The president proposed using the coca leaf in industry and contributing to the replacement of illicit economies in regions such as the Micay Valley, in Cauca.
This Tuesday, October 3, President Gustavo Petro Urrego visited Cauca; In El Tambo, located 33 km from Popayán, and one of the municipalities in the country with the largest area of crops for illegal use, the head of State presented the National Drug Policy 2023-2033 “Sowing life, banishing drug trafficking.” Later he went to Popayán with his program “Gobierno Listen”.
The strategy prioritizes the care of life and the environment, putting human rights, public health and the strengthening of peace first. For the first time, the communities and territories directly affected by illicit drug trafficking participated in its formulation.
To this end, the Ministry of Justice held 27 territorial spaces in 16 departments and Bogotá, 51 bilateral technical tables, three sessions with strategic allies, five with sectors of the Joint Coordination and Monitoring Commission and three spaces with specific sectors: women, youth and prevention.
According to the Government, the objective of this project is to reduce cocaine production in the country by almost half, affect illicit finances, reduce annual deforestation and substantially lower CO2 emissions into the atmosphere, relying on two main pillars: Oxygen , aimed at the territories, people and ecosystems affected by the illegal drug market, and Asfixia, focused on the criminal structures that generate violence and profit in a greater proportion from this illicit economy.
Coca leaf as an industry
Likewise, in Tambo, President Petro Urrego said not to demonize the coca leaf and to remove it from the list of prohibited substances so that it can be used in industry and contribute to the replacement of illicit economies in regions such as the Micay Valley (Cauca). .
The president asked: “How can we take the coca leaf and turn it into fertilizer? Because I do not demonize the coca leaf, I asked the Secretary General of the United Nations (António Guterres) to remove the coca leaf from the so-called prohibited substances, because the coca leaf is not to blame. “It is the industrial transformation of some merchants that produces the negative effect.”
“Somewhere in the Micay Valley – he explained – you can achieve the biofertilizer industry and other products that you have shown us here at this fair: food, nutrients. Who is going to demonize the coca leaf if the indigenous people of a thousand or two thousand years ago knew why?
“It never occurred to an indigenous person two thousand years ago to make cocaine from the coca leaf. That was to a European capitalist in the 19th century. That indigenous knowledge knew that that leaf could be used in other things. That’s why they used it and it became a sacred plant, according to their beliefs.”
He added that it is time to take the leap towards a legal economy in this entire region and for this region – with the coffee, cocoa, livestock or coca leaf industries – to become one of the spiritual axes, a soul. of Cauca, land of so many wars and so much history.
Before social leaders, peasants, indigenous people, Afro people, members of women’s and youth organizations, as well as representatives of the international community, President Petro called on them to work together to advance in the Micay Valley in the first concerted experience with the entire community. to transform the regional economy.
He recognized that “that is worth money and requires a State and a social effort, which even goes beyond our own national effort. With you we want to change this economy and take care of it, ensure that the peasantry and ethnic communities can prosper, showing the world how a policy that is not based on bars, extraditions, State corruption or repression can be very important. more effective.”
He asserted that it can be demonstrated in Cauca, where the organization and social strength is so high that there is something to transform reality.
The president called on international investors, such as Walmart stores, to participate in the replacement project promoted by the Government of Change.
“Can those gentlemen from Walmart not come here to the mouths of Micay to buy coffee from the peasantry and put in their supermarkets the note according to which Micay is the region that gets rich by selling this coffee and that showed the world How to replace an illicit economy with a licit one?” said President Gustavo Petro.