Under the shadow of coca

In the southern Colombian department of Putumayo, coca cultivation remains one of the few viable economic options for thousands of rural families living in one of the country's most neglected border regions. Despite decades of eradication campaigns, military operations, and international pressure driven by the United States' war on drugs, the coca economy continues to shape daily life in this area of the Amazon rainforest.

This work follows farmers, coca leaf pickers, processors, and families whose livelihoods are tied to an illicit economy sustained by poverty, limited state presence, and armed control. In rural communities such as Jordán Guisia, La Piña, and La Hormiga, men and women harvest and carry heavy sacks of coca leaves, process coca base inside their homes, and rest after long days of physically exhausting labor. Their routines unfold under the control of armed groups such as Comandos de la Frontera, which regulate production, movement, and local economies.

Some of the people portrayed are attempting to leave coca cultivation behind. Couples like Gerardo and Marta have joined crop-substitution programs, growing cacao, raising pigs, and participating in fish-farming projects promoted as legal alternatives. Yet these initiatives rarely provide enough income to meet basic needs, making the transition fragile and uncertain. For many others, coca remains the only stable source of income. The families documented here are not drug traffickers or mafiosos; they are campesinos with limited options. The real profits and control of the cocaine trade lie with armed groups that dominate the territory.

This project unfolds at a moment of renewed political tension. Recent events in Venezuela and statements by U. S. President Donald Trump accusing Colombia of producing excessive amounts of cocaine — and labeling its leadership as complicit — have intensified international pressure on the country. Such rhetoric reinforces a long-standing narrative that simplifies responsibility and overlooks the realities faced by rural communities at the lowest level of the drug economy.

Rather than focusing on trafficking networks or spectacular violence, this work centers on everyday endurance. By grounding the global drug debate in the lives of specific people and places, it reveals how the costs of the war on drugs continue to be borne by those with the fewest choices, far from the decisions and accusations that shape their futures.