CPTnet
18 March 2006

COLOMBIA: The sound of helicopters, the poisoning of the land

by Noah Dillard

The sound of helicopters flying overhead still causes my spine to tense.
When I lived in Gaza Strip, Palestine, my friends associated this sound with
the terror of bullets the size of lead pipes that could tear thick branches
from their trees and drill holes the size of soft balls in the crumbling
cement of their houses. Here in Colombia, the Blackhawk helicopters made by
Connecticut's Sikorsky Helicopter have a different association, though no
less brutal. These black helicopters guard the small planes that fly the
poisonous chemical fumigation missions over Colombia's coca fields.

Communities rarely receive warnings of these fumigation missions. The
poison spray catches men, women and children within the wide aerial drift.
An organizer with a local farming organization describes the effects of the
fumigation operations:

"--the children present with serious problems of conjunctivitis and
dermatitis, the same for the elderly. Pregnant women have miscarriages when
they drink the water that has been dusted with glyphosate. Also, the
chickens die around all the regions that have been fumigated, as do the pigs
and cows poisoned by drinking the contaminated stream water."1

In August, I met with a man who had been fumigated multiple times. His flesh
was falling away from his body as though he had suffered serious burns.
Soft white powder that settled from the spray had entered his body. The
symptoms of this poison were not immediate but within weeks he began to find
blisters erupting from his skin. The blistering ravaged his body from head
to toe, as though the poison were burning him from the inside out. He had
to flee the area with the rest of his community where he said all of his
crops had died, and nothing would grow. Now he sits in a rocking chair on
the porch of a house that is not his. He is one of the more than three
million internal refugees living in Colombia. He says he is waiting to die
because he has nothing anymore, nothing to give his family.

Children born in the months after their mothers lived through fumigations
exhibit the same skin disease, he told me.

In 2003 the civil court of Colombia ruled that the fumigations were illegal
and ordered a moratorium on them while the state studied the health and
environmental effects fully. Despite the court's ruling, the U.S.
government continues to insist on the use of poisonous fumigations to fight
this so-called "war on drugs." The state never conducted any studies ordered
by the court and Colombian President Uribe has said that as long as he is
president he will never stop the fumigations.

In the spring of this year the US congress will review the fumigations
policy. Please tell your policy makers that fumigation must end.

1) Cifuentes, Miguel; Las Fumigaciones, un Sofisma Para Mantener el Negocio
del Narcotr