Talk:Northern Colombia
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Northern Colombia is a Growing Region: a named region that sits above Growing Areas and below the regional complex and gene pool. It groups three growing areas of northern Colombia: the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, the Colombian side of the Serranía del Perijá and the Provincia de Ocaña. The growing areas of the Andes further south belong to Cordillera Central (Colombia); the Ariari, in Meta, belongs to neither region.
Data verification
Check the main page for the sources behind each statement. Discuss the boundary, the areas the region takes in, and the accessions and news items that belong to it here.
Discussion
Why the region is on the map
- No source read names "Northern Colombia" as a place where cannabis grows. The region groups three growing areas, each of which rests on its own sources; their pages give the evidence in full.
- Some sources speak of two or three of the areas together. Thoumi (2002) and Britto (2010, 2020) on the Sierra and the Guajira in the 1970s; the House Select Committee print of 1986 on the shift of growing from the Santa Marta area to the Perijá; the truth commission (2022) on the combos marimberos of the Perijá and the Sierra; the anti-narcotics police in 1993 (Sierra, Perijá and Caquetá) and 1995 (Sierra, Perijá and San Lucas). The page gives each at the scale the source gives it.
- No source read joins the Provincia de Ocaña to the Sierra or the Perijá as one growing zone. Ocaña is in the region because it lies in the same northern belt of departments and has no closer grouping; the page says nothing more about it than its own sources do.
The name
A compass name, as for the other growing regions named after the part of a country they cover. Costa, Caribe and región Caribe were not used: the Provincia de Ocaña is in the Andes of Norte de Santander, not on the Caribbean plain.
Growing status
The status is Active. Each of the three areas is Active on its own evidence: eradication records in all three between 2007 and 2020, plantations reported by the police and the army (the Sierra 2015–2020; Ábrego 2015–2016; Villanueva 2024), and the national ombudsman's alert of 2018 on the Sierra. No source says that growing has ended in any of them.
How the border is drawn
- The border is the three growing areas' own borders, joined, with no land added: the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta (the massif above 200 m), the Serranía del Perijá (the range above 200 m in thirteen municipalities from La Jagua de Ibirico to Barrancas, the Sierra cut out) and the Provincia de Ocaña (its ten municipalities). Where the region and an area share an edge, the line is the area's.
- The three areas do not touch, so the region is drawn in three parts: about 12,300, 4,300 and 7,800 km², about 24,400 km² in all, the figure in the infobox. The Sierra and the Perijá are about 4 km apart at their nearest, across the floor of the Cesar valley; the Perijá and Ocaña about 23 km. The gaps are left open, because no source read gives growing on the valley floors between them.
- The infobox point (10.67, −73.61) lies in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, the largest of the three parts, because the region is three separate parts; it is not a field.
- The border is not drawn from accession or news points.
Land left out
- The Ministry of Defence's eradication dataset (downloaded 20 October 2026) also lists marijuana eradicated in southern Cesar, between the Perijá and Ocaña: San Martín (about 21 hectares, 2015), Aguachica (about 17, 2012–2014), González (3, 2016) and Río de Oro (1.5, 2018). No source read describes growing there, and the press for these municipalities reports marijuana in transit. They are left out, as they are left out of the Provincia de Ocaña.
- Chiriguaná (about 10.5 hectares, 2013–2016), on the valley floor south of the Perijá, and Valledupar, El Copey and Pueblo Bello (small totals) are outside the areas' borders and are left out for the same reason.
Sources
- All the sources on the page are cited on the pages of the three growing areas and were read there; the page repeats what they say, at their scale.
- Ministry of Defence, Erradicación (open dataset). Rows with crop type marihuana. Magdalena: 848 rows, April 2007 to November 2020, 988.5 hectares (Ciénaga 650.1, Santa Marta 311.2, Aracataca 12.2, Fundación 11.2, Zona Bananera 3.8). Dibulla: 84 rows, May 2007 to December 2014, 94.2 hectares. The totals for the Serranía del Perijá and the Provincia de Ocaña are those given on their pages. The figures on the page are sums of the rows, rounded.
Not used
- Seizures on the Troncal del Caribe and at the ports are marijuana in transit and are not evidence of growing in the region.
- Coca in the Catatumbo, north of the Provincia de Ocaña, is a separate crop and is not used.