colombia's coca leaf and cocaine production have boomed in recent years, to the dismay of anti-drug officials both here and in Washington. But the boom has not brought the violence of the 1980s drug boom. Some say that's because the cartel wars have shifted to Central America and Mexico; others, that it's because the narcos moved their headquarters from the cities to rural areas, where violence is less noticed. Or, is it due to some tacit understanding between authorities and drug producers to live and let live?

But any such truce was shattered in Tumaco Oct. 5, when six campesinos were killed in clashes with police, under confusing circumstances.

It's not clear who started the confrontations. But tensions were escalated by increased pressure from Washington to erradicate coca fields, the crop which puts food on the table for innumerable rural families but also supplies narcotraffickers.

Cocaine produces untold environmental and human damage here and overseas. But decades of drug fighting, billions of dollars and innumerable deaths haven't eliminated it, and aren't likely to.

The Trump administration's mounting pressure on Colombia to reign in drug production won't eliminate cocaine, but will mean more confrontations like Tumaco's. Non-governmental organizations point to ten more municipalities in the region with the same combustible ingredients: booming drug acreage and violent outlaw organizations which profit from and defend the drug trade.

Meanwhile, the crisis is intensified by the U.S.'s refusal to deal with the FARC, even tho they have demobilized, turned in their weapons and transformed themselves from guerrillas to a political party - yet remain on the U.S.'s list of terrorist organizations.

One of the key selling points of the FARC-government peace agreement was that the FARC would help fight narcotrafficking. But that's difficult as long as Washington refuses to talk to them.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Wrong-Way Drug War

Erradicating Colombian coca bushes. Less supply increases prices, triggering more plantations elsewhere.

During the Santos-Trump meeting in Washington today, undoubtedly at the top of the agenda was the huge increase in cocaine acreage in Colombia over the last several years.

Colombia's coca leaf crop has more than doubled, reaching record levels.

Conservative politicians and commentators, such as Florida Governor Rick Scott, ex-U.S. ambassador to the OEA Roger Noriega, and a certain right-wing Wall Street Journal columnist, want Colombia to accelerate coca leaf erradication, and in particular restart aerial fumigation with glyphosate.

Coca leaf acreage has spiked in recent years.
(Graphic from Semana magazine.)

Colombia suspended aerial fumigation in mid-2015 following a report which said that glyphosate might cause cancer. Many suspected that the government's real motive was to ingratiate itself with the FARC guerrillas, who late signed a peace deal with the government. Aerial spraying is also controversial because of its impacts on the environment and on food crops. And some analysts say it doesn't produce lasting impact on coca crops, since farmers have found ways to protect their plants, and can quickly replant them, compounding the environmental impact.

But even in the best of scenarios, attacking drug crops is a losing strategy. According to analysts, coca leaf farmers receive barely more than 1% of drug trafficking's profits, meaning that destroying those crops produces little economic impact on the drug economy. Even more importantly, by reducing supply, drug crop erradication raises prices and increases the economic incentive to plant coca. As a result, when they erradicate one farmer's crop, he or another farmer will likely respond by planting someplace else.

Also, drug traffickers' profits rise. Narcos say: 'Thank you Donald Trump!

Florida state Governor Rick Scott send Trump
a letter criticizing Colombian for failing to
erradicate its coca leaf crop.

On the other hand, reducing demand, for example by treating addicts, lowers prices and reduces the economic incentive to plant coca. Yet, Trump has proposed cutting the budget of the Office of National Drug Control Policy by 95%.

Naturally, decriminalizing drugs would reduce many of their negative impacts, but that's not on Washington's policy radar screen.

Afterthought: Santos and Trump also likely agreed to condemn the Venezuelan government for its increasing authoritarianism and many human rights violations. Good enough. So, how does Trump square that with his friendship with Turkish Pres. Erdogan, who is becoming increasingly authoritarian and violates human rights?



By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Santos: Worst President Ever?

Economic growth is slowing, drug production is growing, and the Colombian government is handing the nation over to communist guerrillas.

Colombia is in multiple crisis due to the misgovernance of Pres. Santos - if you believe right-wing Wall Street Journal columnist Mary Anastasia O’Grady.

It does sound pretty bad - unless you look at thing in context.

Pres. Juan Manuel Santos

Yes, Colombia's economic growth has slowed, but that's the fault of weak prices for raw materials, which Colombia can't control, as well as Colombia's lack of economic diversification - a problem the nation had since long before Santos.

