Families frightened by warplanes and helicopters flying overhead. Men coming back from their fields with strange rashes and marks on their bodies. Women washing their faces in what was once a clean river, and their skin breaking out. Children suddenly coming down with mysterious stomach ailments, crying because their eyes are severely irritated. Farmers weeping as they watch their crops die, poisoned, their livelihoods destroyed.

These are some of the things we hear and images we see in the video we present here today. It is a compilation of some of the testimonies gathered by the International Verification Mission that traveled to the Ecuador-Colombia border this June, and comes to us thanks to our friend Adolfo Maldonado and his colleagues at the Ecuadorian organization Acción Ecológica, as well as the producers at Acción Creativa; both groups members of the Inter-Institutional Committee Against Fumigations.

The mission went to look into the continuing claims of Ecuadorian peasant farmers that the fumigation programs just across the border, in which the Colombian army, with vast financial and logistical support from the U.S. government, dumps untold thousands of gallons of powerful herbicides onto the countryside in an attempt to eradicate coca and opium plantations. They also investigated claims that Colombian troops had crossed into Ecuadorian territory while fighting against the guerrilla insurgency, violating Ecuador’s avowed neutrality toward the Colombian civil war.

Crop fumigations have caused huge controversy within Colombia, generating countless denunciations that they devastate the rural areas where they are carried out. These denunciations have been controversial, with the Colombian and U.S. governments fiercely denying any danger from the spraying and producing a stream of questionable studies and evidence to support their denials.

The government of Ecuador, which shares a border with some of Colombia’s top coca-producing and most violent areas, has repeatedly asked that the Colombians err on the side of caution, and, while the question of the fumigation chemicals’ safety remains in the air, stay at least ten kilometers away from Ecuadorian territory.

According to the eyewitnesses from the Ecuadorian side of the border interviewed in this video, Colombian military aircraft not only approach the border but often cross it. There is no question in the minds of these people that things have changed since the airplanes started spraying poison close to their homes. These are the people whose voices are never heard in drug war debates in Bogotá and Washington. Though it may not be clear exactly what is causing some of the health and environmental problems they report, they know intimately these lands and the communities who live there, and understand that something is not right. Listen to what they have to say... and stay tuned, as this is by no means the last thing we will have to report about this in the coming days and weeks…

For more information, contact Juan Pablo Barragan of Acción Creativa at

English Language Video Transcript

(Name of local peasant farmers withheld.)

Testimonies of Those Affected by Plan Colombia
June 2005 International Verification Mission

INCURSIONS BY THE COLOMBIAN ARMY

ESMERALDAS

“We counted nine helicopters one morning… We were here working, and you could see that they were going by, and four flew overhead here, over Ecuadorian territory.”

“The planes don’t have limits… the planes come from Colombia and pass over Ecuador. One time, in Mataje, they fumigated a hectare inside the forest.”

“The Colombian military is coming in here. The Ecuadorian military should respond to that.”

“This week, Colombian military personnel were here, inside Ecuadorian territory. Here in our town, a kilometer and a half, in the Rio Plata area. We know that they were there; a Colombian truck came by with, I don’t know what inside, and we went to talk with the military authorities. And they told us that there was some kind of agreement, between the two military authorities, so that they could enter here. As a civilian community, we are complete against the Colombian army entering via Ecuadorian roads.”

…

“In May, there was an invasion by the Colombian Air Force, with 17 helicopter gunships. These same forces were shooting in the middle of the San Miguel River, forcing the boats on the river to pull into shore. This went on for more than two and a half hours, so that caused a lot of fear and panic among the people.”

“So, when I got there, there were some planes… a large plane, and a helicopter, that were coming from up there, toward here. So, I was standing alone there, and when that airplane got close to me, I ran and hid behind a big log. And so the big plane came and started to fly around and shoot. I don’t know what kind of weapons they were, but that was… there were bullets flying there. And I stayed hidden there, for almost three hours.”

“The planes passed over the school, with the children in classes. Some of them were outside, on break. Around five or six planes passed right over the school, and I think the children can all bare witness to this.”

COLONEL JORGE NARANJO, COMMANDER, JUNGLE BATTALION 58: “Well, no one has indicated to us the presence of any kind of aircraft or any kind of fumigation, and much less the dropping of any pamphlets…”

SECOND LIEUTENANT PEDRO AYALA, CICAL MILITARY DETACHMENT: “And so, around here we haven’t seen any helicopters or aircraft. If we had observed this, well, it would be bad, because they would be violating our Ecuadorian airspace. We would have informed our superiors”

COL. JORGE NARANJO: “The Ecuadorian Air Force doesn’t have any radar equipment there to detect this kind of thing. But… when something flies overhead, one would notice.

INFANTRY MAJOR CARLOS OVIEDO: I am surprised at claims that helicopter gunships have passed through here, that there have been shots fired here. That is impossible. We have a very tight intelligence network, and we know about everything that goes on here.

