Northern Colombia
More actions
| Northern Colombia | |
|---|---|
| ActiveGrown here in 2000 or later | |
| Location | |
| Coordinates | 9.93, -73.37 |
| Country | Colombia |
| Provinces/States | Magdalena Department,La Guajira Department,Cesar Department,Norte de Santander Department |
| Area | 24,400 km² |
| Primary Mountains | Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta,Serranía del Perijá |
| Growing history | |
| Conservation | |
| Populations | none documented yet |
Northern Colombia is a cannabis growing region in the north of Colombia. It is made up of three growing areas: the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, the mountain massif on the Caribbean coast; the Serranía del Perijá, the range along the border with Venezuela; and the Provincia de Ocaña, in the west of the department of Norte de Santander. According to the economist Francisco Thoumi, the marijuana of Colombia's export boom of the 1970s grew mainly in the Sierra Nevada,[1] and in 1985 a delegation of the United States House of Representatives reported that production had been moving from the Santa Marta area to the Serranía del Perijá for two years.[2]: 11 The Ministry of Defence's eradication data list marijuana eradicated in all three areas between 2007 and 2020.[3]
Geography
The region is drawn on its three growing areas and takes in no land outside them. The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta rises from the Caribbean coast in the departments of Magdalena, Cesar and La Guajira. To the east, beyond the valleys of the Cesar and the Ranchería, the Serranía del Perijá runs along the Venezuelan border in Cesar and La Guajira; the area covers its Colombian side from La Jagua de Ibirico in the south to Barrancas in the north. The Provincia de Ocaña lies further south, in the ten municipalities of the western subregion of Norte de Santander. The three areas do not touch, so the region is drawn in three parts, of about 24,400 km² in all.
The export boom
The historian Lina Britto writes that the traders who ran the export boom, called in Colombia the bonanza marimbera, came from the Sierra Nevada and the neighbouring Guajira peninsula,[4]: 1–2 and dates the peak of the trade to 1972–1978.[4]: 16 In her account the first crops grown only for export appeared on the Guajira side of the massif, in its western and north-eastern foothills.[5]: 166 Britto calls Colombian Golden or Santa Marta Gold the first local strain made for export, in the early 1970s.[5]: 166, 174
Colombia's truth commission, in its report on the peasant land settlements of Cesar, dates the bonanza marimbera to 1975–1985 and found that marijuana crops had become established in the Serranía del Perijá by the end of the 1970s. A former FARC fighter told the commission that in the 1970s private armies called combos marimberos, which guarded the marijuana crops, came to the Perijá and to the Sierra Nevada and fought one another.[6]: 14 When the House delegation visited the Perijá in 1983 it was given an estimate of about 15,000 hectares of marijuana in the range, at a time when 17,000 hectares had been reported for the whole of Colombia.[2]: 11
Eradication
Decree 2144 of 1978 set up controls over the Sierra Nevada and the Guajira to suppress the growing and transport of marijuana, and a campaign run jointly with the United States began on 1 November 1978.[5]: 160, 171 In August 1985 the House delegation inspected eradication in Magdalena, in the north-coast region, which it called the principal illicit marijuana cultivation area in Colombia. It reported that herbicide spraying in the north-coast region, begun in 1984, had eradicated 3,400 hectares by the end of that year, and that in the Perijá very little eradication had taken place in 1985, growers were resisting and there had been some firing on the helicopters.[2]: 9–11
In June 1993 the new head of the anti-narcotics police warned of a rise in marijuana crops in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, the Perijá and Caquetá.[7] In 1995 the head of the anti-narcotics police told a workshop on illicit crops that there were 6,000 hectares of marijuana in the country, mainly in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and the Perijá and San Lucas ranges.[8]: 80–81
Since 2000