In fact, just months ago Colombia had one of the world's fastest-growing economies, and one which had grown year after year under both presidents Uribe and Santos.

Santos has also pursued exactly the sort of capitalist free trade policies which the Journal usually praises.

It's also true that Colombia's cocaine production has boomed in recent years, and part of the reason is undoubtedly the government's prohibition against aerial herbicide spraying. That decision, based on supposed health concerns, was certainly questionable. But the more fundamental reason for the drug crop's growth is the booming cocaine market in the U.S. - and that is not Colombia's fault. Prohibitionist policies have never worked, and those failed policies are imposed by Washington, not -Bogotá.

O'Grady is also correct that the government gave the FARC guerrillas a sweetheart deal in the peace talks, and that Santos simply ignored the national referendum which voted narrowly against the pact. But I'd like to see anybody, including Uribe, get the guerrillas to sign a better deal - particularly one which would send them to prison for their numerous crimes.

O'Grady is correct that Colombia has troubles, but they're mostly not the fault of Pres. Santos.

O'Grady doesn't want the U.S. government to continue sending foreign aid to Colombia. However, Colombia's transformation from a near failed state to a stable democracy with a growing economy is one of Washington's biggest foreign policy successes.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Our Homicide Epidemic

Last weekend, nine people were murdered in Ciudad Bolivar, in southern Bogotá.

In the port city of Buenaventura more than 2,500 people have been forced from their homes recently by fighting between the bands Los Urabeños y La Empresa. Buenaventura is an important route for smuggling cocaine north toward the United States.

And in the town of Sincelejo on Bogotá's Caribbean coast the mayor just announced that the traditional correlejas will be canceled next year because the city doesn't have enough police to keep the event safe and also fight a crime wave across the city.

According to a new report by the United Nations Development Program, Latin America is suffering a violence epidemic.

'Most of the region's nations suffer violence rates considered epidemic by the World Health Organization,' the report says.

Ten murders per 100,000 people per year is defined as epidemic. During the cartel wars of the 1980s Colombia's murder rate hit 57 per 100,000 and then soared to 95 per 100,000 by 1993, according to this paper from the University of San Francisco. (During that period, when Pablo Escobar was paying his assassins $1,000 for each police officer they killed, Medellin's homicide rate was a terrifyingl astronomical 350 per 100,000 people.)

Of course, we all know that that violent scourge has passed into history. Except that Colombia's homicide rate seems to have stabilized in the low 30s per 100,000, still epidemic and much higher than the rate in Mexico, which has been scourged by drug-related violence, where the rate is 22 per 100,000. But small, poor, corrupt nations with weak institutions are doing even worse. Nicaragua and El Salvador have homicide rates of 64 and 77 per 100,000 people respectively.

The region's homicide epidemic has many causes, including poverty, unequal income distribution, and easy availability of firearms. But the huge driver is undoubtedly the illegal drug trade, which channels huge amounts of money to violent, illegal groups which practice dispute resolution policies of 'shoot first, talk later.'

 In fact, 11 of the region's 18 countries have homicide rates considered 'epidemic.' And, in addition to homicide's human costs, it also takes a huge bite out of the economy, of 2-3% in relatively peaceful nations such as Chile, Uruguay and Costa Rica, and as much as 10% in the most violent nations.

Most of the possible solutions, such as increasing security and the rule of law, are difficult and will take a long time to implement. But one solution could be implemented relatively quickly.

'Legalize and regulate drugs,' recommends the University of San Francisco paper. 'If drugs are legalized and regulated, they will be taken off the black market and out of the domain of violent insurgent groups. These groups will stop being able to fund themselves,' and presumably lose the motive and capacity to wreak havoc.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

With Coca Leaf, All That Goes Down Must Go Up

'Historic fall in coca leaf cultivation,' says today's El Tiempo

El Tiempo reports that Colombia's coca leaf crop has dropped to 48 hectares, a 25% drop from 2011 and a level not seen since the 1990s, when the Peruvian and Bolivian crops began shifting north.

The result, which is still preliminary and comes from a yet-unreleased United Nations report, will surely be crowed over by supporters of the War on Drugs. It shows, they'll say, that aggressive eradication does work. In this case, according to El Tiempo, the key was preventing farmers from replanting, in part by offering them economic alternatives.

Manually eradicating coca bushes near the Ecuadorian border.
(Photo: AFP/Colombia Reports)

That's well enough. But El Tiempo's story also points out that the coca leaf crops have expanded in both Bolivia and Peru, the second of which has surpassed Colombia in leaf production.

