The city at the forefront of Colombia’s war on cocaine

Community activist Wilson Muniz said that in Cali’s labyrinthine working-class neighborhoods, a territorial war is taking place over the control of the local drug markets. In one case, a young drug dealer was hospitalized in intensive care after being shot in the face. Elsewhere in the city, residents found the remains of dismembered bodies of victims thrown into drainage ditches. “Drugs are behind everything here,” Muniz said.

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Prisons in the heart of the Amazon

Cali has suffered from violence for years, but peak crops of coca leaves, the agricultural raw material used to make cocaine, have increased the flow of drugs and the intensity of violence. The resulting excess cocaine not only flooded markets around the world, from the US to Europe and Australia, but also reached the streets of Colombia’s third largest city.

Today, cocaine is so cheap that many Cali residents can afford to buy it, and it is especially common in low-income neighborhoods. Local drug gangs are waging deadly battles for control of neighborhoods, and security forces are encountering increasing violence as they try to quell the struggles.

The security implications of the situation were at the center of a heated public debate in view of the presidential elections held last week. The growing fear of the strengthening of armed gangs has increased support for Abelardo de la Espería, a conservative and populist lawyer. He surged in the polls after promising to take a tough hand against drug trafficking networks, among other things by establishing maximum security prisons in the heart of the Amazon forest.

Cali is expected to pose a complex challenge to the next president. Its geography is an integral part of the problem. To the south of it lies the province of Cauca, an unstable region where some of the most fertile coca fields in the world are located. The crops in the area are characterized by a particularly high concentration of psychoactive alkaloids, the substances from which cocaine is produced in remote laboratories.

To the west, smuggling routes stretch through the Pacific Ocean, which are used to transport shipments of many tons of cocaine to markets in the US and Europe. Cali’s location, close to both the production areas and the export routes, made it a natural junction where the dirty money, smuggled goods and violence produced by the cocaine trade drain.

“There is no other city in Colombia near which there is one of the largest coca growing areas in the world,” said Juan Camilo Cook, CEO of the Albarralisa Foundation, a local crime prevention organization.

The mountains became a battlefield

The drug trade in Cauca is controlled by armed militias, which combine characteristics of guerrilla organizations and drug cartels. Many of them are splinter factions of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which broke away from the organization after the peace agreement signed with the government in 2016.

The mountains around Cali have become a battlefield in recent years. Army forces and police commando units raid cocaine labs, while the armed groups fight back and struggle to maintain control of the area.

According to police officials, the criminal organizations operating in the rural areas do not operate openly in Kali. Instead, they operate local street gangs to distribute drugs, collect sponsorship fees and carry out assassinations. “Outsourcing,” Cali Police Chief General Herbert Benavides calls it.

For many of the city’s residents, gang violence dictates the routine of life. “When they start fighting, everything has to be closed,” said Yasmin Sanchez, 40, who works at the family grocery store. “They start shooting, and it doesn’t matter who the bullets hit.”

The struggle to dismantle these organizations sometimes looks almost like a military operation. On one of the last days early in the morning, more than 200 police officers equipped with burglar bars, assault rifles and tactical shields raided one of the city’s neighborhoods. The target was the “Monarchs” gang, which established its control over the area through the brutal elimination of its rivals, according to the authorities.

The police broke into the houses and arrested 23 suspects belonging to the gang – without firing a single shot. “As long as they’re not on the streets, they don’t commit crimes,” Benavides noted.

The vast wealth generated by the booming cocaine trade ensures that the fight against it never truly ends. Armed groups operating in the countryside south of Cali have upgraded their weapons arsenal, and now operate advanced drones carrying explosives alongside state-of-the-art assault rifles to attack security forces.

Alejandro Adar, the mayor of Cali, said that his forces managed to thwart several drone attacks within the city limits, but more attempts are expected in the future.

“They attack to distract the security forces, so they can transport the drugs through the mountains towards the shores of the Pacific Ocean,” Ader said.

A struggle that lasted for generations

Kali’s fight against drug trafficking organizations has been going on for several generations. In the 1990s, when the infamous Cali cartel controlled 80% of the cocaine shipments destined for the United States, the number of murders in the city exceeded 2,000 a year. The mayor at the time, Rodrigo Guerrero, an epidemiologist trained at Harvard University, began to treat the murders as a veritable epidemic. He mapped the centers of violence in order to target them with police forces and social programs, an approach that is considered a harbinger of Data-based policing.

According to the data of the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Colombia, the number of murders in Cali dropped to 1,107 last year. Despite this, the city’s homicide rate is still among the highest in Latin America.

According to officials in the municipality, law enforcement alone cannot compete with the economic temptation that the drug trade offers to young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. Adar’s approach combines increasing defense budgets alongside targeted social programs.

Kali’s fight against drug trafficking organizations has been going on for several generations. In the 1990s, when the infamous Cali Cartel controlled 80% of the cocaine destined for the American market, the number of murders in the city exceeded 2,000 a year. The mayor at the time, Rodrigo Guerrero, a Harvard-trained epidemiologist, began treating the murders as a public health epidemic. He mapped patterns of violence to deploy police forces and run social programs where needed, an approach that predated modern data-driven policing.

According to data from the National Institute of Forensic Medicine in Colombia, the number of murders in Cali last year was cut to 1,107. Despite this, it still ranks among the cities with the highest homicide rates in Latin America.

City officials said that law enforcement alone cannot compete with the economic appeal of the drug trade for low-income youth. Adar’s approach combines increased spending on security with targeted social programs.

In the two and a half years that Ader has been mayor, Cali’s police force has grown by 14%, and funding for surveillance cameras, vehicles and crime prevention initiatives has jumped by 30%. At the same time, he increased investment in infrastructure, schools and parks, while relying on partnerships between the public and private sectors with companies from industry, food processing and the city’s business sector.

One such initiative, called On the Right Path, provides counseling, education and vocational training to ex-gang members and at-risk youth. In the workshop on the western edge of the city, funding from industrial companies such as Panelka, which operates a local Honda motorcycle assembly plant, finances courses for motorcycle mechanics. Sergio Castaneda, a 22-year-old student at the workshop, said that the program gave him a way to get out of the street gangs that exploit young people and work to recruit them.

“They are told: ‘You have to kill someone to keep your place,'” said Castañeda, describing the conditions of admission to gangs. Today he is on his way to finish his studies, and his goal is to get an entry level job at a Honda factory.

Similar coalitions supported by the business sector also finance programs for the preservation of cultural heritage. One of them is the Carlos Molina Salsa Museum in the Hapoalim neighborhood. The museum, supported by the civic development organization Pro Pacifico, provides musical instruments, employment opportunities and art tours in the neighborhood with the goal of keeping youth off the streets. “We give them music and culture,” Molina said. “This way another door opens for them.”