How does glyphosate is used as a security infrastructure in Colombia?
“Introduced as the active ingredient in Roundup in the 1970s, glyphosate is a non-selective herbicide, which means that it can eliminate almost any type of plant to which it is applied – even desirable plants.” (Bayer Global)[1]. With US interventions and alliances, Colombia has used glyphosate as one of the main tools to address the “war against drugs”[2]. Plan Colombia, an agreement between the US and Colombia’s government, financed the use of glyphosate to attack two of the main “hazards” for citizenship: the internal armed conflict and drug trafficking. Using fumigation airplanes, the State bathes the soil with glyphosate, and kills any trace of non-human life over coca leaves crops.
The Constitutional Court[3] sentenced that the aerial spraying of glyphosate could not be used again until there was a 100% proof that this herbicide makes no harm to humans’ health, but the current government is trying to implement it again.
If we consider the definition of structural violence given by Rodgers and O’Neill (2012), we could think about glyphosate as the material – and ignored – side of structural violence against “cocaleros”. Most of these farmers are disjointed from the national economy, are victims from the armed conflicted, and/or find no other alternative to have a decent income (Cruz, 2019)[4]. The State, in these remote areas of Colombia’s territory, makes presence in the toxic materiality of glyphosate.
Collier and Lakoff (2008) talk about how the US government characterized terrorism as a non-deterrable threat, which meant that it was impossible to point at a specific actor that could be treated as a hazard or an enemy. Given the enormous network involved in drug trafficking, that goes from cultivating coca leaves crops, to corrupted relationships with the military and the government, and ending in the consumption of cocaine even beyond Colombia’s frontiers, it is also a context in which it is almost impossible to blame a specific enemy. Therefore, the coca leaves crops become the most tangible target.
In this sense, the State treats coca leaves crops as being the exact same thing as cocaine, ignoring all the different dynamics, contexts and actors involved in each stage of transformation of the coca leaves. There was a national campaign in 2008 that said: “do not cultivate the plant that kills”. Even though it was withdrawn in 2010[5], the campaign shows the modus operandi of the government: criminalizing cocaleros as a way of finding someone to blame in an enormous and complex conflict. Then, coca leave crops are objectivized as the threat (Amoore, 2006), they become a category that must be eradicated.
To finish, I would like to ask, how, in terms of Foucault analysis, could we problematize our notion of security? Is persecuting production of coca leaves crops an actual solution? Shouldn’t legalization of crops could be consider as a more accurate strategy?
References:
Amoore, L. (2006). “Biometric borders: Governing Mobilities in the war on terror”. Political Geography25 (3), 336-351.
Collier S. & A. Lakoff (2008). The Vulnerability of Vital Systems: How ‘Critical Infrastructure’ became a security problem. In The Politics of Securing the Homeland: Critical Infrastructure, Risk and Securitisation London: Routledge.
http://anthropos-lab.net/wp/publications/2008/01/collier-and-lakoff.pdf
Rodgers, D & B. O’Neill (2012). “Infrastructural violence: Introduction to the special issue”, Ethnography 13(4):401-412.
[1] Bayer (n.d.) “Glyphosate-based herbicides and modern faming practices”. Available in the link: https://www.bayer.com/en/about-glyphosate-based-herbicides-and-their-role-in-agriculture.aspx
[2] Cosoy, Natalia (2016) “Has Plan Colombia really worked? BBC News, Colombia. Available in the link: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-35491504
[3] Kongevinas, Manolis (2019) “Probable carcinogenicity of glyphosate”. The BMJ. Available in the link: https://www.bmj.com/content/365/bmj.l1613
[4] Cruz, Felipe (2019) “Las marchas cocaleras, una expresión del derecho a pedir derechos”. DeJusticia. Available in the link: https://www.dejusticia.org/column/las-marchas-cocaleras-una-expresion-del-derecho-a-pedir-derechos/
[5] Revista Semana (2010) “Corte ordena retirar campaña publicitaria ‘la mata que mata'”. Available in the link: https://www.semana.com/nacion/articulo/corte-ordena-retirar-campana-publicitaria-la-mata-mata/126042-3