Sure, perhaps if Colombia's effective anti-coca leaf policies were applied everywhere the drug war could be won. But that ideal world won't arrive anytime soon. And, even if they did apply such effective measures across the Andean region - or even all of South America - the crop would likely just shift to Asia or Africa.

I've been waiting for an excuse to post this graph, which I found in a Washington Post piece entitled 'The most embarrassing graph in American drug policy.'

Since 1970, cocaine prices in the US have dropped, even while incarceration rates have soared.
(Graph from Carnegie Mellon University)

If the drug war was supposed to accomplish anything, it was to raise cocaine's price, discouraging use. Instead, cocaine prices have dropped over the last two decades. (The blue line and the black one with white dots. The red and black lines show the rise in inprisonment.)

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Colombia's New Cocaine?

The molecular structure of H2CB, or pink cocaine, on the right.

Just what Colombia needed - now it's also making synthetic cocaine.

That's according to news reports that a synthetic drug called 'pink cocaine' invented in Holland is being manufactured in the Zona Cafetera and the Norte del Valle. The stuff, whose chemical name is H2CB, is said to be relatively easy to make, transport and hide.

If this is true, and not another legend-from-the-Colombian-jungle like the Roundup-resistant coca bushes Wired magazine wrote about a few years ago, then it's got a significance far beyond being yet another criminal enterprise.

Where is it? "The Conjurer," by Hieronymus Bosch,
shows a shell game and a pickpocket.

Have you ever watched those swindlers playing the shell game on a sidewalk? No matter which shell the poor victim looks under, the ball's somewhere else. That's what the War on Drugs often feels like: a nation makes progress, as Colombia has against cocaine, only to have the industry shift somewhere else, like Peru, and the violence migrate to Mexico.

But this brings something more like a pardigm shift. If this 'synthetic cocaine' is really easier to manufacture, transport and hide than normal cocaine while being more profitable, it just might accomplish drug warriors' goal: reduce the traditional cocaine industry - but by replacing it with something even worse.
By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Marching Powder

Inmates in Bolivia's San Pedro Prison. (All photos taken by Mike Ceaser, around the year 2000.)

Children in San Pedro Prison.

Thomas McFadden would have been just one more guy doing time in a Third World prison for trying to make fast and easy money smuggling drugs - except that McFadden got locked up in La Paz, Bolivia's hyper-corrupt San Pedro Prison and befriended Australian lawyer-turned-writer Rusty Young. 

The result, Marching Powder, is a memorable account of McFadden's years in San Pedro. Marching Powder may not match the grueling prison accounts like Papillon and Midnight Express, but it does capture the craziness and corruption of Bolivia and San Pedro prison - where prisoners hold the keys to their own cells, manufacture cocaine and sometimes sometimes do prison tours for foreigners. 

And Marching Powder, of course also provides an implicit commentary on the War on Drugs.

In San Pedro's kitchen. 

Rusty Young during a visit
to Bogotá two years ago.

From the book's beginning, when McFadden is betrayed by a police official whom McFadden has bribed to let his cocaine shipment thru, to the book's end, when McFadden pays off judges to let him off of a trumped-up drug charge, this book is about corruption. I lived for several years in Bolivia and visited San Pedro Prison multiple times, and throughout the book I kept telling myself: 'Yep, that's Bolivia!' 

The prison's swimming pool. McFadden describes an
episode in which a mob murders three alleged
child rapists in this pool. 

San Pedro, with its stores, families, churches and neighborhood organizations, is arguably a more humane place to be locked up than many normal prisons - A french drug trafficker and mercenary doing time there told me 'This would be the world's best place to be imprisoned - if you could only get your sentence.' Indeed, the prison seemed to be full of inmates who'd spent years there without being getting their trial, much less sentence - one of the disfunctional systems' myriad arbitrary and wholesale human rights violations. McFadden's experience starts with him being thrown into a cell and forgotten, apparently a strategy meant to force him to confess, then later deposited in San Pedro, where he crawled into a bathroom to sleep and was beaten up by other inmates who believed that he was from the U.S. (the country which inspired Bolivia's hated drug laws).

A prisoner relaxes in his cell. 

Clothes drying in crowded San Pedro Prison. 

