Ciénaga (appellation)
More actions
| Ciénaga | |
|---|---|
| ActiveGrown here in 2000 or later | |
| Hierarchy | |
| Growing Region | Northern Colombia |
| Growing Area | Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta |
| Geography | |
| Country | Colombia |
| Province/State | Magdalena Department |
| Coordinates | 10.89, -74.01 |
| Landscape | |
| Area | 1,090 km² |
| Terrain | The mountain part of the municipality of Ciénaga, on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta; approximately the municipality above 200 m |
| Growing history | |
| Conservation | |
| Populations | none documented yet |
Ciénaga is a cannabis appellation in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta growing area, covering the mountain part of the municipality of Ciénaga, in the department of Magdalena, Colombia.
Geography
The appellation lies on the western slope of the massif and takes in the corregimientos (rural districts) of San Pedro de la Sierra and Palmor.[1]: 3, 61 The town of Ciénaga and the coastal plain lie outside it. It adjoins the Santa Marta appellation to the north.
The marijuana boom
In mid-1969 the police found a marijuana field in rural Ciénaga.[2]: 218–219 A former mule driver of Palmor, interviewed for the oral-history journal Oraloteca of the University of Magdalena, said that marijuana reached San Pedro de la Sierra in 1970 and was first planted in the vereda of La Reserva, the land that produced the most. In San Pedro several coffee farms were cleared to plant it; in Palmor, where most people had coffee farms, very little was grown.[3]: 27–29 The same account describes plants set 60 centimetres apart, in rows a metre apart.[3]: 29
A coffee grower whose father was given land in Ciénaga in the 1950s recalled that during the boom the most productive area was La Reserva, four or five hours' walk from the family farm, where the few landowning families leased plots to newcomers for 400 pounds of marijuana a hectare. Four of the grower's brothers planted almost seven hectares between them and brought in two harvests. In the early 1980s buyers stopped paying, the government sprayed the crops with glyphosate and violence grew; when the guerrillas arrived they banned marijuana in the area.[4]
According to El Heraldo, Hernán Giraldo, who came to Santa Marta in 1968 and later led armed self-defence groups in the Sierra, took up growing marijuana like other peasants, in places that included San Pedro de la Sierra and Siberia.[5]
Since 2000
The Ministry of Defence's eradication data list 421 entries of marijuana eradicated in Ciénaga between April 2007 and June 2020, about 650 of the 988 hectares listed for Magdalena; one entry, in April 2012, is 11.5 hectares.[6] In February 2019 soldiers and police pulled up 660 plants in the upper part of Palmor.[7]
Accessions
No accessions documented yet.
Recent news
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See also
References
- ↑ Defensoría del Pueblo, Sistema de Alertas Tempranas (2 December 2025). Alerta Temprana Estructural 020-25 (Report) (in español). Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ Sáenz Rovner, Eduardo (2007). "La "prehistoria" de la marihuana en Colombia: consumo y cultivos entre los años 30 y 60" (PDF). Cuadernos de Economía (in español). XXVI (47): 205–222.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Martínez-González, Luis Alejandro, ed. (2009). "Entre marihuana y guerrillos". Oraloteca (in español) (1): 26–30. ISSN 2145-0471. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ "Life amidst coffee, coca, marijuana and war". Drugs and Disorder. SOAS University of London. 25 March 2022. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ "El poderío de Hernán Giraldo en la Sierra a punta de sangre y destierro". El Heraldo (in español). 26 January 2021. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ Ministerio de Defensa Nacional. "Erradicación". Portal de Datos Abiertos de Colombia (dataset) (in español). Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ "Erradicadas 660 matas de marihuana en la Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta" (Press release) (in español). Policía Nacional de Colombia. 6 February 2019. Retrieved 19 October 2026.