Cocaina: A Book on Those Who Make It by Magnus Linton, John Eason Page B

become the most sought-after powder in the world.
    ‘That’ll do it,’ Edgar says. ‘Now it will all go into one barrel instead of three. That means less fuel, less cement, and fewer chemicals. Two-thirds less. That saves money.’
    It is 7.00 a.m., and Edgar is just one of the hundreds of thousands of coca farmers on the slopes of the Andes who has started up his shearing machine. In the Colombian southern provinces this morning, like all mornings, small motors buzz in the hands of illiterate family men and women who wear themselves ragged in an effort to respond to an ever-growing global need. Demand in the United States has stabilised or even decreased in recent years, while the opposite is occurring in Europe, Australia, parts of Asia, Africa, and, not least, in the most well-developed Latin American countries — Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Mexico, and Colombia — where demand has been rapidly increasing over the last decade.
    Edgar picks up a leaf missed by the shearer and holds it reverently, like a priceless stamp, between his thumb and forefinger before slowly folding it and snapping it in two. ‘This is a good leaf, ripe. It should feel like paper. If it’s soft like cloth it’s been harvested too early, and the paste won’t harden as it should. No one buys a bad product. One time I couldn’t get it to harden and had to throw all of it out. It was a financial disaster for my family, because I still had to pay all the farmers I’d bought the leaves from, and then I’d also spent a lot of money on chemicals and fuel. But if you just have ripe leaves from the beginning, you can hardly mess it up. It’s a simple process.’
    Edgar turns the mythical leaves of the coca bush into coca paste: the first and most labour-intensive, but least profitable, link in the cocaine chain. He sells the paste to local buyers, who are under the wing of either the guerrillas or paramilitary groups, and who in turn take it to the more sophisticated labs — cocinas , usually strategically located adjacent to the points of exit — where the final stage of production takes place. After that, the cartels take over transporting la mercancía , ‘the goods’ — the only term used here — to modern-day mafias, who distribute it to old and new markets.
    Since the war on drugs has escalated and large plantations are no longer possible in the region, the entire hierarchy is based on this network, which consists of thousands of small contributors. But even though Edgar and his colleagues’ grunt-work is absolutely essential if everything is going to work, the financial allocation of the narcotics pyramid is brutal. Less than one per cent of the going street price ends up in the pockets of the coca farmers. Four per cent goes to the groups involved in the fine processing of the powder and 20 per cent goes to the smugglers, while those who benefit most are the people who control sales in the United States and European markets. This is also where most of the money laundering takes place: 75 per cent of the enormous earnings generated by cocaine trafficking remains in the country where the end product is sold.
    It requires 1.2 grams of coca paste to produce one gram of pure cocaine and, according to current street rates in Europe and the United States, Edgar’s little daily harvest is worth around 21,000 USD. His own earnings after two days’ work — when leaves, fuel, and chemicals have been paid for — is 50,000 pesos (27 USD). About 1.50 USD per hour. But he is satisfied. ‘Yes, very. It’s four times more than I get for other crops. No product brings in a profit like coca. Sometimes the authorities show up, gather us villagers around, and try to convince us that there are other crops that are more profitable, but it’s not true. If I grow pineapples or yuccas there’s never anyone who wants to buy them. Coca paste, on the other hand, I can get rid of in five minutes.’
    This is Putumayo, the epicentre of the shady side