A rare look inside a Colombian coca farm and cocaine lab, via TikTok

Issued on: 22/02/2022 – 13:51

Two-thirds of coca plantations worldwide are found in Colombia, according to the UN – far ahead of the next two countries on the list, Peru and Bolivia. In 2020, an estimated 143,000 hectares of Colombian land was covered with coca fields.  

Coca leaves play an important role in Andean culture, primarily because of their powerful qualities as a stimulant. But Colombia is also the leading global producer of cocaine, a highly addictive drug made from these leaves. According to the UN, 1,228 tonnes of cocaine were produced in the country in 2020, most of it sent to North America or Europe.

Producing coca and cocaine in the country is banned, but that does not stop many young Colombians from posting videos on TikTok showing their work in the sector. Some of these videos have garnered thousands of views. We’ve shared a number of these videos in this article, but deleted the names of the TikTok accounts that shared them to protect the safety of those individuals.

‘Raspachines’ in the spotlight

Most of these videos show sunny fields of coca and are often scored with catchy music. In the fields, you can sometimes see “raspachines” – the local name given to the workers who gather coca leaves.

In one of these videos, a “raspachin” explains how to wrap one’s hands to protect them before gathering coca leaves.

Several videos also show “raspachines” lifting up giant bags filled with coca leaves.

‘Lots of people make a living through coca production in Putumayo’

Juan (not his real name) is a young TikTok user. He stopped going to school around the age of 13 and a few years ago started growing coca in Putumayo (a region bordering Ecuador), mainly for financial reasons.

I have a small plot of land, one hectare, and I started growing a kind of coca called “orejona blanca” there, but there are lots of other types as well.

On a hectare, you can gather 220 arrobes [Editor’s note: 2,750 kilogrammes] of leaves every three months. An arrobe sells for 32,000 pesos [Editor’s note: €7], so, every three months, I can get seven million pesos [€1,585]. But with all of the expenses related to production, I only end up making about 1.3 million pesos [€294] every three months. I have to buy pesticides, for example, and pay the labourers who help me to harvest.

So I supplement this income by working on bigger plots of land that belong to people I know. On those plots, we grow coca, harvest the leaves and then process them in a lab [Editor’s note: These labs are secret because the coca is being processed into cocaine.]

In the labs, we crush the coca leaves with a machine, then we pour lime and ammonium sulfate on them. Then we crush it all up again.

Then we put the mixture of crushed leaves into a barrel with petrol in it. An hour later, we separate the leaves and the petrol, which goes down a pipe.

Then we pour water and acid into the petrol and shake it all up. This creates a liquid acid that resembles oil. Then, there are more steps, requiring other chemicals [Editor’s note: notably caustic soda] to create “coca base”. That’s what we do in the lab where I work. And to get cocaine itself, there is a another step [Editor’s note: including chlorohydric acid]…

When I am working on other people’s land, they pay me between 40,000 and 80,000 pesos [Editor’s note: between nine and 18 euros] per day. The rate depends on if I am gathering leaves or helping in the lab.

‘The advantage of working in illegal crops is that you can meet your goals more quickly’

Essentially, between that and what I make from my own land, I can make between 1 and 1.2 million pesos per month [Editor’s note: 226 and 271 euros]. If I had a legal job, I wouldn’t make more than 900,000 pesos [Editor’s note: 203 euros. In Colombia, the minimum salary is  253 euros per month, minus some social welfare contributions]. A few years ago, I was working in a shop, but I wasn’t making as much money. The advantage of working in illegal crops is that you can reach your goals more quickly – like buying a motorcycle, building a house.

Personally, I started working in coca because there was a lot of work in the sector. In Putumayo, many people make their living from coca.

More than 200,000 families made their living working in the coca fields of Colombia between 2016 and 2018, or roughly a million people (2% of the population), according to the UN.

‘It’s clearly not the farmers who make the most, but the groups of narcotraffickers’

Alexander Sanchez is a community activist based in Putumayo, and the spokesperson for the National Coordination for Coca, Marijuana and Poppy Growers (COCCAM):

There is not enough work in Putumayo and in Colombia in general. Many young people who finish their studies are left without a job [Editor’s note: Officially, the unemployment rate was 13.7% in 2021, but is higher for young people, at around 21.5%]. So lots of people turn to the farming of illegal crops, especially during the harvest. For example, you need eight people to gather 200 arrobes [Editor’s note: 2,500 kg]. It’s a real source of jobs.

Moreover, the advantage of working in this sector is that you can make more without working as hard. That said, it is clearly not the farmers who make the most but the groups of narcotraffickers who buy their goods.

The government is responsible for this situation because they don’t carry out the necessary investments to respond to people’s needs. [Editor’s note: For example, if farmers want to grow anything else, the bad state of the roads makes it extremely difficult for them to go sell their wares elsewhere.]