All was forgiven though when, barely half an hour later, Edgar showed up with another guy with a jeep. Just outside San Pablo our big, red Totota jeep was stopped at a heavily-fortified Army checkpoint. Whatever Edgar said to the soldiers it was enough to get us through. Further on, special Government anti-guerilla troops waved us to the side of the road and Edgar talked us through again. A glaring irony that wasn’t lost on me was that this was the same road that 600 Paramilitaries, the death squads, had traveled up just a few hours earlier. So much for the fiction that the regular army doesn’t collude and cooperate with them, I thought.
We passed a burnt-out command post that had belonged to FARC. The driver told us that ten guerillas had died here only last week. From here on, a road that had been merely impassable to cars became a four-wheel-drive obstacle course. The good news was that, where the Paramilitaries had turned off, our route carried straight on. We forded five rivers and drove around and over fallen trees, deep ruts and boulders. Agua Sucio just wasn’t worth it. Fortunately, this miserable collection of huts was just another stop on the journey. We topped up with cool, soft drinks and were soon on our way again. Finally, we breasted the brow of a steep hill and stopped. Our bone-shaking ride had lasted over three hours.
The present stop was for Edgar to take a pee. Just before disappearing into the undergrowth he pointed out to me the farm buildings nestling in the lee of the hill below. The sweep of his hand took in the thousands of coca plants that covered the surrounding hills. Amongst them he pointed out the ‘raspachinos’ or pickers, working in the blazing sun.
He cautioned me about taking photos, saying that good manners demanded that we ask his permission first. Well I’m afraid that, by this stage, I was clean out of ‘good manners’ and something called ‘enlightened self interest’ was firmly in their place. I hadn’t come all this way, risking life and limb, for some farmer to say I couldn’t take any photos. I could take the best story in the world back to ‘Front’, but in the absence of photos it would be as nothing.
I too walked off into the undergrowth, making as if I were going for a pee. As I gazed through the lens of my thoroughly ordinary camera, I wondered what all the fuss was about. The collection of scruffy sheds in the distance could have been anything, anywhere in the world. If it really was a coke farm, then it certainly didn’t look it from where I was standing.
As it turned out, the farmer was hospitality personified. He was at pains to emphasise that he was only a poor man and the obvious poverty on his farm attested to that. When asked why he grew coca, he pointed at his six children. He said that there weren’t any alternatives for him. If he grew the food plant, Yucca, it would be too expensive to sell by the time he got it to market, because of the distance and the cost of transport.
Certainly, the economics of cocaine production at this end of the market weren’t impressive. Coca was a hardy plant that would grow virtually anywhere. However, it still had to be fumigated by hand two to three times before each of the three harvests each year, to protect it from insects and worms. He usually employed 30 ‘raspachinos’, working 11 hour days, six days a week. For this each was paid around £8 per day, with free board and lodging.
The gasoline and cement to produce the coca base had to be brought in by boat and this was subject to taxing on the way. He paid a flat tax of about £18 per hectare to the Paramilitaries who controlled the area and a further £60 per kilo tax on each kilo of coca base produced. Finally, he would have to sell the base to the Paramilitaries for about £600 per kilo. These were the same Paramilitaries who operated out of San Pablo under the protection of the Army!
The farmer said that we could photograph what we liked, as long as we didn’t photograph him or the faces of his workers. That could bring the wrath of the Paramilitaries down on them. He absolutely refused all offers of payment. I was already deeply impressed by the simple Colombian courteousness and hospitality I had experienced.
Before we embarked on the guided tour though, there was one final ritual to be observed. Taking a boiling pot off a nearby stove containing coca leaves, the farmer poured each of us a cup of coca tea. He said that it was good for everything, including illnesses and allergies, and would give us energy.
It wasn’t for me though. I had long ago promised myself that coke wouldn’t have me in any way, shape or form. Further, abstinence had become almost an article of faith for me on this trip. I felt that, if I lived clean, then I might just get the story. And as for the extra energy, on most days I tripped on my own adrenalin anyway.
With two ‘raspachinos’ as extra guides, we climbed the slopes covered with coca bushes and the two different types were pointed out to us. Both types of leaf looked identical to me, apart from the fact that the Peruvian coca leaf was much darker than the Colombian one. We were told that it also yielded four crops a year against three for the Colombian.
The actual ‘cocina’ was on the summit of a small hill. Basically, it was a long shed with no walls, just six upright beams to hold the roof up. Inside, two large, black, plastic sheets were spread out on the rough earth floor. On the first, a worker was chopping a vast pile of leaves into small pieces with a garden strimmer. On the second sheet, the chopped leaf was covered with cement powder, sprinkled with gasoline, then trod in by men wearing Wellington boots. Once it was well mixed in it was shoveled into large black plastic drums, which were topped up with gasoline and left for two hours.
