× Expand Toxic Remnants of War Project The environmental and public health impact of aerial spraying of narcotics crops has been a matter of substantial concern for indigenous groups, farmers, NGOs and human rights organizations.

With a cocaine boom underway in Colombia, the Trump Administration is pressuring the Colombian government to resume a controversial aerial fumigation program targeting coca crops. The program was previously phased out due to health risks and opposition from the country’s rural residents.

In mid-September, President Trump increased the pressure on the Colombian government by disclosing that the White House had “seriously considered designating Colombia as a country that has failed demonstrably to adhere to its obligations under international counternarcotics agreements.”

The Progressive first reported on this aerial spraying program in June 2001, when the U.S. State Department contracted with the DynCorp corporation to spray coca crops.

Aerial fumigation had once been a central component of Plan Colombia, the multi-billion dollar U.S. assistance program to help the Colombian government wage war against drug traffickers and the FARC, a leftist revolutionary group.

In May 2015, however, the Colombian government decided to halt aerial spraying, citing a Supreme Court ruling that the spraying must end if the chemical used in the spraying, glyphosate, was creating health problems. The Colombian government made the decision shortly after an agency of the World Health Organization found that glyphosate “probably” caused cancer. The fumigant also contained surfactants and other undisclosed chemical additives to help with dispersal, potentially increasing toxicity.

The Colombian government decided to halt aerial spraying based on a Supreme Court ruling that the spraying must end if the chemical used in the spraying, glyphosate, was creating health problems.

The decision to end aerial fumigation was also a central component of ongoing peace negotiations with the FARC. In 2014, the Colombian government agreed with FARC negotiators that it would transition away from various forms of forced eradication, including aerial spraying, and begin to prioritize voluntary forms of eradication.

Equally important, the Colombian government was facing significant pressure from the rural poor, who were organizing national protests against aerial fumigation and other forms of forced eradication. “National level protests blocking access roads and inhibiting movement were a major hindrance to manual eradication’s ability to operate in major coca growing regions, and also bedeviled aerial eradication operations,” the State Department reported in 2014.

“You have to get back to allowing the spraying of these fields, the destruction of the fields.” --Secretary of State Rex Tillerson

With coca production in Colombia increasing in recent years, however, the Trump Administration has been pushing for a resumption in spraying, despite the potential health risks, political fallout, and uncertainty about what is actually causing the increase.

“What we’ve said is you have to get back to allowing the spraying of these fields, the destruction of the fields,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in June. “The administration’s basic message to the Colombian government has been that “we have to get back to eradicating these fields.”

In early August, former U.S. official José Cárdenas lent his support to these efforts. “I disagree with ending aerial fumigation,” Cárdenas told a subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. “I think that, in our engagements with Colombian officials, we continue to need to insist on respect for U.S. interests in this.”

The Colombian government, which has yet to cave to U.S. pressure, has continued experimenting with alternative programs to limit coca production. It has implemented crop substitution programs that provide farmers with one-time payments to help ease the financial burden of switching to less profitable crops. It has also promised to provide families with title to their lands if they abstain from cultivating drug crops for a period of five years.

Officials in the Trump Administration refuse to support these alternative programs, insisting that they will not work.

William Brownfield, a former U.S. Ambassador to Colombia and the administration’s top counternarcotics official at the State Department, laid out the administration’s logic during a hearing before a congressional subcommittee last month. Essentially, Brownfield argued that poor Colombian peasants could not be trusted to follow the rules of the crop substitution programs.

“The campesino, who is not a stupid individual, may be very poorly educated in a classic sense, but knows exceptionally well what's going on around him,” Brownfield said. “He'll take the money and perhaps eradicate right near the road. But, 200 yards off the road, he will continue to grow.” Indeed, Brownfield warned that the Colombian government was going to be outmaneuvered by the country’s peasants. “There has to be the threat of eradication, along with the alternative development,” he said.

The issue of community groups blocking highways “was not a problem when they were doing aerial eradication.”

In addition, Brownfield argued that aerial spraying was the best way to beat back protesters who oppose the administration of the poison. The issue of community groups blocking highways, he said, “was not a problem when they were doing aerial eradication.” Only by returning to aerial spraying could Colombian security forces more effectively counter protesters.

“You cannot protest from the ground an airplane that is flying over a coca field and killing the coca from the air,” Brownfield said.

Edward Hunt writes about war and empire. He has a PhD in American Studies from the College of William & Mary.