‘Peace’ Brings More Murder and Cocaine to Colombia’s Rebel Zones
The 2016 deal with FARC guerrillas won a Nobel prize, but life is hell for locals as competing drug armies have taken over.
Colombian soldiers hold a checkpoint along the main road to Ituango, Colombia.
Photographer: Nicolas Bedoya/BloombergIn the far north of the Colombian Andes, where for decades Marxist rebels controlled cocaine production and battled the army, a widely-praised 2016 peace accord was supposed to change everything. It has — for the worse.
Promises of new security measures and crop substitutes have gone unfulfilled. Where once there was brutal — but clear — rebel rule, there is today a cacophony of drug-trafficking mafias, each charging farmers so much protection money that coffee, cattle and even cocaine are barely profitable. Former guerrillas are re-arming, the homicide rate is skyrocketing and hundreds are fleeing, emptying schools and businesses.