After his initial crisis, McFadden actually flourishes in prison. Marching Powder drew me in with its accounts of McFadden's entrepeneurial efforts in prison, including opening businesses, operating criminal projects and doing tours for foreign tourists. At one point, McFadden even finds work in a prison cocaine factory in order to 'keep myself out of trouble.' But prison was all fun for McFadden. His conflicts with other inmates, particularly the evil Fonsecas, and the tragedies of unfortunates shipped off to die in the cold and barren Chonchocoro prison in the altiplano, are also gripping. But I could have used less about his love affair with an Israeli tourist, which wasn't so different from a love affair anywhere. On the other hand, I would have appreciated much more about other inmates: their crimes, their backgrounds, their roles in Bolivian society. When I visited San Pedro a decade ago, I recall hearing accounts of campesinos doing long sentences because a small plot of coca bushes, the base ingredient for cocaine, had been found on their land. In some cases, the drug crop may not even have been theirs. Others, called mulas, had been caught transporting small packages of drugs, from which someone else would make most of the profit, but they'd pay any penalty. These sorts of impoverished people are the ones who get trapped by the system, railroaded, and end up living in San Pedro with their wives and families.

A French mercenary works on art in his cell
in San Pedro Prison. 

In San Pedro's carpentry shop. 

This prompts me to ask what ends imprisonment in San Pedro Prison achieves: Does it punish criminals? Protect society from criminals? Preserve human rights? It's hard to argue that it accomplishes any of these things, altho it clearly does provide great criminal training and ruin lots of lives. Does Bolivia's penal system fight crime, and the drug trade specifically? Sure, McFadden suffers in prison - but he keeps on dealing. (The book at times reads like a how-to manual for drug smugglers). And, for every smuggler that gets caught, many must successfully bribe or sneak their way thru and enjoy the profits. On the other hand, San Pedro is full of people doing time for petty offenses or none at all, simply because they are poor and powerless. All of this at huge human and financial costs for an impoverished nation.

While reading Marching Powder, I also wondered about the experience of the author, Rusty Young, a young Australian lawyer, whom I met in Bolivia (where he struck me as too much of a cokehead to ever write a book), and again here in Bogotá. Young gets portrayed as something of a hero in the book for helping McFadden beat a second, trumped-up charge and finally leave prison. I would have enjoyed a chapter describing Young's own impressions first-hand: It's not every day that a lawyer from a rich nation pays to spend time in a corrupt third-world prison.

Lunchtime in San Pedro. 

And I spent much of the book wondering about McFadden's own background: Was his family poor? Rich? How did he get into drug-smuggling? Why? What happened to all the money he must have made? McFadden evidently had a long exprience running drugs to Europe, but he provides no details. Perhaps he left this out for legal reasons, altho it seems as tho the years and statutes of limitations would make earlier crimes irrelevent. This lack is the book's single greatest failing, in my opinion. 

The source of the trouble: Coca bushes. 

It's hard to feel very sorry for McFadden, who made quick money thru bribery and smuggling an addictive substance knowing full-well the possible consequences. While incarcerated, McFadden got the assistance of the British consulate and a UK prisoners' rights organization, was aided by friends back home and got the love of a beautiful Israeli girl - not to mention plentiful and cheap cocaine and marijuana. That many people who've committed no crimes at all should be so lucky!

A La Paz graffiti says 'Don't fall asleep - chew coca.'

I also looked unsuccesfully for some remorse or reflection from McFadden about his trafficking. He says that before San Pedro he'd never tried cocaine, a claim which seems dubious (but if true is another condemnation of the prison system). McFadden seems to have enjoyed San Pedro's plentiful drug supply, altho without those daily highs he might have used his prison time more productively, perhaps by studying something. In San Pedro, he witnesses pathetic cases of drug addiction - just as he must have seen in the outside world. Yet McFadden never reflects on the human impacts of his profession, and in fact continues shipping drugs from prison.  

Headed to San Pedro? A Bolivian coca farmer whose plot has been erradicated. 

Naturally, I also wonder what McFadden is doing today. I suppose that if I had to guess, judging by his long experience and his continued success smuggling drugs while in prison, I suspect he might back at his old profession.  

With its imperfections, Marching Powder is an interesting and entertaining book which will open your eyes. 

Protesters, many of them coca farmers, in Cochabamba, Colombia. 

Protesters, many of them coca farmers, march in Cochabamba, Colombia. 

Schoolgirls in San Pedro.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

What Makes Colombia So violent?

Anti-bullfighting protesters outside the plaza de toros yesterday hold up a sign saying 'Bullfighting: Reinforcer of a Culture of Violence.' 

I've been thinking about that because of the confluence of several recent events, which at first glance might not appear related.

Tribal militancy? A Millonarios fan today celebrates
the team's birthday today by waving a
banner with a skull and crossbones. 

