The displacement in El Orejón demonstrates how megaprojects, coca substitution, and the peace process work together to serve elite interests at the expense of campesino ways of life.
Colombia’s new president, Iván Duque, continues to push for failed supply-side drug war policies in Colombia—a reversal of alternative coca substitution policies negotiated in 2016 as part of country’s peace accords.
As leadership in Bogotá fails to provide resources for former FARC territories to transition out of coca production, a battle for control over the drug trade reignites the Colombian countryside.
After the peace accord, can the Colombian government incentivize coca planters to cultivate other crops? Not if they don’t address the inequality and land grabbing that prompted them to start growing coca in the first place.
