With the fall of communism in the early 1980s and the shift of the world’s focus away from poverty toward globalization, the United States-lead west needed some other means to morally legitimize its intervention in the Andes.  Conveniently placed to fill this role was the Andean cultural and economic reliance on coca. Over the course of the twentieth century, the United States had constructed drugs such as cocaine as a moral evil, making it the perfect guise under which to continue to promote its economic interests in the Andes. Unfortunately, the drug war as the new moral legitimization for western involvement in the Andes directly attacks the cultural and economic symbol on which the Andean people have come to rely.  This has incited a new form of resistance with in the Andean people as they try to preserve their way of life.

Today, this puritanical moral aversion to drugs remains ensconced in the U.S. consciousness. In the most recent presidential election both Bush and Gore pledged a hard-line policy on drugs, articulating a belief that substances such as cocaine “…are on the wrong side of the fundamental line between right and wrong in our minds and hearts” (Kirk 2000: 2).  As president, Bush has followed though on this pledge, earmarking billions of additional dollars toward the eradication of Andean coca in his recently passed Andean Counterdrug Initiative (Colombian Monitor 2002: 5). 

However, much of this money publicly allocated to eradicate coca in the Andes is simultaneously advancing a western political and economic platform.  In the year 2000 for example, the United States initiated its Plan Colombia, a $1.3 billion dollar aid package publicly directed at assisting Colombia fight its drug war. Yet, as Leech points out, the majority of these funds have gone to reinforce the Colombian military and its continued battle against the FARC Guerillas, a socialist rebel group that controls close to forty percent of southern Colombia (Leech 2000: 2). Both the United States and Colombian governments justify this allocation of funds by classifying these rebels as ‘narco-guerillas’.  They claim that the FARC profits from and perpetuates the drug trade, participating in both the production and trafficking of cocaine.  However, as even the United States Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) reports, the FARC is not involved in the international drug trade.  In testimony before Congress, the DEA stated that, “…there is little to indicate the insurgent groups are trafficking in cocaine themselves either by producing HCL and selling it to Mexican syndicates, or by establishing their own distribution network in the U.S.” (Meza 1999: 3). 

In fact, the FARC guerillas are currently at odds with many of Colombia’s major drug cartels.  As Leech points out, many of these drug cartels have invested their fortunes in huge tracks of land to produce coca and other legitimate products. This necessity evolved from the need to secure sources of coca in the wake of the United States’ semi-successful eradication efforts in Bolivia and Peru. In order to secure such sources, the aspiring ‘narco-landowners’ have organized paramilitary groups to stamp out the peasant-oriented FARC (see below) in coca growing regions. As Meza states, drug traffickers such as Rodriguez Gacha and Fidel Castano after developing “virulently anti-Communist positions…created paramilitary armies that attacked both armed insurgents [the FARC] and their peasant base”(Meza 1999: 4). One such example of this paramilitary / FARC conflict is found in Putumayo, one of Colombia’s largest coca producing region. In this region Castano’s United Self Defense Force of Colombia (AUC) has successfully overrun the FARC, now controlling sizable chunks of the Putumayo (Isacson 2001: 6). 

Yet, despite their intimate connection with the Colombian drug industry, the United States and Colombian drug wars have conveniently overlooked these paramilitary groups, instead focusing their military efforts on the FARC.  Understanding the social history of the FARC will expose the ulterior western motives behind their persecution of the FARC over these narco paramilitaries. 
The FARC has its roots in the communist/capitalist struggle that swept Colombia in the years immediately following WWII.  Between 1948 and 1958, a period know as La Violencia plighted Colombia’s landless liberal-communist peasants against the conservative capitalistic landed aristocracy.  The ensuing conflict inspired the formation of liberally-minded peasant guerilla groups to counter the conservative governmental armies. These small guerilla groups were the FARC’s predecessors and vehemently fought for economic reforms to benefit the disenfranchised peasants (Molano 2000: 2).

Unfortunately, the conservative-liberal coalition government, known as the National Front, that ended La Violencia did little to advance the land issues that underwrote the original conflict. This failure left the small-scale guerrilla movements intact. In 1964, the National Front tried to rid Colombia of these lingering guerillas and their socialist enclaves that developed in the jungle of the Andean foothills.  This attempted failed, inspiring the unification of two smaller guerilla groups into what is today known as the FARC (Molano 2000: 3). 

The FARC’s historical position as a socialist peasant guerrilla group has placed it in active opposition to the U.S.-led neo-liberal economic reforms begun under the banner of development.  For example, in the 1970s the FARC’s size and strength grew in the Andes because of its opposition to a western-inspired rural development plan.  The plan endeavored to eliminate all obstacles to free investment in the Colombian country-side, furthering the “…concentration of land ownership, the undermining of small-scale peasant producers and the rise of peasant proletarianization” (Molano 2000: 3). Furthermore, the FARC has historically fought the advancement of many U.S. multinational corporations, impinging on the desires of American companies such as Occidental Petroleum, who wish to gain drilling rights in FARC controlled territory (Leech 2000: 4). The FARC have also recently begun attacking a major U.S. petroleum pipeline running through Colombia. Interestingly enough, the U.S. ambassador recently claimed that this pipeline is “important for the future of…[U.S.] petroleum supplies and the confidence of our investors” (Colombia Monitor 2002: ). 

This understanding of the FARC’s history and social policy provide some insight into the U.S.’ continued persecution of the FARC over Colombia’s paramilitary groups.  Though the paramilitary groups are deeply involved in the narcotics industry they do not represent opposition to a western capitalistic agenda. Instead they have indirectly colluded with the western economic initiatives by overtly fighting the socialist FARC.  In this sense, the FARC’s persecution exposes an ulterior motive behind the United States’ Andean drug war.  Though in one sense the U.S. does wish to save the world from the evils of coca and cocaine, its eradication efforts in Colombia conveniently correspond with the advancement of a western neo-liberal economic agenda. 

The clarity of both the FARC and the cocaleros’ resistance to America’s drug war illustrates the depth at which coca has penetrated the Andean consciousness. The Comaroff’s state that colonization “…everywhere gives rise to struggles – albeit often tragically unequal ones – over power and meaning on the moving frontier of empire”(Comaroff 2002: 494).  However, they go on to demonstrate that the type of struggle depends on the state of the resister consciousness – a heightened sense of consciousness producing a more overt conflict.  With this understanding of resistance, the Andean people’s overt defiance to the United States’ coca eradication efforts speaks to coca’s place within the Andean consciousness, illustrating its historical construction as something inextricable.