Yesterday, El Tiempo reported that Bogotá's homicide rate has dropped markedly and, perhaps surprisingly, far below those of Cali and Medellin. Also yesterday, I saw a protest in front of the bullfighting stadium calling La Fiesta Brava "A promoter of violence in society." And, today, we rode our bikes thru massive rallies of thousands of screaming Millonarios football team fans.

Despite the welcome drop in homicide, Colombia still has an unjustifiably high homicide rate: 33 per 100,000, which is six times higher than that of countries such as the Argentina and United States, more than triple the homicide rate in Bolivia and a mind-boggling 24 times higher than that of France and other European nations.

Colombia's homicide rate soared in
the '80s and '90s during the drug cartel wars.
(Source: Havana University)

Why is Colombia so violent? Poverty is part, but certainly not the whole explanation, judging by the lower homicide rates in much poorer nations such as Bolivia (8.9 homicides per 100,000 people), Cambodia (3.4 per 100,000) and Guyana (18.4 per 100,000). Colombia's homicide rate is almost double that of Mexico, which has been ravaged by drug cartel violence.

Aspiring bullfighters practice in Bogotá's Plaza de Toros. 

A second factor must be Colombia's very unequal distribution of wealth, or GINI coefficient, which is one of the worst in the world. This World Bank study from the 1990s, for example, graphs wealth inequality against robbery rates and finds an upward line - with the Latin American nations bunched together in the violent and unequal upper right-hand corner. (Interestingly, the World Bank study also says that median poverty and education rates do not correlate with crime rates.)

Inequality probably produces violence because it erodes social trust and the poor's confidence in being able to succeed thru legal pathways.

The War on Drugs and associated criminal and guerrilla violence also have a huge impact, as a glance at national homicide rates shows. The countries with sky-high homicide rates make a path from Colombia across much of the Caribbean and Central America across Mexico to the U.S. border. Inoffensive little Honduras, for example, suffers a homicide rate of 82.1 per 100,000, while Mexico, at 18.1 per 100,000 is just a bit above half of Colombia's, but still terribly high by world standards.

Internatioal robbery rates correspond
to greater wealth inequality.
(Source: United Nations)

Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker wrote a book a few years ago called 'The Better Angels Of Our Nature' which argued that violence has declined through history. Pinker ties this alleged decline to many broad changes in culture, including the decline of institutionalized and state-sponsored forms of violence and injustice. Not so long ago, witch burning, public executions by torture and cat burnings for entertainment were all accepted practices. More recently, slavery and wife beating were perfectly accepted in the west. Today, execution of criminals still goes on in some countries, as do violent spectacles for entertainment like bullfights and cockfights. If I understand Pinker's ideas correctly, this public violence generates more violence in Colombian streets and homes.

Pinker believes that these sorts of violent cultural practices influence all of society, contributing to higher homicide rates. On this measure, Colombia falls in the middle - it has no death penalty, but does allow cockfighting and bullfighting.

And do Millonarios' rabid fans fit into this analysis? Those young guys look to me like armies, just carrying banners instead of guns. God forbid they collide with a group of Santa Fe fans.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

What's Happened to the National Language Academy?

The Academia Nacional de la Lengua on La Plaza del Periodista:
Now part of the Florida Drug Court System?¿

No, despite drug court overcrowding, Colombia's National Language Academy has not been rented to the Florida court system, altho it looked that way today.

The Academia Nacional de la Lengua's headquarters building on the Plaza del Periodista in La Candelaria, sported new signs on its windows announcing 'Judicial Circuit * Florida State Courts,' men in State of Florida police uniforms patrolled in front toting M-16s, and a crowd in front waved signs in English and Spanish saying things like 'Death Penalty for Drug Dealers' and 'Drugs Kill...Hang the Dealers.' To top things off, the statue of writer, Colombian president and Language Academy founder Miguel Antonio Caro had his name covered up and was flanked by the flags of the United States and the U.S. state of Florida.

Had the Academy's already building been sold to the gringos, in anticipation of the imminent U.S.-Colombian Free Trade Agreement? 

In fact, the academy's was rented out and dressed up for the taping of a miniseries called 'El Capo,' about an imaginary extradition of cocaine king Pablo Escobar's wife and daughter to Florida for trial. Escobar famously said he preferred 'a tomb in Colombia to a prison in the United States,' and got his wish after Colombian special forces gunned him down on a Medellin rooftop in 1993.

The Language Academy, well protected
by Florida cops with M-16s. 

