Cocaine

I am not going into the complexities of the almost 60 year semi civil war Colombia has suffered in this post. I will write about that in the next few days.

However how cocaine fits into that conflict I will talk about.

In the 70s Americans figured there was gold in them thar' hills, in this case Colombia
gold cannabis which is then imported to the states en masse.

In the early 80s Pablo Escobar and other bright thugs catch on to the north American and European love for cocaine - drug of stars of the rich and powerful.

The new gold: white gold as it is called here.

The massive demand for cocaine production and enormous wealth that comes from processing leaves in the jungle leads to destruction of rivers; thousands of hectares of rainforest and jungle are wiped out to make way for coca production.

Manufacturing cocaine from leaves is a very complex process utilizing toxic chemicals which are dumped anywhere and poison the soil.

After the cartels are starting to be shut down in the early 90s, the right wing paramilitaries and FARC, begin to manufacture and traffic cocaine to fund weapons purchases.

Violence, vengeance and profiteering is rampant. The average colombian or peasant Campesino is saturated with a culture of death, mistaken identies and vendetta.

Interesting to think about the dance clubs of the 90s - New York, LA, even Toronto: "we like to party".

A world away a young boy is shot.  A young woman raped, and her mother murdered.

All part of the cycle of white gold.