In 2019 a presentation of the national drug observatory, citing the anti-narcotics police, named Magdalena and Norte de Santander among the main producing departments of the country.[9] The Ministry of Defence's open data list about 990 hectares of marijuana eradicated in Magdalena between April 2007 and November 2020, 650 of them in Ciénaga and 311 in Santa Marta, and 94 hectares in Dibulla, on the La Guajira side of the Sierra, between 2007 and 2014. They list about 145 hectares between 2007 and 2020 in twelve of the thirteen municipalities of the Serranía del Perijá area, and about 47 hectares between 2012 and 2018 in five municipalities of the Provincia de Ocaña.[3]
In the Sierra an early-warning alert of the national ombudsman's office reported in May 2018 that marijuana growing had increased in areas with a strong foreign presence, among them Minca, Buritaca and the Tayrona park, and that it was grown in small, scattered plots so that it would not be easily detected.[10]: 16–17 In May 2020 the police destroyed about two hectares, some 10,000 plants, at Altos de Jolonura in the Sierra.[11] In the Provincia de Ocaña the newspaper La Opinión described in March 2016 a proliferation of marijuana crops in rural Ábrego, where marijuana had become one of the most common crops.[12] In October 2024 soldiers found a marijuana plantation in the vereda (rural district) of Oro Azul, in Villanueva, on the Perijá side, and destroyed more than 200 plants.[13]
Growing Areas
Appellations
Accessions
No accessions documented yet.
Recent news
No news items are recorded for this growing region yet.
See also
References
- ↑ Thoumi, Francisco E. (14 July 2002). "Illegal Drugs in Colombia: from illegal economic boom to social crisis". Semana. Retrieved 19 October 2026.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control, U.S. House of Representatives (1986). Latin American Study Missions Concerning International Narcotics Problems (August 3–19, 1985) (PDF) (Committee print). Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office. SCNAC-99-2-1. Retrieved 19 October 2026.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Ministerio de Defensa Nacional. "Erradicación". Portal de Datos Abiertos de Colombia (dataset) (in español). Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Britto, Lina (2020). Marijuana Boom: The Rise and Fall of Colombia's First Drug Paradise. Oakland: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-32547-0.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Britto, Lina (2010). "A Trafficker's Paradise: The "War On Drugs" and the New Cold War in Colombia". Contemporánea: Historia y problemas del siglo XX. 1 (1): 159–177. ISSN 1688-7638.
- ↑ Comisión para el Esclarecimiento de la Verdad, la Convivencia y la No Repetición (2022). Caso «Parcelaciones del Cesar: tierras campesinas tiznadas por el conflicto» (PDF) (Report) (in español). Comisión de la Verdad. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ "Prevén nueva bonanza marimbera". El Tiempo (in español). 7 June 1993. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ Restrepo, Luis Alberto; Reyes, Alejandro (1995). "Cultivos ilícitos: relatoría del Primer Taller Internacional". Análisis Político (in español) (25): 80–88.
- ↑ Observatorio de Drogas de Colombia (June 2019). Experiencia en la recolección de información sobre oferta y consumo: ODC. Taller para Fortalecer a los Observatorios Nacionales sobre Drogas de América Latina y el Caribe: Cuarta Edición (in español). Comisión Interamericana para el Control del Abuso de Drogas, Organización de los Estados Americanos. slide 21. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ Defensoría del Pueblo, Sistema de Alertas Tempranas (7 May 2018). Alerta Temprana N° 045-18 (PDF) (Report) (in español). Retrieved 19 October 2026 – via Indepaz.
- ↑ "Policía destruyó dos hectáreas de marihuana en la Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta". Santa Marta Al Día (in español). 24 May 2020. Retrieved 19 October 2026.
- ↑ "Ábrego: en medio del cultivo y el consumo de marihuana cripy". La Opinión (in español). 26 March 2016. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ "Ejército desmantela cultivo ilícito de marihuana en La Guajira". La Prensa (in español). 15 October 2024. Retrieved 20 October 2026.