In a white-walled room, a high-ranking Colombian police officer points to a map on his desk and describes how, at Colombian border crossings, coca leaf is planted, marketed and brought to processing laboratories. The harvest is sold to drug gangs or guerrillas. But the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in La Paz has repeatedly reiterated that international trade in the plant is prohibited because it contains alkaloids that can be used to make cocaine. The discovery of 700 hectares of coca leaf crops should not be overlooked as a minor issue. Taking the production yield of each hectare of fresh coca leaves, the provinces of Esmeraldas, Carchi and Sucumbíos could produce about 4,830 kilograms of cocaine per crop. This is worrisome given that coca leaf crops can produce a yield of approximately 8 years of harvest; That is, in 2018, Ecuador`s northern border produced about 38,640 kilograms of cocaine hydrochloride, representing a turnover of about $300 million. However, police investigations and findings must be used to determine where this production is going and whether there is a segmented distribution in border areas. We ask ourselves: what are the explanations for the disappearance of coca leaf production and consumption in the territory of the Real Audiencia and then in today`s Ecuador? In a chronological analysis of the probable causes of the extinction of leaf consumption and its persistence in Andean regions other than Ecuador, we note that: The Council of Lima (1567-1569) judged the habit of chewing coca as “a useless, harmful thing that leads to superstition because it is the devil`s talisman”, With this edict begins the stigmatization of this ancestral custom. Through satellite analysis and remote sensing, the study revealed countless tricks to hide coca leaf plantations on the northern border.
One of them is the combination of mixed crops of African palm trees with coca leaf crops, as shown below: in addition to the presence of drug trafficking with river, land and air corridors for its operations (by the way, the Directorate of Civil Aviation DAC remains silent to this day on the complaint of the Ministry of Defense about the existence of dozens of secret runways); weak institutional capacity to develop strategic intelligence to combat crime; and a lack of articulation and intergovernmental cooperation to fight corruption, we are now witnessing the emergence of an additional factor that has been missing for many years: the presence of illegal coca leaf plants that close the loop of the drug trafficking value chain in Ecuador. In 1492, more than 500 years ago, when Christopher Columbus came to the New World by order of the kings of Spain, things and customs that were previously unknown caused great astonishment, including the fact that Native Americans were producing and consuming the leaf of a new plant for European knowledge in some areas of the colony. Coke (Erythroxylum coca). The 48th FARC Front operates in this area and the map of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) found that in the neighboring department of Putumayo (in the neighboring country), coca leaf cultivation is the main activity that, although illegal, captures farmers. Chroniclers say that the natives of the Andes very regularly carry a bolus of coca leaves (Chacchar or Acullicar) in their mouths, which they combine with ash or limestone powder, which they call Llipta, which they consume when walking on large areas and in cold places; it takes away their hunger and gives them strength and energy; When they work in the mines to cushion fatigue, thirst or hunger, they chew the coca leaf. All this has been observed in the highlands of the Andes, where the indigenous and mestizo population is concentrated, namely: Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, northern Chile and Argentina, and even in some areas of the Amazon basin at the mouth of the Amazon on the island of Maranao. The coca leaf was produced and consumed in the Andes from pre-Hispanic times to the present day for ritual purposes, due to its healing and nutritional power. Used by indigenous peoples to avoid hunger, cold or fatigue during heavy work or to cope with altitude, it is important for the Andean world because of their cosmovision. The study shows that there are “more than 159 plots representing about 700 hectares of illegal coca leaf cultivation in the provinces of Esmeraldas, Carchi and Sucumbíos”.
For many years, the naïve popular notion of the “island of peace” has been constructed if we compare ourselves with the serious internal security conflicts that have arisen in Peru over the past two decades, or with the ongoing, unfinished and interdependent Colombian affair, which for more than half a century has been brought to neighboring countries because of the complexity of their violence and criminality. which starts from its limits, causes headaches. Among other things, high homicides caused by the territorial dispute over drug trafficking. Two boys decided to leave alone, then deserted because they didn`t like military life. Now they are dedicated to collecting coca leaves from plantations that pay for the weight of the collected product. For each arroba, they receive 5,000 pesos (US$2.20). “A good harvester gets 20 arrbas in a day and gets $44.40,” says one. The young man knows that it is illegal to work in the coca leaf fields, but he assures that there is no other activity to survive. “Since the glyphosate spraying, cassava, banana and maize production is no longer the same. We have to earn something to live.
He complains that cattle get sick or die because of the chemicals. The participants of the V FIHC congratulate Mr. Evo Morales, President of the Plurinational State of Bolivia, for celebrating the 12th anniversary of the Plurinational State of Bolivia. March has been declared Akulliku Day, which we adhere to and invite other countries in the region to join on this date, as it is the day the UN recognized Akulliku as a legal activity. It is clear that part of the newspaper`s discredit came from the West when it was turned into alkaloids such as cocaine (created for other purposes in the late nineteenth century), with the consequences we know today. Culturally, it is worth asking: why, how and when in the current Ecuadorian territory, the use of the traditional leaf has disappeared, while in other Andean countries, from Venezuela to Argentina, its consumption continues? The discovery of crops and their functional links within the coca, cocaine and transnational organized crime economic complex leaves behind the old idea of being only a transit and storage country. Bolivia is one of the world`s leading producers of coca, along with Peru and Colombia, and the government of Evo Morales has considered exporting it for legal purposes such as the production of infusions and other products. Although the presence of illegal crops in Ecuador is not comparable in scale and extent to neighboring countries, the relationship between coca leaf cultivation, increased illegal border crossings, the presence of uncontrolled tracks on the border with Colombia, and the absence or weak presence of state institutions represents a complete failure in terms of strategic intelligence. border surveillance and interoperability. The territory, its inhabitants, resources and social organizations are vulnerable to cross-border crime and related operations in these areas.
Once the coca leaves are turned into labs and turned into drugs, the mafias cross the border, the man in uniform adds, to take them to Ecuador. Then it left for the ports to be shipped to Mexico or the United States. In 1996, the Geopolitical Observatory of Drugs in Paris published the World Drug Atlas, in which Ecuador is not considered a producer or user of coca leaves. For more than 300 years, it was known that he had stopped using it in what is now Ecuador. But what do you do with the harvested coca leaves that come from the fields? In United Nations research, it has been found that after the appearance of three new species of leaves, such as Pringa María, Amarga or Caturra, each Arruba can be worth 26 USD.