PBH / colombia (travelguide, pictures) / post

Where a Little Coca Is as Good as Gold!!

I thought this article was a little amusing, even if it was a little old. Not sure if this still goes on, but again I guess this is how some have to adapt to the local living conditions...

Culture/Society News
Source: New York Times
Published: 7/8/01 Author: JUAN FORERO
Posted on 07/08/2001 08:39:34 PDT by H.R. Gross

Where a Little Coca Is as Good as Gold

By JUAN FORERO

THE DRUG CENTER, the only pharmacy in the stiflingly hot jungle town of Camelias, deep in southern Colombia, looks ordinary, with wide glass counters and shelves stacked high with medicines. Then the customer pays the bill.

The customer produces one of the clear plastic bags in which people here carry around coca paste. The pharmacist, Socrates Solis, scoops out a bit of the paste, weighs it on a digital scale and gives back change — the excess he had ladled out.

Welcome to the Caguan River valley, a swath of jungle towns and coca fields in far-flung Caqueta province, a part of Colombia with no government presence, only guerrillas. The economy is built on coca production, and coca paste has become a main currency.

In the pharmacy, for example, everything is priced in grams. Expensive antibiotics retail for 45 grams, worth roughly $36; a bottle of aspirin costs a little more than a gram, or $1; medical exams are given to prostitutes for 12 grams, or $10.

"I was speechless when people would drop by the pharmacy and pay for the doctor's bills or their medicines with coca instead of money," Mr. Solis, 35, told the photographer Carlos Villalon when he visited the town. "The first three months I worked here we collected six and a half kilos of base."

In this part of Colombia, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia run things, patrolling roads, punishing law breakers, even building bridges over creek beds. Perhaps most controversially, the rebels regulate and tax a thriving trade in coca leaves and coca paste. Traffickers buy the paste, process it into cocaine and ship it by the ton to quench the United States' insatiable appetite for the drug. It is a business that President Andrés Pastrana's government says fortifies the rebel army and helps fuel Colombia's brutal civil conflict.

But in a dozen towns in the region, coca paste is seen in much less nefarious terms. Paper money is in short supply, since conventional businesses are few. Instead, everything revolves around coca, as evidenced by thousands of acres of coca fields and the coca-processing laboratories in the jungles.

It is not unusual for people to be paid for their work in coca. They, in turn, pay for necessities with the paste, which is soft and powdery like flour. Need a pair of shoes for the little one? El Combate general store in Sante Fe takes coca paste. Groceries at Los Helechos in the village of Peñas Coloradas? Just drop the powder on the scale, the merchant says with a smile.

It feels quite normal for Wilber Rozas, 34, of Peãs Coloradas to spend 1.08 grams (worth 90 cents), for a large glass of juice at the Peñas Juicery. Or for villagers at the annual festival in Santa Fe to lug bags of coca paste to buy clothing from traveling salesmen or to bet in the cock fights. "I would like to always take cash, but if I do not receive coca base I might as well shut down my restaurant," said Selmira Vasquez, who owns the Buenos Aires restaurant in Peñas Coloradas.

As a currency, the coca paste is as good as gold. When traffickers arrive every few weeks to buy coca paste, they pay with a wad of bills — and soon money is flowing again. The merchants have cash. So do workers. The value of the paste, however, is unpredictable.

"The price of paste can go up or down, like having money in the bank," explained Ms. Vasquez. "When the dealers show up, the prices could be lower or higher than when I bought, so it is like gambling."

The region's bartering system does not mean the inhabitants themselves are cocaine addicts or gang members. The rebels keep the peace by prohibiting drug consumption. Those who violate the ban end up on road- paving or bridge-building duty.

The guerrillas also forbid those most susceptible to drug use — the young, single men who have come from across Colombia to pick coca leaves — to be paid in coca paste. They receive coupons they can cash once the traffickers arrive with money.

"That is the way it works in the Caguan river region," explained Jose Sosias, 28, a villager. "We are a coca culture. Our money, some times during the year, is coca base but we just use it as currency. No one here consumes the drug."

http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b487eb63c62.htm

By lampltr on Apr 8, 2008, 00:51 in Politics & the war.

Sam Salmon says on Apr 8, 2008, 09:10:

It'as not a little old it's Very Old News and has been hashed over in international media many times-here as well.

In the intervening years thing have changed drastically and for the better.

' a la orden!'

0 funny, 0 helpful.

lampltr says on Apr 8, 2008, 16:09:

Appreciate the feedback....Sam, guess you have been around PBH for awhile jeje. Personally being in the mix for interdiction, I had no clue this was the survival means in that particular region during that time frame, but I am sure I may not be the only one. Behave!

0 funny, 0 helpful.

nueva york bombero says on Apr 8, 2008, 16:24:

Which department? Arauca?
Very interesting....

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