Talk:Northern Cauca

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Page scope

Northern Cauca treats the north of the department of Cauca, in south-western Colombia, as a cannabis growing area: the five municipalities of Caloto, Corinto, Jambaló, Miranda and Toribío, each an appellation of its own. It covers the history of marijuana growing there, the greenhouse and open-air crop since about 2010, the rules set by growers, armed groups and indigenous authorities, the estimates of its extent, and licensed growing. The department as an administrative unit is treated at Cauca Department. Marijuana carried through the region from elsewhere, and coca and opium poppy, are part of this page only where a source ties them to the cannabis grown here.

Data verification

Record source conflicts, dating problems and sources not used here. Keep narrative content on the article.

Discussion

Why Northern Cauca is a growing area

Several independent sources say that marijuana is grown in these municipalities, naming each of them: the 2024 Indepaz study La economía de la marihuana en el enclave productivo del Norte del Cauca, which defines its "productive enclave" as exactly these five municipalities and estimates growers in each (Table 9, pp. 46–47); the Truth Commission's volume on the Valle and the north of Cauca (2022, pp. 73, 163, 192–194); the Dejusticia book by Cruz and Pereira (2021, chapters 2–3); the CAPAZ policy brief of 2024; the anti-narcotics police survey reported by El Tiempo in March 2021, which gives hectares for each of the five; and press and army reports from 2011 onwards.
The status is Active: the sources describe growing from about 2010 to 2024 (army reports of 2011 and 2013, press reports of 2012 to 2023, the police survey reported in 2021 and the Indepaz fieldwork of 2023–2024), and the Ministry of Defence's eradication data run to April 2020. No source read says that growing has ended. The fall in prices from November 2023 is reported as a crisis of the trade, not as an end of growing.
The crop is mostly a modern one. The sources describe greenhouse and open-air growing of types called creepy (or cripy, cripi) since the early 2010s, and older native types (cominera, corinto, mango biche, punto rojo) that growers have largely given up. No accession or herbarium sheet from the area is held on this wiki.

Extent and border

The map border is the union of the five municipalities as drawn in OpenStreetMap (relations 1722356 Caloto, 1723758 Corinto, 1740108 Jambaló, 1723761 Miranda and 1740146 Toribío), simplified; about 1,500 km². The five are the unit the sources themselves use: the Indepaz study's enclave, the area of the growers' association El Gremio, and the five municipalities in which, according to Indepaz, the Dagoberto Ramos front allowed growing in 2018. The point in the infobox is the centre of the border, not a field.
Neighbouring municipalities are left outside the border, for these reasons:
- Santander de Quilichao: the UNODC light-alert indicator gave it 8 per cent of Cauca's alerts, the Dejusticia book counts it among five municipalities with 55 per cent of them, and Indepaz reports that planting spread there after 2023. No source read gives a grower count or a police hectare figure for it, and the Ministry of Defence's data list no marijuana eradicated there. It is mentioned on the article and may join the area if later sources describe growing there.
- Buenos Aires and Suárez: one per cent each of the light alerts (Truth Commission, p. 193); one eradication entry for Buenos Aires (September 2013, 1.1 ha). Not enough for a border.
- Popayán: 22 per cent of the light alerts, but it is the departmental capital in the centre of Cauca, outside the north; no source read places it in the northern growing zone.
- Caldono, Padilla, Puerto Tejada, Guachené, Villa Rica and Morales: no source read names them as places where marijuana is grown.
The Indepaz study defines the wider subregion of the north of Cauca as 13 municipalities (p. 7); the page title follows the sources' usage ("norte del Cauca"), but the area is the five-municipality enclave, not the whole subregion.