The next stage involved letting the liquid drain out of each drum into another drum below. Permanganate was added and stirred well in. The mixture was then left to stand for another two hours, when the coca paste could be seen in the form of a white, viscous precipitation at the bottom of each drum. The farmer told us that his ‘cocina’ turned out approximately 15 kilos of base a week.
All through the guided tour, Danny, Jorge and myself had been photographing everything that was remotely interesting. I was sure that we had several hundred photos between us. Together with the farmer’s description, I had what I had come for. The worry that exercised me now was that, as everyday Colombian life was so problematic, would I get back safely with the photos? Edgar emphasized that nobody had ever photographed a working ‘cocina’ before.
I wanted to leave immediately, but the farmer asked us to join him for lunch In the circumstances it would have been churlish to refuse. I ate with a tranquility belied by my internal mood. I consoled myself with the thought that the trip back couldn’t be nearly so fraught as the trip out.
The ride back to San Pablo was without incident. The Army roadblock had gone and there was no sign of the Paramilitaries either. I paid the driver off, musing that too many trips like today’s would see his new jeep a wreck in no time.
Back at the hotel, the first priority was a cool shower and a change into clean clothes. I took the rolls of film with me everywhere. Afterwards, I went to reception to get a cold drink from the fridge. Four young guys were by the reception desk. They gave me a hard stare as I came in. It was one of them ‘who are you looking at’ stares that were so commonplace in London. Back there I would probably have responded in kind, but, quite strangely, because personal interaction was so polite and unthreatening in Colombia, I had relaxed considerably. However, it registered subliminally as I returned to my room.
Within minutes raised voices could be heard coming from reception. As I came out of my room, Danny was already in the hall. We hurried towards the reception area. The four young guys had Jorge and Edgar backed up against a wall. Both were white as sheets and literally shaking with fear. “They’re taking us away”, cried Edgar to Danny, “please help us.”
It was in situations like this that Danny was worth his weight in gold. He quickly engaged the four guys in conversation and soon had them laughing. Within seconds all the threat went out of the situation. It transpired that they were Paramilitaries and they had heard that we were in town and wanted to know what we were doing here. They had thought that we were Americans.
Danny explained that we were English and made some deprecating remarks about Yanks that had them laughing again. He told them of our mission to photograph the ‘cocina’. They left, still laughing and seemingly satisfied.
Jorge and Edgar though were definitely not laughing. Still shaking, Edgar said that they were definitely on the verge of being taken away and killed. He emphasised that we must get out of town right away. “We must leave right now or we’re dead”, were his exact words.
It wasn’t exactly panic, but we had our bags packed and were in reception paying our bill in no time at all. The owner was relieved to see the back of us. He had been following developments from inside his office and was as white as either Edgar or Jorge.
At a trot, we made our way down to the river and accepted the first boat available without bothering to negotiate the price. Soon we were heading upstream towards Barranca. If I had thought that we were now safe, Edgar soon disabused me of that notion. “They will phone ahead to their comrades, we must get out of Barranca as soon as possible”, added a still shaken Edgar. Ever mindful of the 700 dead and 1,000 missing last year alone, I could only agree with him.
We docked at Barranca and Edgar spent a couple of minutes finding a properly registered taxi. We paid him the £80 he wanted to take us to Bucaramanga. Three hours later we were in the Melia Confort Hotel, five star, safe and secure.
After the almost constant excitement in Colombia, England was something of an anti-climax. My reunion with Marsha wasn’t nearly as fraught as I might have expected, despite several missed phone calls. I figured that, whatever else she might do, she wasn’t about to cut my head off and stick it on a pole. However, I did refrain from planting the idea in her head.
My arrival at ‘Front’s’ offices had all the sense of occasion of a returning hero. Eoin must have been considerably relieved. This had been a comparatively expensive assignment and he had gone out on a limb to okay it. But when he saw the photos and listened to the story he was delighted.
The following month’s issue saw my ‘cocina’ story prominently displayed inside, over several pages. The ‘piece de resistance’, of course, was the photo of me in a ‘Front’ t-shirt holding several kilos of coke in my arms. Eoin told me later that that particular issue had increased the month’s circulation by 80,000.
Even the BBC showed an interest. They put an account of the trip, together with several photos, on their news website, where it remains to this day under ‘Colombian cocaine factory’.
I was now quite a ‘hot’ magazine journalist and, although it wasn’t the situation that every door was open to me, I could at least consider writing for more prestigious media outlets. Not that I was ungrateful to ‘Front’, but, quite obviously, I didn’t want to spend the rest of my career writing exclusively for them. The problem with a triumph though, was that it always raised the question of what to do for an encore. I already had my next story though and, in fact, I had already done it.