USAID's Alternative Development Strategy: A Critical Review of Initiatives in Colombia

Furthermore, Isacson reports that USAID’s crop substitution program has disturbed many Putumayans because “outside experts unfamiliar with the region told them what crops to produce, and were often wrong,” but he then cautions that Putumayo’s residents could not themselves name more appropriate plants for their region given its current lack of “decent roads” and “reliable security,” among other concerns (2006:9). If farmers are to remain where they are but to delve into new economic projects – if they are, for example, to sell manzana de agua and uchuva to the U.S. – much supplementary development must occur first. Road-building is essential, for farmers that grow cash crops without being able to transport them anywhere fare no better than those that cultivate nothing at all.

If locals were supportive, USAID could even hire them to construct the roads and thus provide some Colombians with non-drug income. Nonetheless, campesinos would still not abandon their drug crops immediately; reluctant to trust that the roads would actually get built, they would maintain illicit cultivation until the roads had been completed and until those roads had brought them alternative forms of productivity. Furthermore, ruling guerrillas might resist road-building initiatives. These fighters have fled to remote regions because they are remote; they strive to hide from state authorities (LeGrand 2003). Opening these areas to legal trade and travel would not only undermine the guerrillas’ ability to profit from the drug trade but also threaten their safety, and they therefore might attempt to destroy any roads erected.

As Isacson suggests, security then emerges as a paramount concern. If warring parties control drug-producing regions and if drug cultivation helps fund their fighting, then they are unlikely to support their areas’ inhabitants in alternative activities. Because guerrillas and paramilitaries have the power and unscrupulousness to kill disobedient peasants, the peasants are likely to do as their warring patrons desire. Thus, Colombia’s war may need to end, and its combatants to cede control to local civil authorities, before sustainable development can occur. Indeed, in early 2006, USAID halted its alternative development program in the Caquetá region, in part because of concerns about its employees’ safety (Otis 2006). If Colombia’s violence puts aid workers at risk, then by deterring human activity and physically endangering infrastructure, it thwarts development.

CONCLUSION

Many Colombian peasants harbour a guarded willingness to forego drug production. Isacson has claimed that the campesinos detest coca because it embroils them in the country’s conflict, forcing them to finance their local warlords (2001). Also, during a 1996 campesino protest against aerial fumigation in Caquetá, one peasant declared, “The majority, maybe all of us, agree that coca should be stopped; we say so. … [but] what we are demanding … is that there be guarantees of other work for people in the country …” (quoted in Ramírez 2005b:63). Thus, as many analysts have asserted, and as USAID itself has acknowledged (2000), if Colombians are to stop growing coca and poppies, then alternative development is essential. Alternative economic activities, however, and the infrastructure to support them, must fully develop and must demonstrate themselves to be reasonably profitable before drug cultivation ceases.

Ramírez presents a useful framework for shifting the policy focus from destruction of the drug industry to development of alternatives: to stop conceptualizing small-scale drug cultivators as “criminals,” despite their crops’ illegality, and to begin to conceptualize them “as citizens in social and economic distress” (2005b:67). Her remarks urge a recognition of the history that LeGrand and others have laid out, a history of oppression and violence, of chaos, of displacement, and ultimately of relocation to regions so remote that they have offered peasants few choices other than to sow drugs.

Acknowledging the historical political economy of drug production, as well as the ensuing economic and socio-political conditions that today characterize peasant life, policy-makers must focus first on resolving Colombia’s conflict so that the guerrillas that have hidden in remote regions no longer coerce those areas’ campesinos into cultivating drugs. In conjunction with the campesinos, agencies may then begin to build alterative opportunities. The Colombian government might enact land reform policies or stimulate urban economies so that displaced peasants eager to escape the isolated areas have opportunities toward which they can migrate. USAID could also provide peasants with the means to build roads and could help them identify lucrative markets, both domestic and international. Finally, after carefully studying soil and market conditions, with much input from Colombian locals, the agency could help campesinos begin to cultivate viable licit crops.

Alternative development is thus an extraordinarily complex task, one that will require years or even decades of work. USAID’s current alternative development program promises speedy improvements in peasants’ non-drug economic opportunities while ignoring the political and economic circumstances that hinder the emergence of said opportunities. USAID thus asks peasants to stop producing drugs within a year of acquiescing to aid workers’ plans. Peasants, however, will not relinquish their illicit crops so long as they doubt that alternative development will actually occur and believe that abandoning drug cultivation will bring them destitution, starvation, and guerrilla retaliation. Thus, instead of pursuing both simultaneously, the United States may need to predicate achievement of one of its goals, destroying Colombia’s drug industry, upon development and also upon its second goal of ending Colombia’s war.

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[i] The following incentive structure applies strictly to small-scale farmers, who as of 2000 tilled about one-quarter to one-third of the country’s total coca-producing area (USAID 2000). Different motives may prompt large-scale farmers and drug traffickers to engage in the illegal drug industry.

[ii] The U.S. government reserves its alternative development programs for those farmers growing no more than three hectares of coca and no more than one of opium. Large-scale drug farmers receive different treatment, including aerial fumigation of their fields.

[iii] In this context, “spray” implies aerial fumigation.