Judging by the signs waved by the extras in front of the supposed courthouse, the message of the miniseries, to be broadcast both in Colombia and the U.S., will be 'prohibit drugs' and 'throw the drugs at drug dealers.' Some would argue, however, that the lesson from Escobar's fate is the opposite: almost two decades after his death, Colombia continues to be the world's biggest cocaine producer, and while narco violence has dropped here, it's surged in Mexico and Central America. (A just-released movie, Ilegal.co, argues that the War on Drugs has failed.)

Guess we're still in Colombia - a TransMilenio bus passes by. 

Pity long-suffering Colombia. It's become more stabilized, slashed crime rates and done its
best to repackage itself as a land of wonderful culture, beautiful biodiversity and a profitable place to do business.

But the Cartagena Summit of the Americas, intended to show Colombia as an economic and political leader, got overshadowed by a prostitution scandal. And the media continue portraying Colombia as a land of drug dealers and drug violence.

A luminary of Colombia's National Language Academy looks uncomfortable flanked by foreign flags. 

'No Drogas, No Traficantes.'

A kid and a cop. 

Putting on the make-up.

'Drugs kill. Hang the dealers.'

Afterwards, Miguel Antonio Caro got his name back. but the window signs still say Florida courts. 

The orange-suited inmates on their way out. 

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Beginning of the End for Plan Colombia?

This year Washington is cutting Plan Colombia funding by 15%, to $400 million. That's still a considerable sum - about $10 bucks for each Colombian. The reduction was probably inevitable, considering the U.S.'s budget problems and Washington's near obsession with terrorism, to the exclusion of other problems. Colombia may have more officially-designated terrorists per-capita than any other nation on Earth - but they rarely target Americans, and never on U.S. soil. It's also healthy for Colombians to assume their own security needs.

However, the cut must worry many Colombians, as Plan Colombia has helped bring remarkable changes here since its start in 2000. Before that, Colombia was nearly a failed state, suffering severe violence. Some observers even suggested it might split into three separate countries: one in the south controlled by Marxist guerrillas, the mountainous central region controlled by the government and the coastal region controlled by right-wing paramilitaries.

The plan's name and goals were certainly presumptious - just imagine anybody accepting a Washington-designed Plan Ireland or a Plan Italy. Yet, in many ways it's succeeded. A decade later, Colombia is stable, democratic and has a solidly growing economy and a new destination for tourists. The Marxist guerrilla groups, which so long had half the nation under seige, have been driven into remote regions. And both heroin and cocaine production have declined substantially.

The changes have come at a big price in human rights, most notoriously due to the Falsos Positivos scandal, in which military units murdered young men and disguised them as guerrillas, and a continuing flow of peasants driven from their homes. The herbicide spraying and pushing of drug crops into jungles has caused lots of deforestation and water pollution.

Youths allegedly killed by the military and labeled as guerrillas.

But, for the great majority of Colombians, the policy has succeeded and they've looked past the problems. As a result, Colombia was one of the few countries in the world where John McCain was more popular than Barack Obama - because Colombians believed that a Republican administration would bring more U.S. money.

With less U.S. money and military aid, could the guerrillas come clawing and bombing their way back? Only experience will tell for sure, but hopefully Colombia's economy is strong enough, its public institutions honest enough and its police and military sufficiently cleansed of drug corruption to keep up the battle against the guerrillas.

Incidentally, the plan has also meant probably billions of dollars in sales for U.S. military and other contractors, as well as opened huge areas of Colombia to investment by U.S. and other companies which previously had feared violence and extortion by guerrillas.

But, even with big business support, U.S. funding for Colombia has never enjoyed the same political backing as the U.S.'s Cuban policy.

Colombian Response

In response, Colombian officials vow they won't let down their guard against rebels and drug traffickers. However, Pres. Juan Manuel Santos recently suggested, uncharacteristically, that he'd be open to drug decriminalization if other nations did the same - a crack in the Washington-backed (imposed?) prohibitionism.

A Broader View

The new cocaine?

But if Plan Colombia has definitely benefited both Colombia and U.S. business interests, it's questionable how much it's accomplished regionally. While coca leaf and heroin production have been slashed in Colombia, they've shifted to Peru, Bolivia and, in the case of heroin, to Afghanistan. Violence is down in Colombia, but it's up in Mexico and Central America.

If U.S. cocaine use has declined, it's rising in Europe. And some would-be cocaine users may just be shifting to equally destructive artificial drugs, such as methamphetamines.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours