Coca is ubiquitousin remote rural parts of Colombia. Farmers plant the hardy, high-altitude bush, harvest its foliage and sell it in bulk to the small local laboratories that have made the country into the world’s biggest producer of cocaine. The pickers, known asraspachines, are mostly poor migrants from Venezuela or elsewhere in Colombia. Their hands are often shredded and bloodied by their labour, which involves ripping the leaves off the stalk. But it pays more than cultivating most legal crops. And even being on the bottom rung of the drug business confers a certain glamour. “I’m theraspachin,” trills the singer on a jaunty hit from 2015 by Los Bacanes del Sur, a popular folk band. “And I get all the women.”
This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline “The war on drugs don’t work”
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