Bogota – The Colombian government said Thursday it planned to resume aerial spraying of coca and opium poppies in nature reserves after a rebel landmine killed six people working on a manual eradication effort.
That incident took place Wednesday at La Macarena National Park in the east-central province of Meta.
“You know how the government has insisted on being able to manually eradicate in the La Macarena region. They killed 28 of our soldiers in January. The terrorism of the FARC has killed our eradicators and police,” President Alvaro Uribe told reporters, referring to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia guerrilla group.
“The world is going to have to understand because we have made every effort to eradicate coca from the La Macarena nature park manually. I believe the world will have to understand our need to fumigate to avoid our people being massacred by the terrorists,” Uribe said.
Aerial eradication involves the use of the pesticide glyphosate, which is sold in the United States under the brandname “Roundup” and has been blamed in some parts of Colombia for illnesses among humans and livestock, as well as damage to legitimate crops.
Mines were laid in La Macarena by FARC rebels to impede the destruction of the illegal crops, officials said.
The Colombian government on Jan. 19 launched the campaign to manually eradicate up to 5,000 hectares (12,350 acres) of coca – the raw material for producing cocaine – at this natural reserve in Meta province. To date, about 60 percent of the illegal crops in the area have been destroyed, officials said.
About 1,000 peasants – supported by security personnel – initially worked as eradicators, but their numbers have dwindled to less than 300 because many have quit due to guerrilla attacks and the presence of landmines.
Since the campaign was launched, 20 people, including both eradicators and police, have died from rebel violence and landmine blasts in La Macarena.
The FARC, Colombia’s oldest and largest leftist guerrilla group, was founded in 1964.
The rebel organization has an estimated 20,000 members and is still led by 74-year-old founder Pedro Antonio Marin, who is known as “Sureshot.”
The FARC today operates across a large swath of the Andean nation.
Uribe has made fighting the FARC a top priority and has obtained billions in U.S. aid for counterinsurgency operations.
The FARC is on both the U.S. and EU lists of terrorist groups.
Drug trafficking, extortion and kidnapping-for-ransom are the FARC’s main means of financing its operations.
