President Gustavo Petro was present at the First Assembly of Catatumbo Coca Grower Organizations, in El Tarra, Norte de Santander. There he expressed the need for “thePeasants can continue planting coca while they try substitute crops” gradually.
(Read: ‘Peso fell because cocaine dollars no longer reach the country’: Petro).
Likewise, the president assured that: “The program must be devised so that peasants can still cultivate coca leaves while they are planting the substitute crop, until it is proven that the substitute crop works, because if it works, there is no need for the other.”
What Petro is looking for is that the peasants maintain the coca crop with another substitution while the second one becomes profitable. “We have to get the peasantry out of an economy that no longer gives more than it did,” said the head of state.
Later, in a statement to the media, Petro clarified that this had to be done with gradually to the extent that the alternative crop worksThis is how the farmer’s coca leaf cultivation should decrease.
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“A period is established in which both coexist until we can achieve that the substitute crop is the same or at least with levels of profitability that guarantee the standard of living of that”, assured the leader of the Historical Pact.
Along with this, he pointed out that the objective is that the substitute production has an industrialization in the hands of the peasantsince the coca leaf is a product that they do not sell raw, but as a paste, that is, it undergoes an industrial transformation that guarantees them more income, so the substitute crop must go through the same process to guarantee at least least the same income levels.
During the development of the event, some spokespersons for the peasants spoke, who asked the Government “reforms to substitution programs, eradication of crops and the search for an economy not dependent on coca”.
The cocaleros also spoke to the head of state about theto protection of the territory and care of the environmentas well as creating the figure of crop substitution managers.
(Read: Senate ‘gives the green light’ to ban bullfights).
During his speech, President Petro mentioned that “the State must comply with the will of society”, telling the citizens who were in the place that “it is the common people – the peasant, the peasant, the man and the woman – the one with the power.”
BRIEFCASE
With information from EL TIEMPO*
