Plan Colombia: A war on drugs or on Amazonian populations?

Abstract

This article describes the features of the Plan Colombia and anlyses its impact on the people of the Amazon. According to this Plan, the principal cause of the social crisis and political conflicts qhich face the region of the Andes have their origin in drug-dealing. With this reading, the deep-rooted social, economic and political conflicts which are the historical result of a model of economic and cultural Bajo el volcán 14/07/2004, 4:05 PM77 Black development which is dependent, elitist, centralising and socially exclusive, are explained in terms of drug dealing, which even if it intensified the conflicts, did not create them. The Plan continues, now more aggressively, through a war against ilegal cultivation and so against the peoples of the Amazon and their different social and political organisational expressions.