Columbian Drug Trade
If Americans know nothing else about Colombia, they know that it is a place where people grow and package cocaine for use on the world market. This is, of course, a highly biased view of the country because Colombians do many things other than make and sell drugs and most Colombians are not involved in the drug trade at all.
However, it remains true that much of the world's cocaine does originate in Colombia, which has important consequences for that nation's standing in the world as well as for its relationship with the United States. This paper examines some of the consequences for the relationship between the two countries of the ways in which political and economic life in Colombia have become linked to the trade in cocaine.
We must begin this assessment with some basic facts about both Colombia and the drug trade.
It is certainly true that Colombia is primarily an agricultural nation, although it is not true that its primary agricultural product is cocaine according to information from the U.S. State Department Colombia has been an agrarian nation since colonial times, even though in the past two decades it has seen a high degree of industrialization.
Its primary cash crop has traditionally been coffee; however, since dramatic declines in the price of coffee in the late 1980s the country has diversified both in terms of its agricultural crops as well as its economy overall.
How Drugs Came to Colombia
The Columbian economy has become entangled with the illegal drug trade primarily because the country is relatively poor and because many people were effected by government austerity policies in the 1980s that were designed to ensure that the country was able to make its debt payments.
Squeezed by economic conditions and with the ability to produce large amounts of a highly profitable crop, some Colombians turned to cocaine farming. They were also, one cannot help but think, prodded in this direction by a government that was unable and unwilling to control the illegal tendencies of some of its citizens. A country that cannot support its citizens and that is also inclined to be disrespectful of its citizens's rights should not be surprised when those citizens turn to crime.
Colombia's history has been plagued by violence and insurgency. In the beginning of the twentieth century the country was devastated by the "war of a thousand days." In the 1950's Colombia suffered la violencia, a bloody internal war that left some 200,000 dead. Today, Colombia is again marked by intense internal warfare and violence. The current struggle, however, deeply involves also the multi-billion dollar drug trade. Funds from the narcotics trade have financed the growth of the three major terrorist groups: the FARC, the ELN and the paramilitary forces.
Colombia's socioeconomic problems cry out for reform and for the development of a strong, purposeful national will to resolve the country's chaotic situation. Foremost, the drug problem has to be solved. The drug trade not only finances organized violence, it has corrupted and warped much of the country's political and economic system. The nation must organize and finance a much larger, professional military force capable of dominating the terrorist groups. The government must also demonstrate its respect for human rights and its commitment to democratic government (http://www.gwu.edu/~clai/Commentary%20on%20Colombia.htm).
Although the country is wealthy in natural resources, it has not always been governed as wisely as it might be, which means that the distribution of wealth has often been extremely uneven. Whenever the country's economic basis begins to weaken, the effect of illegal drugs tends to become more pronounced. This cycle of relative prosperity and political stability and a weaning of the country from the money produced by cocaine and periods of high inflation, governmental austerity, and political corruption are reflected in the percentage of the wealth of the country that is generated by drugs:
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