Located far from the major cities, 23 miles north of the Ecuadorian border, Tumaco, known as the Pearl of the Pacific, is a port city in the southwestern part of Colombia. Surrounded by pristine beaches, rivers, and tropical jungles, Tumaco—like many of the most beautiful places in the country, especially those populated by Afro and Indigenous communities—has long been ravaged by violence.
In the mid-1990s, the government crackdown on coca cultivation and cocaine processing in other parts of Colombia led to their increase in and around Tumaco. Criminal organizations, guerillas, and paramilitary groups followed the narcotics traffickers into the area, not only to provide security for drug trafficking but also to make money from extortions and assassinations of the local population. By 2020, more than 95,000 people in Tumaco had been displaced from their homes and 721 families reported members missing or disappeared. In 2022, more than 200 unidentified bodies were discovered in garbage bags or sacks buried in a shallow grave in a corner of the Tumaco cemetery.
According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, cocaine cultivation in Colombia has been steadily increasing. Tumaco has become a major center for the cultivation and production of cocaine (approximately 23,000 hectares of illegal crops are being grown in and around Tumaco as of 2023), especially near Indigenous and Afro communities, and its port has become an important exit and transit point for illegal drugs.
In January, Colombian President Gustavo Petro proposed a strategy of voluntary crop substitution to combat the cocaine industry, incentivising farmers to cease growing coca leaves and grow another crop that is equally profitable—a move that has caused criminal organizations to view this as a direct attack on their lucrative business. When farmers in Tumaco agreed to follow the government’s push to substitute coca, they became the targets of the criminal groups. Threats and violence from armed groups, which has included everything from selective assassinations to massacres of families, and which has been directed mostly against community leaders and environmental activists, causing a massive displacement of Afro and Indigenous communities over the past couple of decades as they have been forced to flee their homes and seek refuge elsewhere.
The CIA has targeted these communities as well, due to their alleged involvement in the growing of coca and the processing of cocaine. In conjunction with Ecuadorian military forces, the CIA bombed three cocaine laboratories just outside of Tumaco on January 22 and January 24 of this year, killing thirty local farmers. The United States was simultaneously bombing vessels suspected of carrying cocaine off of the coast of Colombia, the most recent on January 23, killing two crew members. These attacks came after U.S. President Donald Trump labeled drug traffickers “terrorists” and signed orders to legalize CIA covert spy and sabotage operations in Venezuela, allowing the U.S. military to attack without Congressional approval, and later threatening such operations in Mexico and Colombia.
On February 3, a little more than one week after the attacks on Tumaco, Petro visited the White House for a highly-anticipated meeting with Trump. Three months before the meeting, The US Department of State Treasury cancelled Petro’s U.S. visa and the Department’s Foreign Assets Control put Petro on their “Clinton List” of Specially Designated Individuals, which is used to block all US financial transactions with and to lead to the arrest of people associated with narco trafficking. This made Petro’s visit to the United States risky—he could have easily met the same fate as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, being belittled by Trump on a visit to the White House or, worse, that of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, abducted in his own country by U.S. Forces and taken to a high-security prison in Brooklyn, New York, under indictment for drug trafficking.
During his visit, Petro gifted Trump a sculpture of a jaguar from an Indigenous community in the Amazon; Trump provided the Colombian military with eleven ASV M1117 Guardian armored vehicles as part of the Excess Defense Articles program, which allows allied countries to receive surplus military equipment free of charge, to help in fighting “narcoterrorist organizations.”
They discussed the fight against narcotics traffickers and the eradication of coca plantations in Colombia; the lessening of tensions between Colombia and Ecuador; and the possibility of joint operations between the Venezuelan and Colombian militaries against the ELN (Ejército de Liberación Nacional) which is the largest and most powerful guerrilla group in the border region. Petro—who had been one of the most outspoken critics of Trump’s imperialism in Latin America, especially with regard to the kidnapping of Maduro by the United States—offered Trump his help in the difficult task of restructuring Venezuela’s oil industry.
During their talk, Petro handed Trump a list of names and addresses of drug “kingpins” in the United Arab Emirates, Spain, and the state of Florida. Such inside information, however, will surely fall on deaf ears. Instead of going after those who most profit from illegal drugs, Trump is pushing to aggressively confront “terrorist” organizations and drug traffickers (especially groups like the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, Clan de Golfo, and ELN) by sending U.S. forces to attack what he calls “cocaine manufacturing plants,” which are the rural, artisanal laboratories where the drug is processed. These locations are predominantly staffed by people from poor Afro and Indigenous communities, such as campesino farmers and fishermen in Tumaco, many of whom are forced—economically or at gun point—to work for wealthy narcotics traffickers.
As soon as Petro returned to Colombia, he shifted away from his administration’s trademark focus on peace accords with the country’s most heavily armed groups in favor of war. Just after Petro’s visit to the White House, the Colombian military bombed ELN strongholds along the Venezuelan border, killing seven.
Although his meeting with Trump was hailed as a success in Colombia, Petro’s long, hard work toward negotiating peace and the disarmament of militarized groups in Colombia, and his search for a way to substitute other crops for coca, was blown to bits at the meeting in the White House.
In Tumaco, for instance, drone attacks on coca processing plants represent a completely different approach from Petro’s crop substitution policies enacted during his presidency, and the new Trump-inspired aggressive strategy against the most heavily armed groups is the exact opposite of Petro’s peace politics. Allowing foreign governments to kill people on Colombian soil is a direct violation of the country’s sovereignty.
Petro’s willingness to betray his own progressive policies will have serious political consequences in Colombia, especially for the country’s presidential elections scheduled for this May. The détente between Trump and Petro takes away the right wing’s most effective criticism of Petro – that his anti-imperialism will pave the way for Colombia to become like Venezuela. On the other hand, abandoning peace in favor of war will cost Petro’s successor support among his party’s most faithful followers.
Petro’s recent political about-face sets the stage for more weapons purchases, increased attacks and bombings, forced eradication of crops and the spraying of the toxic herbicide glyphosate, and high-level narco extraditions, all of which will only increase the violence in Colombia, especially in areas far from the media’s attention. Substituting peace negotiations for directly confronting Colombia’s most heavily armed groups is a risky step, one that will have serious social, economic and political consequences for the country. The campesinos, Indigenous, and Afro-Colombian communities that live in Tumaco—groups that have long been marginalized and exploited—will inevitably be the ones to pay the dearest for this new shift in U.S. geopolitics and anti-terrorist activity in Colombia.