“Listen man, we’re a narco state, it’s just how it is, if you want to see drug deals, I’ll show you drug deals – it’s Colombia.”
I’d only asked one of our Colombian producers in passing if it was possible to see drugs being traded on the streets of Medellin. I didn’t realise it was that simple.
Medellin is synonymous with drugs and cartels. The home of perhaps the most famous of all the drug lords, Pablo Escobar, it seems to revel in its notoriety.
There are pictures of Escobar everywhere, on posters, on caps, and on t-shirts. There are even guided tours to his grave, and a museum in his honour.
This is where the big business drug cartels were born, invented by Escobar himself, the original Latin American “Godfather”.
In an infamous district in Medellin, we were instantly confronted with the sounds of dealers on the streets shouting out their products for sale as we drove through.
“Cocaine! Pills! Ecstasy! Tusi!” they shouted. All available to a traffic jam of cars waiting to buy.
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Motorcycle delivery drivers queued to make the pick-up for their clients waiting in high-end apartments and nightclubs elsewhere in the city, while buyers on foot discreetly scored their drugs, before moving on.
‘Narco’ culture
It was chaotic and noisy, a place where lookouts use whistles to send signals to the dealers.
Two toots mean it’s all clear, a single toot is a warning – it means the police are nearby.
In the middle of this big open-air market for drugs, dimly lit restaurants and cafes served dinner. We passed one café where we saw a family sat at a table outside, celebrating a woman’s 70th birthday.
This neighbourhood runs a 24-hour drug selling market alongside the usual shops and cafes that spill over on to the pavement.
Although Colombia has a long history and fascination with “narco” culture and drug-taking, its immediate problem is that President Donald Trump has launched a war on Latin American drug cartels, manufacturers, and the nations the drugs come from – and through.
Venezuela is at the top of his hit list; he has launched strikes on boats off the Venezuelan coast that he says were carrying drugs. He has boosted American military presence in the Caribbean – sending ships, marines, helicopters, drones and jets into the region.
There is speculation he may be looking for regime change in Venezuela, and that the war on drugs is a front to remove President Nicolas Maduro from power, claiming the Venezuelan government is basically a drug cartel. Something they of course deny.
None of this bodes well for Venezuela’s neighbour Colombia, indeed President Trump has made it clear Colombia is high on his list of troublesome nations.
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There are other countries on his list, like Mexico, that he says has demonstrated willingness to clean up their act and take the war to Mexico’s deadly cartels.
Mr Trump’s gripe with Colombia isn’t necessarily that its society has a relaxed attitude to drug use – it is widespread across all classes – no, his problem is that Colombia is one of the biggest producers of cocaine in the world, and it feeds the biggest market, which is the United States of America.
Hidden away, miles from people
It seems that the president’s view is that the supplier is the problem, not necessarily the user.
Cocaine is extracted from the coca leaf, which is grown in abundance in Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia.
Growing the coca plant in these countries is not illegal, and the leaf itself is often used for other purposes. The plant only becomes illegal when it’s used for cocaine production.
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I wanted to meet the farmers who grow coca to find out if they are the masterminds of a multi-billion-pound international drugs business, or just farmers meeting international demand.
My journey began just after dawn in pouring rain on the Amazon River in Colombia.
Perhaps unsurprisingly the plantations are hidden away in remote areas, miles away from people.
We travelled for hours in the rain, on a small boat with a guide, passing indigenous communities who have nothing to do with the business hiding in their forest.
The river narrowed as we got closer to our destination, and five hours later, after navigating through broken tree trunks and low hanging branches, we arrived at an eight hectare coca plantation hacked into the rainforest bordering Colombia and Peru.
The crop, which is two-and-a-half years old, is hidden by the trees and the river.
They are about to start harvesting it, but it’s incredible just how many leaves they need.
The farmer says that for every 70 grams of cocaine produced, the cartel producers need 30 kilograms of leaves.
Only way to provide for his family
That’s a lot of picking – and the farmer will earn just $7 for those 30 kilograms of leaves.
The cocaine business might be incredibly lucrative for the cartels that control it, but at the very bottom the farmers hardly get paid a thing.
And though he is worried about getting caught, the farmer I meet sees it as the only way to provide for his family.
“For me it’s very valuable, it’s my sustenance, the way for sustaining life,” he told me.
“We are aware that illegal processing isn’t good for anybody, not exactly, you can’t say I am doing this, and this is good for people, no, this harms the entire community, everyone,” he explained when I asked him if he was at all conflicted about his crop.
“But we all make sacrifices, and we struggle to make our way in life.”
It’s hard to believe that the global business of manufacturing and shipping cocaine around the world all starts with these fairly innocuous looking coca leaves.
And whatever Donald Trump says, they will keep producing as long as users in America, Europe, and indeed the world, demand it.
