Talk:Southern Valle del Cauca
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Southern Valle del Cauca treats the municipalities of Palmira, Pradera and Florida, in the south of the department of Valle del Cauca in Colombia, as a cannabis growing area: the marijuana grown there from the 1950s and eradicated in Florida in 2018. The department as an administrative unit is treated at Valle del Cauca Department, and Colombia's law on cannabis at Colombia. Coca and opium poppy are part of this page only where a source names them with marijuana.
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Discussion
Why Southern Valle del Cauca is a growing area
- Vanegas Muñoz's study for the truth commission (2022) names the three municipalities as places where marijuana was grown: Palmira for the seed seized in 1950, ready to sow on ten plazas (p. 11, note 2, citing Diario del Pacífico, 26 September 1950); Palmira and Florida for the arrests of peasants growing marijuana from the mid-1950s (p. 12); and Florida and Pradera as the Valle end of a mountain corridor from northern Cauca that he describes as known for its marijuana crops (p. 23).
- The Ministry of Defence's open dataset lists five entries of marijuana eradicated in Florida, 19 October to 23 November 2018, 1.24 hectares in all (downloaded 3 November 2026). It has no marijuana entries for Palmira or Pradera.
- The status is Active: the eradication in Florida in 2018, and Vanegas Muñoz's description of the corridor in the present tense in 2022. No source says growing in the area has ended.
The name
Vanegas Muñoz places Palmira and Florida "en la subregión norte del departamento del Cauca y sur del departamento del Valle" (p. 12). The title follows him, as Northern Cauca follows the sources' norte del Cauca. The area does not take in the whole south of the department: Cali, Jamundí, Candelaria and the other southern municipalities are outside it.
Extent and border
- The map border is the union of the three municipalities as drawn in OpenStreetMap (relations 1473610 Palmira, 1356412 Pradera, 1319503 Florida), simplified; about 1,770 km², the figure in the infobox. Where it meets Northern Cauca and Tolima it follows their lines.
- The sources do not say where in each municipality the crops were, so the border takes in the whole of each, the sugar-cane plain of the valley floor as well as the mountain slopes.
- The point in the infobox is the centre of the border, not a field.
- The herbarium sheet Cárdenas 82 (1986), from the Las Brisas environmental-education centre in Florida, lies inside the border. Its label does not record a crop, so the sheet is not placed in the area.
Sources
- Vanegas Muñoz (2022). A consultancy report for the Comisión para el Esclarecimiento de la Verdad, funded by Fundación Redprodepaz; the cover note says the opinions are the author's alone.
- Ministry of Defence, Erradicación (open dataset). Rows for Valle del Cauca with crop type marihuana. Each row gives a date, a municipality and an area, and no vereda.
Not used
- The 1961 report to the inter-American meeting in Rio de Janeiro, as given by Sáenz Rovner (2007, p. 214), places marijuana crops in Cali and in rural Buga, and large crops in the cane fields of the sugar mills near the city. Cali and Buga are outside the area, and the report names no place in it.
- The trial planting of fibre hemp at the Palmira agricultural station in 1929 (Patiño 1969, p. 395) was an experiment, not a crop, and is not used.
- Other marijuana eradicated in Valle del Cauca (El Dovio, El Cairo, Dagua, Ansermanuevo, Buenaventura and Tuluá, 2008–2017) is outside the area.