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#Colombia’s government says it wants to restart #coca #fumigation in January. By-hand eradication is reaching historic levels. Pause there: imagine a place where substitution is the first option. We went to that place to see what works (and doesn’t)... @CrisisGroup 
Welcome to #Briceño, Antioquia, home to the pilot project for post-peace coca substitution in 2016. Summing up the results for the last 4yrs, one farmer told me: “We are poorer, but we live in peace”.
#Briceño was born with coffee and cattle. The story of coca starts in the late 1990s, when the global coffee price collapsed and FARC was arriving in the area. Around 2000, coca come too; once-productive coffee farmers pulled up their crops.
Coca covered the entire horizon, one former cultivator in a remote area told me, looking across a rugged landscape with unpaved roads. The mountains were dotted with plants, surrounded by food crops for sustenance. Buyers came house by house to purchase at a reliable price.
Coca brought farmers sustenance. It grew quickly; there was always a buyer. Transforming the leaf in base pasta, farmers added value to their product and earned enough from one hectare to feed a family.
“Coca was better than any other product we could grow. But it also brought war to our doorsteps”, one farmer told me. When coca came, so did the paramilitaries. Growers were killed or threatened for selling to the “wrong” buyer. Community trust shattered.
“My life for 15 years of this was bombardments, shots firing, threats, and landmines”, recalled one ex-grower. Essentially captive to armed traffickers and also constantly risking fumigation and eradication, farmers grew to trust no one. So they stayed silent and grew.
By the time peace negotiations began, the FARC had reclaimed much of #Briceño. Few trusted the military, which was viewed as complicit in paramilitary offenses. Farmers had watched their neighbors killed, their sons and nephews recruited, their sisters become widows.
When the opportunity to leave the coca economy came, #Briceño overwhelmingly seized it. Entire communities signed up to substitute their crops; to avoid conflicts between themselves, they decided it was all of them or no one.
After a government promise for subsidies and subsequent help building a new livelihood, #Briceño ripped up its coca crops. Some replanted the coffee they had grown before; others raised cattle. Today, there is astonishingly little coca.
But the question on everyone’s lips is for how long. The substitution program is 4yrs late delivering the livelihood support it promised; savings and patience are stretched. Neighboring municipalities are embroiled in a conflict between rival paramilitary-style groups.
In the hills nearby, FARC dissidents Frente 36 roams and watches. They pass, but for now, they don’t bother. It is convenient for everyone for #Briceño to be in the eye of the hurricane. But the government’s window is closing to make substitution permanent.
Substitution can work. Cultivators want it to work. With some combination of circumstance, serendipity and real government support – it does. As one grower it, “The farmers have complied. We are waiting for the state”. ends.
