Talk:Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta

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Page scope

Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta treats the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, the mountain massif on Colombia's Caribbean coast, as a cannabis growing area: the fields reported there from the 1940s, the export boom of the 1970s, its eradication and decline, and the growing reported since 2000. Colombia's law on cannabis is treated at Colombia. The trade through the Guajira peninsula and the coast is part of this page only where the sources tie it to growing in the Sierra.

Data verification

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

Discussion

Why the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is a growing area

The sources on the boom of the 1970s place the growing in the Sierra. Thoumi (2002) writes that marijuana "grew mainly in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta". Britto (2010, pp. 166, 174; 2020, pp. 1–2, 16) places the first crops grown for export in its foothills and the boom in the Sierra and the Guajira peninsula. The INDERENA officials (1986) name the valleys cleared for marijuana.
Older evidence comes from Sáenz Rovner (2007): fields in Magdalena in the early 1940s, a farm near Santa Marta in 1952, the foothills of the Sierra in a report of 1961, and fields found in 1968 and 1969.
The status is Active: sources report marijuana grown in the Sierra after 2000. They are the police and national parks study of 2004; the eradication figures for the Sierra and Magdalena, 2008–2013 (Semana, 2013); fields destroyed in 2015, 2018, 2019 and 2020; and the ombudsman's alert of 2018. The decline of the export boom does not change the status. Eradication is not a reason to treat the growing as ended, and no source read says growing in the Sierra has ended.
Why Active and not Historical: accounts of the boom describe it as over. The 2016 article published by the International Drug Policy Consortium says fumigation and competition from marijuana grown in the United States "ended the Santa Marta Goldrush", and Britto calls the marijuana business defunct. Those statements concern the export trade of the 1970s and 1980s, which the page tells as history. Growing in the Sierra is reported after it, so the status follows the reports since 2000: the eradications of 2015–2020 and the ombudsman's alert 045-18 of 2018.

Extent and border

The map border is approximate. It is drawn on the massif as ground at or above 200 m, taken from SRTM elevation data, as the one connected upland holding the highest summit. 200 m is the lowest level at which the massif stands apart from the Serranía del Perijá across the Cesar–Ranchería valley; at 150 m the two join. The area is about 12,300 km², and the infobox figure is rounded from it.
The sources place growing from the foothills to the high valleys. The 1977–1979 clearing was in the foothills below about 500 m (INDERENA 1986); the same report has clearing up to 2,100 m in the Río Frío valley by 1986. Fields reported after 2000 lie at Palmor, at Minca and in the foothills in Zona Bananera municipality. The 200 m line leaves out the coastal strip below it, where the 2018 alert names Palomino, Mingueo and Dibulla. The page names those places, but the border does not reach them.
The Serranía del Perijá is not part of this area. The House Select Committee's report of 1986 treats it as a separate growing zone, to which production moved from the Santa Marta area from about 1983. Workshop remarks of 1995 also name it separately.
The point in the infobox is the centre of the border, not a field.

Sources

Britto, Marijuana Boom (2020). Read in the introduction and chapter 2, which the Facultad de Ciencias Sociales of the Universidad de los Andes hosts as a PDF. The pages cited (pp. 1–3, 16) are from the introduction. Chapter 3, "Santa Marta Gold", was not available, nor was the Spanish edition (El boom de la marihuana, 2022), apart from a short preview.
Britto, "A Trafficker's Paradise" (2010). Read in full. The publisher's metadata gives pp. 159–178; the PDF runs to p. 177. The figure for the fall in crop area between 1984 and 1985 (note 71) is printed with garbled units and is not used. The 10,217 ha destroyed in the first eight months of the 1978 campaign (note 57) is not limited to the Sierra and is not used.
Sáenz Rovner (2007). Read on the pages cited. He writes that the 1952 report came from the foreign ministry; his note cites a Ministry of Public Health report held in the United States National Archives. The page follows his text.
INDERENA (1986). Read in the web copy hosted by Mama Coca. The report gives its field visit as 12–16 December 1986, but is signed at Bogotá on 6 October 1986, so the page gives only the year. Its statement that the first clandestine marijuana fields on the Atlantic coast were recorded in 1945 (citing Patiño) is earlier contradicted by the 1940s cases in Sáenz Rovner. Both are attributed on the page.
House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control (1986). Read in the Colombia chapter of the committee print. The 3,400 ha eradicated by the end of 1984 and the estimate of 10,000–13,000 ha are the committee's figures for the north coast, not the Sierra alone.
Semana (2013). The eradication figures are for the Sierra and the department of Magdalena together; the article does not separate them.
"Weeds of peace" (2016). The page on the website of the International Drug Policy Consortium prints no author; its source link points to The Economist. The original could not be retrieved.
Police statements of 2015 and 2019. Read on the police website. The 2019 statement gives both 660 plants and "61 hectares" for the plot; the area is not used.

Sources not used

Seizures and drying sheds without a standing crop are not used as evidence of growing: for example 400 kg of dried marijuana found near Minca (police, 2018).
A Colombia Reports article of 2014 says that much of Colombia's marijuana still came from Magdalena, especially the Sierra; it summarises an El Tiempo report that could not be retrieved, and is not used.
US State Department reports of 1988 and 1991 and the General Accounting Office report of 1988 describe eradication in Colombia's "traditional" growing areas without naming the Sierra, and are not used.
A 2024 post on the website of the Universidad de los Andes' agribusiness network dates the first hemp crops in the Sierra to the early 17th century but gives no source; the page gives the claim only as the INDERENA officials made it.
NGO accounts of a 1978 spraying operation in the Sierra with paraquat were not checked against the documents they cite, and the page names no herbicide for 1978.
The seed accession VIB-COL-UNK-0100000001 is catalogued as Colombian Santa Marta gold. The catalogue does not say whether the name means the city or the Sierra, and its map point is a placing on a world map, so the accession is not given this growing area.