Sources

Indepaz (2024). By Carlos Eduardo Espitia Cueca and Salomón Majbub Avendaño, March 2024, from fieldwork between December 2023 and March 2024. Most figures (grower numbers, prices, plant limits) come from interviews and work sessions with growers and indigenous authorities, and the study says so. Its Table 9 gives 13,561 growers; the text gives 16,000 to 19,000 as an alternative estimate. The table's pound totals assume 500 pounds a grower; the text gives a total of 1,538 tonnes. The page gives the grower counts and the 500-pound assumption, not a tonnage.
Truth Commission (2022). The volume Colombia adentro: Valle y norte del Cauca of the commission's final report. It dates the first crops in Corinto and Caloto to the 1950s and calls the period the bonanza marimbera; Britto (2020) dates the boom on the Caribbean coast to the 1970s, with its peak in 1972–1978. The page gives the commission's dating, attributed. The commission's 507 km² figure is from the UNODC monitoring report on 2016; the Dejusticia book describes the same indicator as prepared for 2014 and published in 2017. The page says only that it was published in 2017.
Cruz and Pereira (2021). Dejusticia book, with fieldwork in the north of Cauca from 28 January to 7 February 2018. The page names none of the book's interviewees. The book cites the police characterisation of native varieties (Ciena, 2017) and the media hectare estimates; neither original was read. One interviewee treats patimorada as a creepy type, another as a native one; the page gives only a 2022 grower's statement that it was the type most sown.
CAPAZ (2024). Policy brief by Granados, Rojas, López, Moriones and Anzola. Its 1970s dating of the first crops and its 2019 count for Toribío come from Cangrejo (2015) and Corporación Ensayos (2020), which were not read. It dates El Gremio to 2021; Indepaz dates it to 2020. Both dates are given.
Police survey (2021). Known from El Tiempo of 15 March 2021, which had access to the report. The article gives 347.3 hectares for Cauca and figures for five municipalities that add up to 285.8 hectares; its subheading places all 347 hectares in the five. The page gives the Cauca total and the five figures as printed. The survey date is not stated.
Ministry of Defence, Erradicación (open dataset). Read in the rows for Cauca with crop type marihuana (111 rows, 24 January 2010 to 17 April 2020, 74.08 hectares), downloaded on 20 October 2026. Each row gives a date, a municipality and an area in hectares, with no vereda. The municipality totals on the page are sums of those rows: Corinto 43 rows, 28.19 ha; Caloto 31, 16.36; Toribío 15, 12.33; Jambaló 2, 5.08; Miranda 11, 2.64. The other nine rows are in La Vega, El Tambo, Balboa, Buenos Aires, Argelia and Mercaderes. For comparison, the same dataset lists about 20,600 hectares of coca and 1,100 of poppy eradicated in Cauca.
Diana Maria Pachón, "Marihuana de Corinto". A magazine report published in a copy on the Indepaz website; the copy carries no date (its file path is of March 2012, and it refers to a California vote on legalisation "a few months" before). It is cited without a date.
El Espectador, "El pesebre de marihuana que crece en el norte del Cauca". The page prints the date 23 July 2022; the page metadata give 14 June 2023. The printed date is cited.
Britto (2020). The recollection about Corinto is that of a Riohacha journalist interviewed by Britto (ch. 2, p. 79); it says that marijuana was said to come from Corinto, not that it was grown there at that date.

Sources not used

Seizures on roads, in towns and at the checkpoints of the indigenous guard are not used as evidence of growing.
Army reports of harvested marijuana and of drying or packing sheds are processing, not standing crops, and are not used.
Coca and opium poppy reports are not used, among them a 2013 report of 30,000 flowering poppy plants eradicated in Jambaló.
A figure of 12,595 hectares for Cauca, reported by Semana (2018) from the crop-monitoring system, is not used: the article itself calls it the potential area available for planting.
Accounts that repeat sources cited here or give no source for their figures are not used: an online article in Rebelión (2018), which says that in 2000–2002 at least half of the marijuana smoked in Colombia came from the mountains of Corinto, all of it of creole varieties; a 2023 post on visomutop.org dating the first crippy in Toribío to 2011; three InSight Crime articles (2011, 2013, 2019); and a seller's glossary (Bunkerlinge) that lists a "Corinto" landrace without a source.
No seed-bank line or accession on this wiki names a place in Cauca.