Talk:Herbicide spraying in Colombia
Discussion page of Herbicide spraying in Colombia
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Herbicide spraying in Colombia treats the aerial spraying of marijuana in Colombia from 1984, with what came before it from 1978 and what the sources say about its effects on growers. The later aerial spraying of coca and opium poppy, which ran until 2015, is outside its scope except for one closing sentence. The growing areas are described on Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Serranía del Perijá and Northern Colombia.
Data verification
Record source conflicts, dating problems and sources not used here. Keep narrative content on the article.
Discussion
Sources and how they were read
- Read in full: the GAO report GAO/NSIAD-89-24 (November 1988; chapter 2, pp. 30–34), the NNICC reports for 1985–1986 (p. 17) and 1989 (p. 68), the INCSR of March 1988 (pp. 20, 28) and the House study-mission print of 1986 (pp. 11–12), all in NCJRS or gao.gov scans; Britto (2010); the INDERENA commission report (1986) in the Mama Coca web copy.
- Moreno (2015), the MamaCoca–Indepaz history of fumigation, quotes the political scientist Juan Gabriel Tokatlian for the decisions of May to July 1984 and for figures of 1984–1987; Tokatlian's own article and the book it appeared in (Arrieta et al. 1989) were not read. The article attributes these passages to Tokatlian as Moreno quotes him.
- Moreno (2021), a second Indepaz history, is the source for "Operación Fulminante" and INDERENA's letter of 19 June 1978. It gives the operation as an intention to destroy about 20,000 hectares with paraquat; no source read records paraquat being sprayed on Colombian marijuana, so the article reports the intention only, attributed.
- The United Press International report of 11 July 1984 and The Christian Science Monitor reports of 9 April 1981, 20 December 1983, 3 May 1984 and 31 January 1992 were read on the outlets' sites.
Area sprayed
- The figures are listed side by side in the article because they disagree by a factor of several and the GAO found no formal check on the Colombian figures. The House committee's 3,400 hectares eradicated by the end of 1984 and its 2,500 hectares sprayed by early August 1985 come from the same page and are not reconciled there.
Paraquat first?
- A Cultural Survival Quarterly summary says Colombia sprayed paraquat first and switched to glyphosate after peasant complaints. United Press International (11 July 1984) and INDERENA's letters quoted by Moreno say glyphosate was chosen over paraquat from the start, and no dated witness to paraquat spraying of marijuana was found. The claim is not used.
- Moreno (2021) quotes a 2001 audit of the Contraloría General as mentioning herbicide experiments before 1984; the audit itself was not read, and the claim is not used.
Not used
- The 2016 article cited on Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta on the end of the "Santa Marta Goldrush".
- A CIA assessment of December 1983 on a rebound in Colombian marijuana production (it is cited on United States and cannabis eradication abroad).