“Anyway, they are involving us, the civilian population. And they are lying, and they are denying that the things we are living through are happening. This week, we proved this, and we went to file an appeal…”

HEALTH EFFECTS

DR. LUIS ENRIQUE CASTRO, EPIDEMIOLOGY CENTER DIRECTOR: “The Epidemiology Center, which collects evidence, noted a very, very intimate relationship between fumigation and illnesses. And this started to draw our attention, because suddenly the signs began to appear. Children with diarrhea, adults with respiratory problems. A few women who had been pregnant said that they had lost their babies.”

“Lately, we’ve had children, they get scabies… some kind of exaggerated [skin condition]. I’ve been here for almost three years, and when we got here there weren’t these kinds of problems. This has been happening for, let’s say, the last six months or something like that…. There are also respiratory infections. Right now, these are more common than before. We’re downwind, and it’s because of the fumigations in Colombia.”

“It wasn’t far away. The helicopters flew overhead until 8 or 10 o’clock at night. And there were times when they came so close, that the sound was so close, we were also living in a climate of terror here. Because we didn’t know if there was combat going on, or if they were fumigating; we ourselves didn’t know what was happening.”

“So, all the children and us, since it was three in the afternoon, we went out to see. And there were two helicopters, accompanied… and we looked, at this airplane, to see what it was doing. And we saw that it had been fumigating, dropping some poison, glyphosate. And so we didn’t know what it was that they were doing, and a week later, they said that this is fumigation. And so, since then we have started to get sick, the children started to break out in their skin, started vomiting, having diarrhea, headaches, losing their appetites, everything. Two weeks later, the children started dying.”

“And because of this… many people here suffered the effects. It looked like conjunctivitis, but it wasn’t really conjunctivitis. It was the effect of the winds that came in from the other side [of the border], towards us. It mostly affected the children.”

“…we have children with fevers. We have marks [on the skin], especially in Guadualito. When the fumigations come, one feels the need to get out of there, because the airplanes sound really bad, all the people get scared.”

“The winds that come, bring the fumigations, because we are not far from the border; we’re only ten kilometers away.”

“So many children are sick, with diarrhea, with fevers, with rashes, vomiting. Now my family, daughters… the smallest ones are the ones that are most affected.”

UNNAMED UNIFORMED MAN: “There are illnesses because of the Colombian army’s fumigations. Because the water is contaminated. And the children, since they swim there, and adults swim there too, they are contaminated. They get fungus, all kinds of bacteria affect the children and the older people.”

“In the community of San Marcos, people would wash their faces with the water, and later they would have marks all over their faces. And this… this isn’t something that normally happens.”

“I have problems with my uterus, I have early signs of cancer.”

“After the fumigations, that cancer appeared, and she didn’t last a year until we had to bury her.”

“Before, there was no cancer here, everyone lived, everyone swam in the water, everyone ate the fruit. But now, we are suffering from cancer.”

“An uncle of mine died because he couldn’t breathe. He was only 48 or 50 years old, he was a healthy man before that. And after the fumigations happened, he went to work, and when he had drunk a bit of the water from the pond that’s been contaminated, he was on the ground, nearly dying.”

“Now many children are getting coughs, colds, but before we didn’t get these kind of fevers. The fumigations infected all of this.”

“That’s why I’m so sick. I have burning irritations all over my body. Like a full-body rash.”

“It’s an irritation, a rash that I can’t stand. They tell me that I need an operation, but who knows? Since there’s no money, one has to just sit around and wait for death.”

“Because of these damn fumigations, my son lost his life. From so much suffering, he was spent, I couldn’t save my son’s life.”

“It’s taken a little longer for the adults, but we have illnesses as well. For example, my illness is that my hands feel like they’re dying, as if I had no strength; it feels likesome kind of blood clot.”

“My whole body, all my skin, my hands, everything is covered with welts. There is a rash. It’s all permanent.”

“As you can see I have this problem with my eyes, and it’s going to stay there, I have no solution.”

“The hens died, the dogs died… everything died.”

“Are they just planning to destroy us once and for all? We shouldn’t have to go through this, it’s very hard… families have died because of this.”

2LT. PEDRO AYALA: “So, thank God, up until now we haven’t had that problem here.”

COL. JORGE NARANJO: “No, no kind of illnesses, or any effect from any kind of fumigation.”

MAJ. CARLOS OVIEDO: “No, we haven’t heard of any infections, and illnesses caused by the fumigations.”

CHONE 2 COMMUNITY, 500 KM. FROM THE BORDER, SEPTEMBER, 2002: “It’s happened here, on my farm. Fumigations have come near here, and caused this damage to my crops that I keep to support myself and my children. And now I can see that no, nothing’s left. All of this is ruined. And how am I supposed to make money? How can I provide for my children?”